Summa I, Q.29, Art. 1: Boethius' Definition of Person as an Individual Substance of a Rational Nature

Orientation #

He says “we’ve talked about” the processions and relations already and that the prologue to q. 29 now “approaches” the persons; he also recalls “last time” looking up the etymology of “crisscross” and “last week” stressing names equivocal by reason (prev. lecture). He ends: “take a little break before we go on to the second article. I’ll see you next time.” The previous class finished the four real relations (q. 28, a. 4) and previewed the treatise on the persons; the next takes up q. 29, a. 2 on person, hypostasis, subsistence and essence.

The class, in order #

1. The prologue: “approaching” the persons and the plan of fifteen questions (“necessary to consider absolutely about the persons”) #

The point: the prologue to q. 29 is also the prologue to all fifteen questions on the persons, and its divisions should be followed by “the rule of two or three.”

• The Latin aggredi (“approach”): he recalls the commentary on Natural Hearing IV, where Aristotle “approaches” time and insinuates its difficulty (Augustine’s Confessions: I know what time is if no one asks). We likewise “approach” the persons.
• Division: absolute consideration (qq. 29-38, ten questions; “absolute” in Thomas is opposed to relative/comparative) vs. comparative consideration (five questions: equality, one sent by another, etc.).
• Absolute: persons in general (four questions) vs. singular persons: one on the Father, two on the Son (as Word, as Image of God, not as Son since that is clear from the Father), three on the Holy Spirit (as Holy Spirit, Gift, Love). Common before particular is Aristotle’s order at the start of Natural Hearing; Paul VI once called it “the common rule of all teachings.”
• Four things about persons in general: the meaning of the name person (q. 29); their number (“it’s going to be three”); what follows on number, e.g. diversity and likeness; how we know the persons.
• Four articles of q. 29: (1) definition of person; (2) comparison of person to essence/nature, subsistence, hypostasis (cf. “hypostatic union”); (3) whether the name belongs in divine things; (4) what it signifies there. He stresses: the first two articles are general (they could precede a treatment of the human person as well as the divine); the last two apply them to God.
• Aside: Henry Hyde has died, aged about 83; requiescat in pace.

2. Boethius’s definition and why the objections take it word by word (“defining is like spelling”) #

The point: Boethius (source also of the definition of eternity, from the Consolation) defines person in On the Two Natures as “an individual substance of a rational nature,” and most objections single out one part of it.

• Spelling analogy: leave out one letter and you have not spelled the word; leave out one part and you have not defined the thing; both have an order of parts. Boundary: definition is “more by nature” than spelling (Shakespeare spelled his own name variously; spellings drift over time).
• Suited to a beginner: each objection and reply makes you think about one part, as was done with the definition of eternity.

3. Objection 1, on “individual”: nothing singular is defined (“you can’t write a mathematical equation”) #

The point: the first objection says a singular cannot be defined, yet person signifies a singular.

• His preparatory analogies, all of the same shape (a kind of knowledge that cannot be turned on itself):
  • Words and sentences vs. mathematical symbols and equations: you can say in words what a word is, but no equation says what an equation is, no symbol what a symbol is; hence, as Plato would say, a knowledge that does not know itself (cf. the seven wise men: know thyself).
  • Metaphor (Aristotle, Poetics; Thomas on St Paul’s figurative speech): one can explain properly what speaking figuratively is, but not explain it by speaking figuratively.
  • Universal and singular: you can say in general what singularity is, but cannot explain the universal by the singular. He expects Thomas to “play out something along these lines.”

4. Objection 2, on “substance”: first or second substance? (“four different meanings of the word substance”) #

The point: “substance” in the definition means either first substance (Socrates, Plato) or second substance (species and genus, man, animal); if the first, “individual” is superfluous; if the second, it is false, since second substances are what first substances are in.

• Aside: studying the Categories he found four meanings of substance, and once found a text of Thomas distributing all four.

5. Objections 3, 4 and 5: “individual” as a name of intention, “nature,” the separated soul (“nature is a beginning of motion and rest”) #

• Obj. 3: a name of intention (something in the mind, not in things) should not enter the definition of a thing; “man is a species of animal” is a bad definition since “species” names an intention; person names a thing, so “individual” is out of place. His illustration of the intentional order: the tree substance / material-immaterial / living-non-living / animal-plant / man / Socrates and Plato, “not divisible any further.” Aside: some people would say “attention” rather than “intention.”
• Obj. 4: nature is “a beginning of motion and rest in that in which it is as such and not by happening” (Physics II; physics is the Greek word for nature; there Aristotle contrasts nature and art as causes and defines nature); but person is found in unchanging things, God and angels, so “essence” should replace “nature.”
• Obj. 5, a different kind of objection: the separated soul is an individual substance of a rational nature but not a person. “Is St Peter in heaven?” That is a synecdoche, the whole named for the part: it is Peter’s soul that is there (Mary and Christ are there whole). A student notes the objection does not explain why the soul is not a person; he answers that the reply will.

6. The body: why an individual of rational substance gets a special name (“dominion of their own act”) #

The point: individual is found in every genus, but in a special way in substance, and in a still more special way in rational substance; hence the names hypostasis / first substance and person.

1. Universal and particular are in all genera (substance, quantity, quality, relation…).
2. But substance is individuated through itself, accidents through their subject: my health differs individually from yours because it is in my body; my and your knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem differ because each is in its own soul; “this whiteness” is named from its subject. Hence individuals of substance get a special name: hypostases (Greek), first substances (Latin).
3. Rational substances have dominion over their own act, are not merely led but act by themselves; actions are found in singulars; so singulars of rational nature get a further special name: person.
4. Therefore “individual substance” signifies the singular in the genus of substance, “of a rational nature” the singular among rational substances.

