The Nine Questions on What Wisdom Is About: Causes, Axioms, Material and Immaterial Substances, Accidents

Orientation #

He opens mid-sentence, continuing the list of doubts: “the first doubt about which in the peri tōn aporōn we have disputed a bit,” referring to the end of the previous book. He closes: “this afternoon we can look at the third reading.” The previous class began outlining the roughly twenty-three questions of Book III after explaining why dialectic and universal doubt come first (prev. lecture).

The class, in order #

1. Does one science consider all four causes? (“whether it belongs to one or to many forms”) #

Point: the first doubt is whether looking at the causes belongs to one or to many forms of reasoned-out knowledge; the probable answer from the sciences we have is “many.”

1. Natural philosophers talked only of matter, or (the later ones) of matter and mover — the exception being “that mathematician turned natural philosopher, Pythagoras,” and even the Pythagoreans treated numbers as what things are made of, “a little bit like matter.” So natural philosophy seems to be about matter and mover.
   • Confirmation from modern physics: force and mass have “a certain likeness” to mover and matter, “not really the same thing.” Aside: as a young beginner he said this to Kasurik [name uncertain], who “laughed in my face.”
2. Mathematics shows by the form: opposite angles are equal because the intersecting lines are straight.
3. Ethics asks the end or purpose of man — “what was your intention in doing that?” Conclusion: different sciences talk about different causes, not the same ones. So what causes does wisdom talk about? If wisdom is about immaterial, unchanging things, how can it talk about matter and mover, and how can there be an end “if nothing is moving for the sake of something?” — “a little question there,” left as a doubt.

2. Does wisdom consider the axioms? (“only belongs in science, or also about those beginnings”) #

Point: granted that wisdom seeks the first beginnings and causes of substances (he takes that for granted, substances being the fundamental things), does it also treat the beginnings “from which all show or demonstrate,” i.e. the axioms, such as whether one can affirm and deny the same thing of the same thing?

• Observation: Aristotle sometimes states the fundamental axiom as “you can’t affirm and deny the same of the same in the same way at the same time,” instead of “you can’t both be and not be” — showing the affinity between logic (affirming and denying as such) and wisdom (being and unbeing); “these two principles are kind of almost the same thing.” Likewise the kinds of being are later distinguished by the figures of predication. He connects this with what Monsignor Dionne “was putting out in the first encounter” with the subject.
• He thinks this question occurred to Aristotle more than to earlier Greeks, though Parmenides talked about the axiom of being and non-being. Pro and con:
• Con: axioms are statements known through themselves to all men; you don’t investigate the obvious, “you just use what’s obvious and build upon that.”
• Pro: sophists go around denying the axioms; and Heraclitus seems to deny the axiom when he says day and night, waking and sleeping, are the same.

3. Digression: was Heraclitus denying the axiom? (“they do not see how that which is opposed agrees”) #

Point: Heraclitus may only have been pointing out an apparent contradiction in how we all speak, to make us think.

1. Heraclitus saw that change is between contraries and from one to the other, and we all say the hard becomes soft, day becomes night; “becomes” means “comes to be,” so one contrary comes to be the other, so one contrary is the other.
2. Parmenides reacts: that is impossible; if change involves that, change is an illusion.
3. Aristotle “unties” this apparent contradiction in Book I of Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics] — the first major contradiction about change, easier than Zeno’s in Book VI, and the first major example of going forward by untying a contradiction (cf. “the first reading”). Aside: when teaching Natural Hearing he raises the role of contradiction throughout philosophy, science and theology at that point.
4. Evidence Heraclitus knew better and spoke paradoxically “like Chesterton”:
   • fragment “They do not see how that which is opposed agrees,” with the bow: pushing with the left hand and pulling with the right, opposed directions, is what gives the arrow its force — unlike pushing and pulling on a table, where “I’d be opposed to myself.”
   • fragment “We should not act and speak like those asleep” — so he knew the difference between sleeping and waking.
   • fragment that men do not understand the things they meet every day though they think they do — reminiscent of Socrates, “but it should be the other way around” since Heraclitus came first; so Heraclitus, like Socrates, may have raised contradictions to show men they do not understand.
   • “war is the father of all”: the untying of contradictions makes the mind go forward.
   • Compare Socrates’ strange genealogy that Iris is the offspring of Thaumas: it makes you stop and ask what it means. So: there is reason to consider the axioms given the attacks on them, and reason not to, since they are obvious. He calls this “the first problem about substance,” but really “in between” the first question and the questions about what substance wisdom is about; he sometimes prefers to make it a separate, bolder question: should wisdom consider the axioms or not?

