Summa I q.16 a.1: Is Truth in the Mind or in Things? (Doctors of the Church, Truth vs. Goodness, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth)

Orientation #

He opens “we’re up to question 16” and, in the body of a. 1, refers back to “the ideas they talked about in the previous question” (prev. lecture: q. 15 on the ideas). He also recalls “the other day” putting the “central question of philosophy: does truth require that the way we know be the way things are?” No word about next time. The previous class worked through q. 15 on the ideas; the next continues the question on truth into the second act of the intellect and the convertibility of truth and being.

Verified matching flags q. 16 a. 1 (20 min) and also a. 3 and handout pages; the transcript itself covers only the prooemium and a. 1 (a. 3 is named only in the prooemium), so the notes follow the transcript.

The class, in order #

1. Thomas among the thirty-three doctors (“The Thirty-Three Doctors of the Church”) #

Preliminary aside from a popular book he bought: the two titles of Thomas, angelic doctor and common (universal) doctor.

• John XXIII dwelt on “common doctor”: his teaching is most in keeping with revealed truth, the Fathers and right reason, “therefore Holy Church has adopted it as her own”; he was attached to Thomistic studies from his earliest priesthood and was linked to Thomas through his namesake.
• John XXII (canonized Thomas, 1323): “he illuminated the church more than all the doctors” (compare Albert the Great on hearing of Thomas’s death: “the light of the church has been extinguished”); and, “very important for us as students”: in his books a man will advance more in one year than in the teaching of the others for a lifetime.
• Leo XIII: the Fathers of Trent laid the Summa on the altar beside Scripture and the decrees of the Pontiffs, “whence to seek counsel, reason, and inspiration.”
• Aside on John Damascene: defender of images against iconoclasm (which lasted nearly a hundred years), doctor of the Assumption, upheld the Immaculate Conception when it was not generally taught; regarded in the East as their greatest doctor.

2. Prooemium: the four questions and the plan of q. 16 (“since knowledge is knowledge of the true”) #

The link with what precedes: after God’s knowledge, truth, because knowledge is of the true. Four questions in the prooemium, then the later articles.

1. Whether truth is in things or only in the understanding.
2. If in the understanding, whether only in the understanding “putting together and dividing,” i.e. affirming or denying. Example: “man”, “unicorn” on a true/false exam: neither true nor false until a statement is made (“unicorns are in fiction”: true; “unicorns are in the woods”: false).
3. and 4. Comparison of the true to being and to the good. True and good are among the “most universals,” of which being is first; Thomas elsewhere lists them (being, thing, one, something other, true, good), and Aristotle already pointed them out. In aa. 1-4 Thomas speaks of truth as the metaphysician does.
4. Whether God is truth. Aside on “I am the way, the truth and the life”: truth belongs to Father and Spirit as much as to the Son, yet is appropriated to the Son because he proceeds by way of God’s understanding himself (the Word); Christ couples truth with life, and Thomas likewise takes up God’s life right after truth and falsity; Christ is the way as man, truth and life as God.
5. Whether all things are true by one truth (the divine) or many. 7. Eternity of truth. 8. Unchangeableness of truth. “We’re going to learn the truth about truth,” as the mind can think about itself.

3. Article 1, the three objections (“Augustine, in the book on Soliloquies”) #

Objections that truth is rather in things.

1. Augustine (Soliloquies, “talking to himself”) rejects “the true is that which is seen” (stones deep in the earth would not be true stones) and “the true is that which is such as it seems to the knower who wants and is able to know” (nothing would be true if no one could know); so he defines “the true is that which is,” which puts truth in things.
2. Whatever is true is true by truth, as whatever is coloured is coloured by colour, white by whiteness. If truth were only in the understanding, nothing would be true except what is understood: the mistake of the ancient philosophers that whatever seems so is true (discussed by Plato in the dialogues, attacked by Aristotle in “the fourth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics IV]), from which it follows that contradictories are true together.
3. The principle “that on account of which each thing, and that more” (he unfolds it: when the same belongs to two things but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause; fire and the air around it: the fire is hotter). Aristotle in the Categories (“praedicamentis”, whence “predicament”: in a category you can’t get out): from the thing’s being or not being, the opinion or speech is true or false. When I sit down it becomes true that I’m sitting; so my sitting causes the statement’s truth; so is not my sitting more true?

4. Aside: Metaphysics II against Metaphysics VI (“in the second book of wisdom”) #

Something Thomas does not raise explicitly here. In the second book of wisdom Aristotle speaks as if truth and being go together and the cause is more true than the effect; by the same principle the first cause would be most true, so it makes sense that the first cause says “I am truth itself,” agreeing with “I am who am” (first in being, hence first in truth). But in the sixth book Aristotle says truth is in the mind, contrasting it with goodness: goodness is chiefly in things, the will good only because it wants the good; truth is primarily in the mind, most of all in the mind affirming or denying.

