Summa I, Q.4 a.3 and Q.5 Introduction: How Creatures Are Like God, and the Most Universal Things (Being, One, True, Good)

Orientation #

He begins mid-article: “so that was the reply to the first objection” of q. 4 a. 2 (prev. lecture); he then finishes a. 2 and reads a. 3. At the end he says “you’re going to hear a little bit about this when we talk about the good now,” previewing q. 5, and that Thomas takes up the infinity of God after perfection. Last time worked through q. 4 aa. 1-2 on God’s perfection and universal perfection; next time opens q. 5 on the good in general.

The class, in order #

1. Finishing a. 2: opposites combined in one model (“Dominicans are supposed to imitate Saint Dominic”) #

Point: the reply to the second objection (how opposite perfections can be combined in one thing) is illustrated by the religious orders.

• Each order imitates its founder, but all are to imitate Christ; Paul: “be imitators of me as I am of Christ.” So we imitate Dominic or Francis insofar as they imitate Christ, but none imitates him fully.
• Christ “combines the perfection of Dominic with the perfection of Francis, with the perfection of Saint Teresa of Avila… but he’s one man”: a perfect model, more perfect than any founder. This is “a little bit of that same idea” of the article.

2. a. 2 ad 3: to be itself includes life and wisdom (“none of the perfections of being are able to be lacking”) #

Point: the objection that esse is less perfect than life or wisdom (like the last objection of the previous article) is answered from Dionysius.

1. Considered as distinguished by reason, ipsum esse is more perfect than life, and life than wisdom.
2. Yet what is living is more perfect than what only is, because living is also being, and being wise is also being and living.
3. Being does not include living and wise, since what partakes of being need not partake of it according to its whole way of being.
4. But the to-be of God includes life and wisdom, because no perfection of being can be lacking to what is to-be-itself-subsisting. His gloss: I have no perfection through wisdom unless being wise belongs to me through my wisdom, and being alive through my life; “so it’s only through to be in some way that I am perfect by these things.” Hence if God is subsistent to-be, he has all the perfections we have by being wise, alive, courageous, etc.

3. a. 3, the objections and sed contra (“It seems that no creature is able to be like God”) #

Point: he reads the four objections and the two sides of Scripture.

• Obj. 1: Psalm 85, “there is no one like you among the gods”; but the more excellent creatures are called gods by participation; much less can lesser creatures be like God.
• Obj. 2: likeness is a comparison; there is no comparison or likeness between things of diverse genera (sweetness is not like whiteness); God is in no genus, “as has been shown above in the simplicity of God.” Aside: “another reason why these articles come after the simplicity of God.”
• Obj. 3: like things come together in form; nothing comes together with God in form, since the nature of no thing is its to-be except God’s.
• Obj. 4: likeness is mutual; if a creature is like God, God is like a creature, but Isaiah asks “whom do you make like God?”
• Sed contra: Genesis 1:26, “let us make man to our image and likeness”; 1 John, “when he appears we will be like him, we will see him as he is.”

4. The body: three kinds of likeness (“every agent makes what is like itself”) #

Point: since likeness is a coming together in form, there are as many likenesses as ways of communicating in a form.

• (i) Same form, same ratio, same mode: two equally white things, “not only like but equal,” the most perfect likeness.
• (ii) Same form, same ratio, not same mode but more and less: less white to more white, an imperfect likeness.
• (iii) Same form, not according to the same ratio: the case of non-univocal agents. Argument for (iii):

1. Every agent makes what is like itself insofar as it is an agent (giving the act it already has in some way), for each thing acts according to its form; so the effect bears some likeness of its cause. Aside: “first thing to my Mohammedan friend”: God made us, so there must be some likeness.
2. Agent in the same species as effect: likeness according to the definition of the species (man generates man). [He misreads “not contained” then corrects himself.]
3. Agent not in the same species: likeness by genus only, as things generated by the power of the sun approach a likeness to the sun.
4. Agent in no genus: effects attain a remote likeness, not by species or genus, but “according to some ratio,” as to-be itself is common to all but not in the same way. Conclusion: all things from God are assimilated to him as beings, to the first and universal beginning of all being.