4. One science of material and immaterial substances, or many? (“whether there is one about all or there are many”) #

Point: supposing there are both material and immaterial substances, is there one science of both?

• The supposition: if only material substances existed, natural philosophy would be wisdom “and we shouldn’t even be involved in what we’re doing right now.” But even natural philosophy gives evidence of immaterials: Anaxagoras’s greater mind, the unmoved mover shown not to be a body in Book VIII [of the Physics], the human soul existing apart after death, or Plato’s forms.
• Pro (one science): wisdom is about all things, so it must be the same wisdom about both, else it would not seek the first causes of all things — “pretty convincing.”
• Con: they cannot be known the same way; “it seems kind of funny to have one science about animals and angels, wouldn’t it, Father?” Plato’s Republic: the soul faces material things and must turn 180 degrees to see immaterial things, turning 90 degrees on the way to see mathematicals — like the Dark Night of the Soul in Christian mysticism, turning from the sensible world upward. This reminds him of Aristotle’s tropaia [ed.: likely tropos, “turn of mind”] in Book II, reading 5 of wisdom; Washington Irving’s Mountjoy has “a poetic turn of mind” that keeps him from metaphysics. A student adds that the name (immaterial) “from the denial of the other” also suggests the difference. So it would seem there cannot be one reasoned-out knowledge of both.
• Follow-up question, if many: are they all subgenera of one genus (as arithmetic and geometry are both in the genus of mathematical philosophy), or should some be called wisdom and the others something else? One could add: which would be wisdom, or both?

5. Are there immaterial substances, and of how many kinds? (“whether sensible substances alone should be said to be”) #

Point: two questions attached here because of their connection with the previous ones, but “a really different dialectic” — about the things themselves, not about what wisdom is about — and “an even more important question.”

• Whether sensible substances alone should be said to be, or besides these other, separate substances.
• If there are such, whether of one kind (Anaxagoras’s greater mind only) or many genera, as with the Platonists: the forms, and between the forms and sensible things the mathematical substances. Aside: in Book I Aristotle sometimes says “we Platonists,” having spent twenty years in Plato’s school; “in some sense Aristotle is a Platonist,” in some sense not. Count: he says this ends “the five questions about substance,” the first three (axioms, one science or many, subgenera) about what substances wisdom considers, the last two about what substances there are; then “the last three questions” concern accidents.

6. Substances only, or also their per se accidents? (“not only substances but also accidents”) #

Point: whether the theōria (he notes Aristotle’s use of this word here and in Parts of Animals instead of epistēmē: “you’re looking at”) is about substances only or also about the sumbebēkota belonging kath’ hauto to them; each philosophy is about what belongs kath’ hauto to its subject.

• Answered “in a way” at the beginning of Book IV: wisdom is about being as being; being does not mean one thing, but its many meanings are connected; the first is substance, and quantity, quality etc. have a ratio to substance (size of substance, disposition of substance). Since being is equivocal by reason, wisdom considers both, but substance primarily; hence Books VII–VIII, on being by the figures of predication, treat mainly substance. Later it treats even accidental being, but “very brief,” not as being as such.

7. The dialecticians’ topics (“same and other, like and unlike, contrariety, before and after”) #

Point: a more particular question, “not that much developed” in the dialectic: does wisdom treat same and other (said in substance and other categories), like and unlike (in quality), contrariety, and “my favorite,” before and after? These seem chosen at random but have prominence in dialectic and in physics.

