Summa I q.16 a.5–6: Privation, opposites and the fallacy of the accident; one truth or many? (Marx on making, teaching, the two Summas)

Orientation #

He opens mid-article on “the third objection” (of the article treated last time, i.e. a.5 (inferred; prev. lecture)), then after the break turns to article 6. The text-matching system also found ST I q. 93 for some nine minutes; the transcript never names it, so that match is probably the mirror/likeness gloss under a.6. The previous class worked through q.16 aa.4-5 (priority of good and true, God as truth); the next continues with aa.7-8.

The class, in order #

1. Reply to the third objection: God causes the truth, not the sin (“none being and privations do not have”) #

The point: it is true that you have sinned and God is the cause of all truth, yet God is not the cause of your sinning.

1. Non-being and privations have truth not from themselves but only from the grasping of the understanding (ex ipsis rebus… sed tantum ex apprehensione intellectus).
2. All grasping by the understanding is from God.
3. So whatever truth there is in “this man is fornicating” is wholly from God.
4. To conclude “therefore his fornicating is from God” is the fallacy of the accident — the first fallacy outside of language in Aristotle. He flags “this is very subtle”. Aside: God will know the truth about our evil acts and therefore punish us.

2. Non-being vs. privation; the four kinds of opposites (“the cup is blind”) #

The point: “non-being and privation” in Thomas’s sentence are not the same thing.

• Privation (lack) vs. non-being: privation is the non-being of something a subject is able to have and should have; pure non-being is the contradictory. The cup does not see (true) but is not blind (strictly false); blindness is non-being of sight in a subject apt to have sight. Bad in general is always a lack, so bad is not pure non-being.
• Aristotle, Categories, four kinds of opposites: relatives, least opposed (father/son, double/half); contraries (virtue/vice); lack and having (blindness/sight, ignorance/knowledge); being/non-being, contradiction, where the one is merely the negation of the other.
• Contradiction has no middle ground: everything, even a mathematical point, God, sees or does not see, is a stone or not; but only what is apt to see is either seeing or blind. Lack and having share a common subject (my knowledge and ignorance, my mind); contraries share also a common genus (virtue and vice are both habits).
• Natural Hearing I (Physics) [ed.: Physics]: change is not always between contraries but always between having and lack. Knowledge/ignorance are opposed as having/lack; knowledge/mistake as contraries (the mistaken man thinks something). Before knowing you are necessarily ignorant, not necessarily mistaken; everyone mistaken is ignorant, not every ignorant man is mistaken. Augustine, on some matter of judging others, prefers to remain ignorant “unless I want to be mistaken”: where judging is presumptuous, better to stay ignorant.
• Ethics parallel: before acquiring a virtue you necessarily lack it but need not have the vice; easier to make virtuous one who never had the vice, and easier to convince one merely ignorant than one holding the contrary — the undecided voter vs. the voter for the other candidate.

3. How the transcendentals’ opposites are opposed (“opposites alongside, so they’re more clear”) #

The point: being/non-being, true/false, good/bad, one/many are not all opposed in the same way.

• Being/non-being and something/nothing: contradictories; something and nothing have nothing in common.
• True/false: false is more than the non-being of true — more like contraries (a true and a false statement are both statements).
• Good/bad: he first says “more like contradictories, it seems to me”, then answers “no”: the three meanings of bad from Aristotle via Thomas — a lack; what has a lack; what causes a lack. Because blindness is bad, it is bad to be a blind man; because that is bad, it is bad to poke your eye out. The primary meaning, blindness, is really a lack.
• One/many: “I’ll give you that in the tenth book of wisdom” (Metaphysics X) [ed.: Metaphysics], left there. Aside: setting opposites side by side makes them clearer, as black and white on the page.

4. Digression: cause of all and said of all (Metaphysics IV) (“cause of all and said of all”) #

The point: why the science of the first cause (shown in the proem of Wisdom) is the science of being as being.

• Cause of all vs. said of all are not the same: Hegel confuses them, making the being said of all the being who said “I am who am”; Plato does something like it, making the forms (universals given their own existence) first causes.
• Argument by proportion: what is cause of more is cause of that of which something more universal is said. King commands the general; the king’s causality extends to every citizen, the general’s to every soldier; every soldier is a citizen, not conversely. Bush as commander in chief commands soldiers, not Berquist. So the science of the cause of all, whose causality extends most universally, is about what is said of all.
• Same in ethics: ethics is first shown to be about the end of man, then to treat all the goods of man, because the end of human life extends to the whole of life, whereas carpentry or medicine extend only to certain things.

5. Being has many meanings connected to substance (“polis, government, revolution”) #

The point: Aristotle’s problem — how one reasoned-out knowledge of being as being if being does not mean one thing — is answered because the meanings are connected to the fundamental meaning, substance.