5. Sed contra and the everyday test (“would you find bits of truth down there”) #

The philosopher (Aristotle by antonomasia, as he called Homer “the poet”) in the sixth book of wisdom: true and false are not in things but in the understanding. His illustration to students: dig in the earth, fish in the ocean, fly through the air: no truth turns up; truth is found in the statements the mind makes. True/false exam again: “stone, man, horse” cannot be marked; “man is an animal” / “man is not a stone” can, and sometimes the negative is true and the affirmative false. But there may still be some way truth is in things.

6. The body: good ends in things, truth ends in the knower (“knowledge is as the known is in the knower”) #

The point: the true names what the understanding tends toward, as the good names what desire tends toward (Aristotle: the good is what all want), but the two terminate oppositely.

1. Knowledge is according as the known is in the knower (Empedocles saw this, though he misunderstood how the known is in the knower). Signs: we say “grasp” of understanding, as the hand contains what it grasps; “getting something into your head” for an exam; Augustine and the boy trying to put the ocean in a hole (“neither will you get the Trinity into your mind”): knowing is getting the thing into the mind.
2. Desire is according as the desirer is inclined to the thing desired. Signs: “I left my heart in San Francisco”; “where your treasure is, there also your heart shall be”; “my heart’s not in it” = I don’t want to do it; “losing your heart” (not good to lose your mind, but it may be good to lose your heart, depending to whom); we “give” love, and what is given is in the other.
3. Hence the end of desire, the good, is in the desirable thing; the end of knowledge, the true, is in the understanding. A kind of contrariety of knowing and loving: to know a thing you take it apart to get it wholly into your mind, which sounds unloving. Greek saying: “don’t try to understand everything, lest you understand nothing.”
4. As the notion of goodness is derived from the desirable thing to the desire (a good will is one that wills the good; the love of wisdom is good because wisdom is good, the love of foolishness bad), so the notion of the true is derived from the understanding to the thing: a thing is called true as it has some order to the understanding.

7. Per se and per accidens order to an understanding (“either per se or per accidens”) #

Distinction: a thing has a per se order to the understanding on which it depends for its being, a per accidens order to one by which it is merely knowable. The house vs. the carpenter’s mind (per se) against a tree in the yard vs. my seeing it (the tree does not depend on me). Since judgment about a thing is taken from what belongs to it as such, not per accidens, a thing is called true absolutely by its order to the understanding it depends on: a true house is one that attains the likeness of the form in the artist’s mind; true speech is a sign of a true understanding; a true stone is one that attains the proper nature of a stone according to the forethought of the divine understanding (the ideas of the previous question). Conclusion, as he stresses: truth is chiefly in the understanding, secondarily in things, and he is “not denying altogether that truth is in things.”

8. The received definitions and “the adequatio” (“truth is that by which is shown”) #

Because truth is in both places, it is diversely made known. Of truth in the understanding: Augustine (On True Religion), truth is that by which is shown what is; Hilary, the true declares being (“man is an animal” declares what is so, but the declaring is in my mind). Of the thing in order to the understanding: Augustine in the same book, truth is the highest likeness to the beginning without any unlikeness; Anselm (one of the thirty-three), truth is a rightness perceptible only by the mind, rightness being accord with the beginning; Avicenna (who treated the most universals at length; Thomas quotes him at the start of the De Veritate on the six most universals), the truth of a thing is a property of its being rendered stable to it. Truth as the equality of thing and understanding can pertain to both; this is why people answer “yes” at first to the central question whether truth requires that the way we know be the way things are.

• More and less than the truth: Falstaff (“more than the truth or less than the truth, they are villains”), Kent in King Lear (“all my reports go with the modest truth, nor more, nor clipped, but so”); the oath “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is not saying one thing thrice: “the whole truth” is against less, “nothing but the truth” against more.
• To say the truth is to say what is is and what is not is not; falsehood is saying what is is not (less than the truth) or what is not is (more). Sitting/standing: “you are sitting” and “you are not standing” true; “you are standing” and “you are not sitting” false.
• Bartender example: Tom and Bill alone were at the bar; saying “Tom” alone is less than the truth (denying Bill who was), adding Harry is more (asserting one who was not). Truth is neither more nor less, hence equal: the adequatio of mind and things. But Thomas holds it is chiefly in the mind, and mainly in the mind making a statement.

9. Reply to the first objection: as such and by happening (“a circle as circle is not green”) #

Augustine speaks of the truth of the thing and excludes from its notion a comparison to our understanding, because what is per accidens is excluded from every definition. Green is not in the definition of circle, though a circle may happen to be green.

• Vocabulary: per se translates the Greek kath’ hauto; literally “through itself,” commonly “as such.” A circle through being a circle is not green but is a plane figure with a point equidistant from the circumference; man as such is not white but is an animal.
• Link to necessity: two as such is half of four, so necessarily; the circle need not be green. Plato saw that necessary knowledge is tied to what is so as such; Aristotle, his pupil of twenty years, brings it out in the Posterior Analytics. Triangle: through the parallel through the vertex and alternate angles, its interior angles equal two right angles as such; being green is not as such, so cannot be known necessarily.
• The philosopher (lover of wisdom) as such: not white, Swedish or a grandfather, but a lover of reason (wisdom being reason’s highest perfection) and of order (reason being “the ability for large discourse, looking before and after”).
• Boundary case: does the teacher learn while teaching? Teachers say so of every course (Charles de Koninck, whom he knew in the late 50s and 60s, saw something new every time through the eight books of “natural hearing” [ed.: Physics] since the 1930s); but it does not belong to the teacher as such, since insofar as he is learning he does not yet know what he teaches (“if I knew at the beginning what I know now I’d have taught it differently” admits he was not fully a teacher). Likewise the housebuilder or cook learns by making, but insofar as he is learning he is not yet a housebuilder. “That’s kind of a subtle thing.”