• Contrariety is treated “ex officio” in Book X; same and other is a book of the Topics (“seventh book is it?”); before and after ran through Book IX (act and ability), and Aristotle also says substance is before accidents in more than one way, and being kath’ hauto is before accidental being.
• The doubt: Aristotle refers explicitly to the dialecticians, hoi dialektikoi peirōntai skopein ek tōn endoxōn monon — they try to look at these from probable opinions only. Dialectic reasons from probable opinions to tentative conclusions; wisdom is the supreme demonstrative epistēmē. So why should the wise man talk about what the dialectician talks about? A student: a sign of something universal, “the affinity between them.” Because the dialectician makes so much of them, maybe they belong to dialectic rather than wisdom. Compare Book V: distinguishing senses of words is the dialectician’s second tool, yet the wise man does it too — though he also shows the order and connection of the senses, going beyond the dialectician.
• He stresses that the before and after of act and ability, read this summer, is “the culmination, the crowning part” of Book IX and of universal importance for wisdom and all philosophy.
• Student’s clarification: is the earlier question about accidents of substance and this about accidents of being? Answer: no; the first asks substances only or also per se accidents; this singles out things of great universality that appear in the dialectician’s work.
• Example of same and other, Plato’s Protagoras: Socrates asks whether prudence, justice, piety, courage and moderation are five names of the same thing or of different things; Protagoras: different parts of virtue, like nose, eyes, ear in the face; Socrates attacks, arguing they are all the same. Truth on both sides: Thomas, following Aristotle and Cicero, takes the four cardinal virtues either as four different virtues or as four aspects found in any virtue (some strength, moderation, balance or justice, and a partaking of reason in every virtue), each virtue having one in excellence. Also Meno’s question whether knowledge is better than right opinion if both direct you to the good. Student: does dialectic deal with these probabilistically? Answer: yes, and wisdom “with some necessity.”

8. Accidents of the accidents (“like the accidents of the accidents”) #

Point: further still, does wisdom treat accidents of accidents — e.g. not only what contrariety is but whether one contrary has only one contrary?

• Example, again the Protagoras: Socrates argues wisdom and temperance are the same because both have the same contrary, folly, and a thing has only one contrary (shown “by a little induction”). Intemperance in wine or women is to act like a fool; “fond” originally means foolish, as still in Shakespeare. Significant that Socrates does not argue this for courage and wisdom: courage is more opposed to the coward than to the foolhardy, temperance more to the fool.
• The dialectician treats these; would the wise man? He thinks these last two questions are less discussed than the others, but interesting that Aristotle raises them; the important question remains whether there are immaterial substances and whether one science treats all.

9. Coda: Book VI, the order of wisdom and the natural road (“wisdom differs from mathematics and from natural philosophy by its immateriality”) #

Point: wisdom’s order goes toward the immaterial while still being led by the hand from material things, so it follows the natural road more than mathematics does.

1. Book VI: wisdom considers things that can be without matter (being, one, substance, which can be with matter but need not) and things that cannot be with matter (immaterial substances); the first are considered before the second, which are less known to us — “as Monsignor Dionne taught us.”
2. Book IX leads from act and ability as found in motion (which must be gone through, though “not really interesting”) to the universal consideration in the middle part, where act and ability are found even in immaterials; motion as act, then operation and form as act. Aristotle is “more in wisdom” in the second part than in the first.
3. Going from being as being to its first causes is going from effect to cause — the natural road; mathematics knows the cause before the effect because it deals with abstracted quantity and shape.
4. Hence Descartes and Spinoza, wanting to proceed everywhere as in geometry, go against the natural road, and are further from it than the empiricists (named from experience): Locke in the Essay on Human Understanding sees men’s disputes come from not using words in the same meaning, notes the sensible origin of words, and criticizes Descartes — “he’s got problems of his own too.” Descartes after the cogito jumps to God and then from God as cause to nature; Spinoza makes it a universal rule that the order of our thoughts is the order of things; Hegel, influenced by Spinoza, makes our first and most confused idea, being, the beginning of all reality — “a gross confusion.”