• Easier example, political philosophy: political means first the polis (city-state); government is not a polis but rules it; revolution is neither but is a change of government. An order: polis, government, revolution.
• So with being: substance first; accident (not a substance, but in it — as health and the body); becoming (not being but coming to be, yet it exists, so it is a being, in a lesser sense than accident); last, as Thomas says here, privation and non-being (blindness; Europe’s low birth rate — people who aren’t there). “Something” is stretched likewise: is becoming something? blindness? nothing?
• Non-being is known only because reason makes it out to be something — the Greeks’ “you can’t get something from nothing” understands something by “nothing”. Motion approaches this: you cannot be in two places at once, so at no time are you in motion, and time’s parts do not exist together; motion hardly exists.

6. The fallacy of the accident: mind, making, teaching (“deceived even the wise”) #

The point: evil has being only in the mind, hence truth only in the mind; to make God cause of the fornication itself is the fallacy of the accident, which Aristotle says “deceived even the wise”.

• Modern philosophy repeats it: everything you know is in your mind, therefore you know only what is in your mind. Otherwise “square” would be defined as an equilateral right-angled quadrilateral in the mind of Berquist and we would not share a definition; being in my mind is accidental to the definition, though I cannot know it otherwise.
• Same fallacy: Plato identifying matter with lack of form; Sartre identifying freedom with non-being; Marx placing man’s highest perfection in making.
• Marx: the maker in making things transforms himself, so man is perfected by making; Marx sees the end of man must perfect man. Objection from experience: carpenters say “I’m learning a lot” on interesting jobs; painters develop styles. Reply: Greeks and medievals held man perfected by understanding and loving God, which perfects the knower and lover, not the thing known (God cannot be made; Thomas warns “perfect” sounds odd of God since he is not made but already in act). Making as such perfects the thing made; that the maker learns is accidental, because he is still learning to make — the man making McDonald’s hamburgers all his life learns nothing.
• Teaching: teaching profound things, you understand it better every time; but the understanding, not the teaching, perfects you. Teaching as such perfects the student. Proof: Christ, the teacher by Augustine, learned nothing by teaching. Because it happens most of the time (the independent craftsman, not the man turning a screw at Ford), it seems not accidental; college professors say “if you’re not learning, you’re not teaching” — they have a hard time distinguishing the accidental from the as such. Break.

7. Article 6: whether there is one truth by which all things are true (“only one truth by which all things”) #

Objections: (1) Augustine — nothing greater than the human mind except God; truth is greater, since the mind judges all things by truth and not truth by itself; so only God is truth. (2) Anselm, On Truth — as time to temporal things, so truth to true things; one time, so one truth. Sed contra: Psalm 11, “truths are diminished by the sons of men” (the mirror broken into little truths in creatures). Body: in one way one truth, in another not.

• Univocal vs. analogous: univocal, the proper definition is found in each, as animal in dog, cat, horse; analogous (equivocal by reason), found properly in one only, from which the others are denominated — healthy said of the animal, the urine, the medicine (Metaphysics IV): the medicine causes, the urine or complexion signifies, health in the animal; there is something in each by which it makes or signifies health.
• Truth is before in the understanding, after in things as ordered to the divine understanding (“with us it’s kind of the reverse”). Truth in the understanding, properly: many truths in many created understandings, and even in one understanding (the whole is more than the part; nothing is before or after itself). Gloss on Psalm 11 (footnote: from Augustine): from one face result many likenesses in mirrors, so from one divine truth many truths in created minds.
• Truth in things: all true by one first truth, to which each is assimilated according to its being; many essences, one truth of the divine understanding by which all are denominated true. So one sense admitted, another denied; he does the same in another text.

8. The replies: judging by the first truth in a mirror (“as in a mirror”) #

Ad 1: the soul judges not by just any truth but by the first truth as it results in it as in a mirror (Paul’s “in a mirror darkly”), in the first things understandable by us; so the first truth is greater than the soul, and even created truth is greater than the soul secundum quid, as its perfection (as knowledge is), not simply; nothing subsisting is greater than reason except God.

• Augustine’s strange way of speaking — when we decide between us by the truth, we see it in the first truth, in God — made precise: “the whole is more than the part” I do not see in God’s mind, as a bit of vision; it is a result, an effect, an impress of the divine mind. John’s “light that enlightens every man” is the partaking of the divine light in the natural light of reason. Bonaventure’s word: not intuition but contuition, a light by which we both see, though not numerically one in us. Ad 2: Anselm’s saying holds of things as true by comparison to the divine understanding, one and simple; of truth in minds, many truths, diminished from the divine truth.