10. Reply to the second objection: the ancients and the divine understanding (“they come about by chance”) #

The ancient philosophers (before Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) did not hold that the species of natural things proceed from an understanding but from chance (as many modern biologists hold: random selection, no mind); yet, seeing that truth implies comparison to an understanding, they were forced to place the truth of things in relation to our understanding, the only one they knew. From this follow the inconveniences Aristotle pursues in the fourth book of wisdom (his example: it seems cold to me and not to you, so it both is and is not cold; the axiom that the same cannot both be and not be), which do not follow if the truth of things is a comparison to the divine understanding.

11. Reply to the third objection: being, not truth, causes truth (“the being of the thing, not its truth”) #

Though the truth of our understanding is caused by the thing, the notion of truth need not be found first in the thing, just as health is not first in medicine: medicine’s power, not its health, causes health, since it is not a univocal agent. So the being of the thing, not its truth, causes the truth of the understanding; Aristotle: opinion and speech are true because the thing is, not because the thing is true.

• Student: “I don’t understand what the distinction is.” His answer: your being seated is the cause of “you are sitting” being true; stand and it becomes false, sit and it becomes true again; your sitting is not called true except in comparison to my statement, yet your being in the chair causes the statement’s truth. Medicine is not healthier than the body, because “healthy” is not said of both in the same sense. Contrast with the principle’s proper case: sugar and coffee are both sweet in the same sense, the coffee sweet because of the sugar, so the sugar is sweeter. Truth is not said of your sitting and my statement in the same way; truth is in the statement, your sitting merely its cause.

His words #

• common doctor / angelic doctor: the two titles of Thomas.
• putting together and dividing: the understanding making an affirmative or negative statement.
• the most universals: being (first), thing, one, something other, true, good.
• fourth / sixth book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics IV, VI]; “sixth book after the books of natural philosophy.”
• “that on account of which each thing, and that more”: when the same belongs to two things but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause.
• praedicamentis [ed.: Categories]: “if you’re in a category, you can’t get out.”
• the philosopher / the poet: antonomasia for Aristotle and Homer.
• grasp: the mind containing the known, as the hand contains.
• per se / kath’ hauto: “through itself,” “as such”; per accidens: “by accident or by happening.”
• more than the truth / less than the truth: saying what is not is / saying what is is not.
• adequatio: the equality of mind and things.
• natural hearing [ed.: Physics].
• univocal agent: one sharing exactly the same thing it causes.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 16, prooemium and a. 1 (objections, sed contra, body, replies), read and translated throughout. Mentioned
• Augustine, Soliloquies (obj. 1); On True Religion (two definitions in the body).
• Aristotle, Categories (obj. 3); Metaphysics II (cause more true), IV (against those denying contradiction), VI (truth in the mind, contrast with goodness); Posterior Analytics (necessity and the as-such).
• Hilary, Anselm, Avicenna: definitions of truth as quoted by Thomas; Thomas, De Veritate, opening (Avicenna on the six most universals).
• “The Thirty-Three Doctors of the Church” (popular book); quotations of John XXIII, John XXII, Leo XIII, Albert the Great.
• Shakespeare: Falstaff; Kent in King Lear.
• Verified matching also lists ST I q. 16 a. 3 and handout pages (“Note for Readings Two through Four”, “The First Statement and King of Statements”, “Note for Sixth Book of Wisdom, Reading 4”); the transcript makes no reference to them.

His questions #

• Would you mark “unicorn” true or false on an exam? Neither; only a statement (“unicorns are in the woods”) is true or false.
• Why is truth appropriated to the Son? Because he proceeds by way of God’s understanding himself, as the Word.
• If my sitting causes “I am sitting” to be true, isn’t my sitting more true than the statement? No: the being of the thing, not its truth, causes the truth of the statement (reply 3).
• If you dug in the earth or fished the ocean, would you find bits of truth? No; truth is in the statements the mind makes.
• Where is your heart? In the thing you love; so the good is in things, the true in the knower.
• Does that tree depend on you for its existence, as the chair depends on the carpenter? No; per accidens order vs. per se order to an understanding.
• Does “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” say the same thing three times? No: “whole” excludes less than the truth, “nothing but” excludes more.
• Does it belong to the teacher as such to be learning what he teaches? No, though it happens; insofar as he learns he does not yet know.
• Is the medicine more healthy than your body? No, “healthy” is not said of both in the same sense; contrast sugar and coffee.