His words #

• “wisdom”: his name for the Metaphysics [ed.: Metaphysics].
• “reasoned-out knowledge”: his rendering of epistēmē [ed.: science].
• “Natural Hearing”: [ed.: Physics].
• “mover”: efficient cause; “matter”, “form”, “end or purpose”: the four causes.
• “affirm and deny the same of the same in the same way at the same time”: his statement of the axiom [ed.: principle of non-contradiction].
• “untying” a contradiction: Aristotle’s way of going forward.
• “greater mind”: Anaxagoras’s nous [ed.: Mind].
• tropaia: “a different turn of mind” (Book II, reading 5) [ed.: probably tropos].
• theōria: “looking at,” used instead of epistēmē.
• sumbebēkota kath’ hauto: what happens to substances through themselves [ed.: per se accidents].
• “ability”: [ed.: potency]; “act and ability”.
• “equivocal by reason”: being said in many connected meanings [ed.: analogous / pros hen].
• “ex officio”: contrariety treated in Book X.
• hoi dialektikoi peirōntai skopein ek tōn endoxōn monon: the dialecticians try to look at these from probable opinions only.
• “second tool of dialectic”: distinguishing the senses of words.
• “fond”: originally foolish.
• “the natural road”: proceeding from effect to cause, from what is more known to us.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book III, the list of doubts (second reading): the doubt about causes, axioms, substances, accidents, dialecticians’ topics, accidents of accidents.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics Book I (natural philosophers, Pythagoreans, “we Platonists”); Book II reading 5 (tropaia); Book IV beginning (being as being); Book V (senses of words); Book VI (immateriality); Books VII–VIII (substance); Book IX (act and ability, read “this summer”); Book X (contrariety).
• Aristotle, Physics Book I (untying the contraries contradiction), Book VI (Zeno), Book VIII (unmoved mover not a body).
• Aristotle, Parts of Animals (use of theōria); Topics, book on same and other (“seventh book is it?”).
• Heraclitus, fragments (day and night; opposed agrees, the bow; not acting like those asleep; men don’t understand what they meet daily; war father of all); Parmenides.
• Plato, Republic (turning of the soul); Protagoras (parts of virtue; one contrary); Meno (knowledge vs. right opinion); Socrates on Iris and Thaumas.
• Thomas Aquinas, Cicero on the cardinal virtues (no locus).
• Chesterton; Shakespeare (“fond”); Washington Irving, Mountjoy; the Dark Night of the Soul.
• Locke, Essay on Human Understanding; Descartes (cogito); Spinoza; Hegel.

His questions #

• What causes does wisdom talk about, if different sciences talk about different causes? Left open: if wisdom is about immaterial, unchanging things, matter, mover and end seem hard to fit.
• Should wisdom consider the axioms, or only the beginnings and causes of substance? Left open: not, because they are obvious; yes, because sophists and Heraclitus seem to deny them.
• Did Heraclitus really think day and night are the same? Probably not: his other fragments show he knew the difference and spoke paradoxically to make us think.
• Could there be one science about both material and immaterial substances? Left open: wisdom is about all things, yet “animals and angels” don’t seem knowable the same way; the soul must turn 180 degrees.
• Are there other substances besides the sensible, and of one kind or many? Left open; Anaxagoras’s mind vs. the Platonists’ forms and mathematicals.
• Is wisdom about substances only, or also their per se accidents? Answered from Book IV: about both, since being is said of both by connected meanings, but substance primarily.
• If the dialecticians talk about same and other, contrariety, before and after, why should the wise man? It shows the affinity of the two; dialectic treats them probably, wisdom with necessity.
• Are the five virtues names of the same thing or of different things (Protagoras)? Both have truth: four different virtues, or four aspects found in any virtue.
• Does one contrary have only one contrary? Socrates uses it to identify wisdom and temperance; left as a question for wisdom.