9. Digression: fewer thoughts, more understanding; the two Summas (“the better a mind is”) #

• Going down from God through angels to us, more and more thoughts and truths are required. SCG argues against composition and division in God: each truth would be a different thought, destroying simplicity — as man-and-animal and two-is-half-of-four are different thoughts in me. His poem: the Father said it all in one Word; no wonder that Word made man spoke and wrote so few and said so much — “He was the brevity and soul of wit” [ed.: usually “brevity is the soul of wit”].
• SCG chapter on whether God knows an infinity of things (seven arguments): the better a mind, the more it sees from one thing (Einstein seeing many consequences); God’s power being infinite, from one thing, his own substance, he sees infinite things. Father Vauday [name uncertain in recording]: to see a beginning and to see it as a beginning; in geometry one sees beginnings without seeing all that follows.
• His practice: read an SCG chapter, later try to recall its six arguments, find the forgotten one, savour it. ST and the Disputed Questions have fewer arguments (three is enough); occasionally one not in SCG.
• Order: ST takes up God’s understanding before will, then life; SCG life after both, ending with God’s blessedness exceeding any creature’s. His PMR talk on the order of the divine substance in the two works: each order yields something the other does not. SCG shows God unchanging before simple, because its unmoved-mover argument is more developed (two of five ways from motion, three reasons per premise, vs. one way with one middle term in ST); ST reaches unchangeability after simplicity and can argue from it — which is why he used ST when teaching Physics I: whatever changes is composed, so what is not composed cannot change. Compendium: infinity before perfection, unity in the middle of simplicity. Reducing the five attributes (simplicity, perfection, infinity, unchangeability, unity) to three: simplicity with one; infinity with perfection — Augustine, “those things that are great not by bulk (mole), to be more (maius) is to be better (melius)”.

10. Student question: The God Delusion (“knowing the guide to British birds only”) #

He knows it from reviews; the author (English scientist) knows little theology; First Things’ latest issue compares him to one who talks science knowing only the guide to British birds; such books come and go like the Da Vinci Code. Asides: Neuhaus quotes his colleague Mahoney (books on Solzhenitsyn, approved by the family; on the neocons). A joke about “something infinite about air, but no perfection” — a machine for producing air. Back to the point: it is overlooking the per se / per accidens, as Marx does, starting from Kant’s “we know only what we make”, after which there is no life of the mind apart from making. Marx neglected his family, liked Shakespeare, buried in London, worked in the British Museum reading room.

His words #

• none being: non-being, non ens.
• privation / lack: non-being of something a subject is able and ought to have; contradictory: pure non-being.
• the four kinds of opposites: relatives, contraries, lack and having, contradiction (Categories).
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• “wisdom”, fourth/tenth book of [ed.: Metaphysics IV, X]; premium of wisdom [ed.: proem].
• cause of all vs. said of all: the two things confused by Hegel.
• fallacy of the accident / of the accidental: from what belongs per accidens to what belongs per se.
• as such vs. accidental [ed.: per se / per accidens].
• univocal: one exact meaning in each; analogous, “equivocally by reason”: proper definition in one only, others denominated from it.
• denominated true: things called true from the divine truth.
• secundum quid vs. simply: created truth greater than the soul only as its perfection.
• contuition (Bonaventure): a light by which we both see, not numerically one.
• mole / maius / melius (Augustine): greatness not by bulk, where more is better.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I q.16 a.5 ad 3 (inferred; “non-being and privations… only from the grasping of the understanding”).
• Thomas, ST I q.16 a.6, objections, sed contra (Psalm 11), body, ad 1, ad 2.
• Gloss on Psalm 11 (Augustine, per footnote).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories, four kinds of opposites; Physics I (change between having and lack; whatever changes is composed); Metaphysics IV (being as being, healthy), X (one and many); the fallacy of the accident (outside language).
• Augustine, De Magistro (Christ the teacher); Augustine on remaining ignorant rather than mistaken; “mole… maius… melius”.
• Anselm, On Truth; Paul, “in a mirror darkly”; John 1, light that enlightens every man; Bonaventure, contuition.
• Thomas, SCG (composition and division in God; God knows an infinity of things; order of divine attributes; five ways); Compendium Theologiae; Quaestiones Disputatae.
• Hegel, Plato (forms; matter as lack), Sartre, Marx, Kant; Dawkins, The God Delusion; First Things (Neuhaus, Mahoney, Solzhenitsyn); Da Vinci Code.
• ST I q.93: found by text-matching, not named in the transcript.

His questions #

• Is God the cause of the person fornicating, or of the statement that he is fornicating being true? Of the statement’s truth; to conclude the other is the fallacy of the accident.
• What is the distinction between non-being and privation? Privation is non-being of what a subject is able and should have; the cup doesn’t see but is not blind.
• Does everything either have sight or is blind? No; everything sees or does not see, only things apt to see are seeing or blind.
• Before you come to know, are you necessarily mistaken? No, necessarily ignorant; not all the ignorant are mistaken.
• Is the maker perfected by his making? Only accidentally, while learning to make; making as such perfects the thing made.
• Is teaching a perfecting of the teacher? No; it perfects the student — Christ learned nothing by teaching.
• Why does the science of the first cause talk about being said of all? The cause of more is cause of that of which the more universal is said (king/citizen, general/soldier).
• How are the one and the many opposed? Left open (“the tenth book of wisdom”).
• Is there one truth by which all things are true? In things, yes, the divine truth; in minds, many truths, diminished from it.
• How would you reduce the five divine attributes to three? Simplicity with one; infinity with perfection; unchangeability apart.