5. Analogy as a likeness of ratios (“which is more like a two”) #

Point: a De Veritate passage on the likeness of creature to God works by likeness of ratios.

• Four is much closer to two than one hundred; but two-to-four is no less like one-to-two than fifty-to-one-hundred is. So a likeness of ratios “bridges the gap” between things far apart.
• Analogia is the Greek word for proportion (Euclid); “proportion” sometimes used for ratio, but analogy/proportion here means a likeness of ratios.
• Application: “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”; the forgiven servant who throttled the other. God will be to you as you are to your neighbour: a proportion, hence a likeness, “even though the distance between you and God is infinite.”
• Aside: Dickens’ Joe visiting Pip, trying to set his hat on the mantel and it keeps falling: “a way of making things more alike” that are far apart.

6. ad 1: like and unlike at once (“the same things are like God and unlike God”) #

Point: Scripture’s “nothing is like God” does not deny a likeness.

• Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 9: things are like God insofar as they imitate him, who is not perfectly imitable; unlike insofar as they fall short of their cause (“the equivocal cause, you could say”), not only in intensity and remission like less-white to more-white, but because they agree neither in species nor in genus.
• Scale: another man is like me in species; a dog or cat in a more remote way, but at least in the same genus; our likeness to God is more remote still, “only by analogy.”
• Aside: “image and likeness” in Genesis may itself signal the distance; he cites from memory the Fourth Lateran Council (1215): no likeness between God and creature can be noted without a greater unlikeness, “a key text.”

7. ad 2: God outside every genus, source of every kind (“He’s the beginning of every kind of thing”) #

Point: the objection assumes God is one genus and the creature another; but God is not in any genus.

• One kind of thing may be “chopped off” from another and not comparable; but every kind of thing can be compared to the beginning of every kind, and that is a ratio.
• Kind = genus (sui generis, “one of a kind”). Image: the centre of a circle is the origin of every point on the circumference, though those points are disconnected from one another.
• Student: is that which is the beginning of every kind of thing confined to no kind? He: no; to say God is “some kind of thing” would be bad, if kind means genus, since it would limit him. Not “nowhere included” as one kind among others.
• Aside: Thomas takes up infinity after perfection; there seems a connection between being universally perfect and being infinite, “not limited in any way.”

8. ad 3: by analogy only (“God is being through essentially, right, and the others by partaking”) #

Point: the creature’s likeness to God is not a coming together in form under the same notion of genus or species, but by analogy only, as God is being by essence and others by participation. Genus as general kind, species as particular kind under it; God is in neither, so we lack that likeness to him.

9. ad 4: likeness is not mutual between cause and caused (“the image is like the man, and not the converse”) #

Point: though it may be conceded that the creature is like God, “in no way should it be conceded that God is like the creature.”

• Dionysius ch. 9: mutual likeness holds among things of one order, not between cause and caused. A portrait of him is like him; you would not say he is like the portrait, since the portrait is made like him. The creature is assimilated to God, not God to the creature.
• Puzzle he raises: metaphor. “The Lord is a rock”: rock is said properly of the thing you stub your foot on, metaphorically of God, so is God like the rock or the rock like God? “It shows you how distant the likeness is” in metaphor; the rock has something of God’s solidity, he is unbreakable.
• A son is the image of the father (natural generation, not the Trinity): you never tell a father he looks like his son; a fortiori with God.

10. Transition to the good; the most universals (“a little treatise about the good first”) #

Point: knowing God to be perfect and universally perfect, Thomas turns to divine goodness, but first, “for the goodness of the teaching,” treats the good in general, a consideration proper to first philosophy of which he gives a summary. He then sets out three distinctions to be understood about the most universals, which Aristotle alone succeeded in understanding; Avicenna brings it together with some misunderstandings; Thomas, in De Veritate q. 1 a. 1, follows Avicenna and gets it completely.

1. Distinction of the most universals from each other. Puzzle: going up the tree of Porphyry (substance; material/immaterial; living/non-living; animals/plants) unity increases, multiplicity decreases; so there should be one most universal, yet Thomas distinguishes six (“I can only count to five”). Aside: the Laval Christmas tree he called the tree of Porphyry.
2. Distinction of the most universals from their opposites. Puzzle: opposites are divided under something more common (virtue and vice under habit); how can a most universal have an opposite?
3. Distinction into what is immediately below them, the less universal.

11. The six most universals, in order (“undivided being”) #

Point: how each adds to being without adding anything real.

• Being: what is, in any way whatsoever; tied to to-be, existence.
• Thing (res): tied to what it is. Existence of a cat and what a cat is are not the same (they are for God, known only through creatures); the logician’s questions “does it exist?” and “what is it?” differ; but nothing can be that is not what it is. Hence “definition is speech signifying what a thing is.”
• One: undivided being. Plato thought of number as many ones; Heraclitus, “all things are one.” Every being is one, by an either-or argument: every being is simple or composed; the composed exists only as put together (pull a chair apart, no chair); a fortiori the simple is one. One adds a negation, a being of reason, not a real addition like “white” to “man.” Problem noted: whether the one that begins number is the one that everything is. Aside: unity is the fifth attribute of God, “undivided,” indeed indivisible.
• These three are said of everything in itself (De Veritate); the next three in comparison to something else.
• Something (aliquid): distinct from all else; again a negation (“I’m not you”). His own etymology: aliquid as “aliud quid.” Thomas and Albert often run “one” together with this (undivided in itself and distinct from others); he sometimes merges them “because I like number five,” which “doesn’t really change what we’re saying.”
• True and good: beyond negation, the only thing of reason left is a relation of reason; it must be to something that is in some way all things, the soul (De Anima III), especially reason and will. True adds the relation to reason; good the relation to the will, “the good is what all desire,” its first definition. These six are called transcendentals because they transcend the ten categories.

12. The most universals and their opposites (“To be or not to be”) #

Point: each pair is a different kind of opposition, “a very subtle thing.”

• Kinds of opposition, sketched: contraries share a subject and genus (courage/cowardice in the irascible appetite, temperance/intemperance in the desiring appetite, under habit or quality); privation and having are between, sharing a subject apt to have (only what can see is blind; a chair “doesn’t see” but is not blind); contradictories share nothing, so it is one or the other (man or not-man, red or not-red), whereas sight/blind, virtue/vice, sick/healthy admit a third (the chair). Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” is a question because you cannot both be and not be, and must either be or not be.
• Being vs non-being: contradiction. Something vs nothing: seems the same, contradiction-like, no common subject or genus; the Greeks’ “nothing from nothing” and Parmenides’ “no being from non-being” are almost the same thought.
• One vs many: different, more like lack: undivided being lacking the division the many has. Aristotle says the many is prior to the one in our understanding, as the simple is defined by negating the composed (the point, “which has no parts”); Thomas says Aristotle is not as nuanced as he could be, since many means many ones. Order: division, undivided, one, then many as a whole. Plato and Aristotle, Avicenna and Plato, got mixed up between the one beginning number (measure of number, “number is a multitude measured by one,” a relative opposition, adds something real, hence not a most universal) and the transcendental one; Avicenna thought this one adds something real too, “and he’s in trouble”; Plato thought everything is numbers.
• True vs false: contraries, he thinks. Thinking two is not half of four is not mere ignorance but thinking something contrary; thinking is divided into true and false thinking as two forms.
• Good vs bad: lack. The basic meaning of bad is the lack of what one can and should have. So one/many and good/bad are both privative, but the lack in “one” is not a lack that makes it bad. Aristotle distinguishes many senses of lack in the fifth book of wisdom; only the earlier senses are bad. Aside: like the Trinity, do not talk about this without Thomas’s words in front of you.

13. Preview of q. 5 and the playful argument (“the only guys who understand anything”) #

Point: the articles of q. 5 exhibit the distinctions just sketched.

• a. 6 (honestum, utile, delectabile) is a first division of good into the less universal (third distinction). a. 1 (good and being the same secundum rem?): you may suspect not really different, as with God’s attributes (knowledge and love of God are the same secundum rem, else God would be composed). a. 2: which is prior secundum rationem, granted they differ only in definition. a. 3: whether every being is good, convertible, as universal as being but posterior in ratio; the good/bad opposition will likely surface here (“there are bad things in the world”). a. 4: to what cause the ratio of good is reduced; Aristotle saw the connection of good and end (Plato: a separated good itself; Aristotle: more in form too). Then two ways of dividing it.
• Closing argument: if the more universal must be understood before the less (Aristotle, beginning of the Physics; a quadrilateral before a square, number before prime and composite), then the most universals before anything; they are extremely hard; Aristotle and Thomas alone understand them, so they alone understand anything. “I’ve been a little playful”; parallel joke to philosophy of nature students (no change, no unchanging, no anything). What’s wrong? He hints at “the simple understanding” of these things, and that even Avicenna and Plato go astray. A student: “concedantur rationes,” reasons are conceded. Left there.

His words #

• ipsum esse: to-be itself; “to be itself subsisting” [ed.: ipsum esse subsistens]
• ratio: the notion/definition under which things agree
• equivocal cause: the cause whose effect falls short of its form in species and genus
• analogia: Greek for proportion; used for a likeness of ratios
• assimilated: made like; said of creature to God, not God to creature
• tree of Porphyry: the descent from substance to species by division
• most universals: being, thing, one, something, true, good; “transcendentals,” transcending the ten categories
• thing: what it is, as being is that it is
• one: undivided being, adding a negation, a being of reason
• aliquid: “aliud quid,” distinct from all else
• the good is what all desire: first definition of good
• lack: privation [ed.: privatio]; “primitive, that’s a Latin word for lack” [unclear in recording]
• secundum rem / secundum rationem: really / in notion
• honestum, utile, delectabile: honourable, useful, pleasant
• fifth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V]
• concedantur rationes: reasons are conceded

Texts #

Read in class

• Aquinas, ST I, q. 4, a. 2, ad 2 and ad 3 (finished)
• Aquinas, ST I, q. 4, a. 3, objections, sed contra, body, replies (verified match)
• Dionysius, Divine Names, ch. 9 (as cited in the replies)
• Psalm 85; Isaiah (“whom do you make like God”); Genesis 1:26; 1 John (“we will be like him”) Mentioned
• Aquinas, De Veritate (likeness of ratios, creature to God; locus not stated); De Veritate q. 1, a. 1 (the transcendentals)
• Fourth Lateran Council, 1215 (greater unlikeness)
• Aristotle, De Anima III (soul in some way all things); Physics, beginning (more universal known first); Metaphysics V (“fifth book of wisdom,” senses of lack) (inferred)
• Aquinas, ST I, q. 5, aa. 1-6 (previewed)
• Paul (“imitators of me”); Heraclitus; Parmenides; Plato; Avicenna; Albert the Great; Euclid; Shakespeare, Hamlet; Dickens, Great Expectations (inferred)
• A text-matching system also reports 10 minutes matching ST I, q. 93 (on the image of God); the transcript does not state this locus. Handout: DHB Vol. III, The School of Aristotle, p. 185 (verified).

His questions #

• Do Dominic, Francis and the rest imitate Christ in exactly the same way? No; each has something of him, none fully; Christ combines their perfections as one man.
• Which is more like two, four or a hundred? And is two-to-four more like one-to-two than fifty-to-one-hundred? Four; but the ratios are equally alike, which is how analogy bridges the gap.
• Is that which is the beginning of every kind of thing confined to any kind of thing? No; to call God “some kind of thing” in the sense of genus would limit him.
• Would you say Pip is like the portrait? No; the image is like the man, not the converse, and even less can God be assimilated to a creature.
• How can there be more than one most universal, when going up gives more unity? Left open as a puzzle; Thomas distinguishes six.
• Is the existence of a cat and what a cat is the same thing? No; two questions for the logician, so thing is distinguished from being.
• Does “one” add something real to being? No; it adds a negation, a being of reason.
• What kind of opposition is between something and nothing? one and many? true and false? good and bad? Contradiction-like; lack; contraries; lack, but a different sense of lack from the one in “one.”
• If only Aristotle and Thomas understand the most universals, are they the only ones who understand anything? What’s wrong? Left open; “concedantur rationes.”