• Set-up examples: my health, my knowledge of geometry, my shape, my hand have no names; I have a name my parents gave me. “That’s all very clear, isn’t it?”
• Asides: Albert the Great on Thomas’s death (“the light of the church has been extinguished”); Thomas visiting Bonaventure at work on the life of St Francis: “let us leave a saint to write the life of a saint.”

7. Reply 1: singularity itself can be defined (“unique and unrepeatable, just like everybody else”) #

The point: this or that singular cannot be defined (you can point to me and say man, white, in his seventies, but all that is common to others), yet what belongs to the common notion of singularity can be defined; so the Philosopher (Aristotle “by antonomasia”) defines first substance in the Categories and Boethius defines person.

• His gloss: we can say in general what it is not to be in general.
• Student exchange: only reason knows the relation of universal to singular, so reason must know the singular in some way, though it cannot define it (Albert: the first thing considered in logic is the universal, said of many). I can define health, not my health; “no material individual is understandable.” Aside: his friend Jim says a woman likes to be told you can’t understand her.

8. Reply 2: two accounts of “substance,” and the crisscross of the Categories (“crisscross two divisions of two”) #

The point: Thomas reports one view and prefers a simpler one.

• View A: substance = first substance (hypostasis); yet “individual” is not superfluous, since “hypostasis/first substance” excludes the universal and the part (man in general is not a hypostasis, nor is the hand), while “individual” excludes assumptibility: Christ’s human nature is not a person because assumed by something more worthy, the Word of God.
• View B, “better and simpler”: substance taken commonly, as divided into first and second; “individual” draws it to stand for first substance.
• The three meanings of substance in the Categories, and how they arise: Aristotle crisscrosses two divisions, said of another / not said of another and exists in another as in a subject / not, yielding universal accident (geometry, in the mind and said of “your geometry, my geometry”), singular accident (my knowledge of geometry), universal substance (man, dog, said of Socrates, of Fido), singular substance (Socrates, Champion, “Horse of Kinok,” dead now). First substances are the singulars, second the species and genus; leave out the crisscross and “what exists not in another as in a subject” is substance in general, the third meaning. Student: are first and second related to the common notion as species to genus? “No,” but something like it: the common notion is involved in both.
• Fourth meaning (Plato and Aristotle): substance as what a thing is, logos tēs ousias = ratio substantiae; so “consubstantial” means same nature, not same person; and a logos tēs ousias can be given in another category (what geometry is: a science). De Koninck: “every respectable word in philosophy is equivocal by reason,” and people are deceived by such words.
• Parallel cases of division into four by crisscross: Euclid divides quadrilaterals into five, but four are parallelograms (opposite sides and angles equal), divided against the trapezium; the four come from crossing right-angled / not with all sides equal / not: square, oblong, rhombus, rhomboid. And a “very subtle division” coming in Thomas: substance vs. relation crossed with signified in the manner of substance vs. of relation.
• Asides: “crisscross” comes from “Christ’s cross” (looked up last time); he once met the horse Champion and was enthusiastic.

9. Reply 3: naming substantial differences by accidents and intentions (“fire is a simple body, hot and dry”) #

The point: substantial differences are often unknown or unnamed, so accidental differences, and likewise names of intentions, are used in their place; “individual” in the definition designates the mode of subsisting proper to particular substances.

• Ancient science: fire, a simple body hot and dry; water, cold and wet: contrasting qualities (third species, sensible qualities) stand in for the unknown or unnamed substantial difference.
• Rational animal: reason is really an ability (second species of quality, an accident), but names the soul from its ability, as “sensing” names the animal soul and its difference from the plant; the name is put on what follows upon the substantial difference.
• His extended example, justice, anger, mercy: justice names a virtue of the human will and carries over properly to God; anger names an emotion and is a metaphor for divine justice (Psalm 94, Isaiah), so “there’s no anger in God,” only a likeness in the punishing. But there is no name standing to the emotion of mercy as justice stands to anger; so “mercy of God” uses an emotion’s name for what has no name, and he thinks it is not figurative as “anger” is, because no proper name exists apart from it. A student adds: since the Incarnation Christ has a merciful heart; he answers with the Sacred Heart: one ascends from Christ’s physical heart and emotional warmth to the love in his human will to the love in his divine will.
• Same problem foreseen for the name “Holy Spirit”: the Father too is a spirit and holy; the name is stretched because the Spirit’s unique way of proceeding has no name, whereas the Son’s has (like a son).
• Digression on two orders: Peter’s confession (Matthew 16), “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” ascends from humanity (the anointed one) to divinity, the order fitting animals with reason, who begin from the sensible (Paul VI: the whole church is built on Peter’s faith); John’s prologue descends, Word first, then “the Word was made flesh” (flesh synecdochically for man). In the order of definition, understanding God and the Word, and understanding man, are presupposed to understanding the Incarnation; and the Word was before he was man. John’s closing (“these are written that you might believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God”) and “I am the way, the truth and the life” (way as man; truth and life as God) follow Peter’s order; the Summa follows John’s, treating the Incarnation only in the Third Part. Children are taught from the Nativity and crib up to the divinity. Aside: his two-year-old grandchild pointing out God (“out of the mouths of babes”).

10. Reply 4: the senses of “nature” in Metaphysics V (“nativity … the intrinsic beginning of any motion”) #

The point: the objection takes “nature” in the Physics sense, whereas the definition takes its last sense, essence.

• Metaphysics V treats names equivocal by reason used most in wisdom and in the axioms: beginning, cause, element, then nature (phusis). Order of senses as Thomas gives it: (1) the generation of living things, nativity (English keeps it: prenatal, postnatal, native); (2) the intrinsic source of that birth within the mother, generalized to any change from within; (3) the intrinsic beginning of any motion, defined in Physics II; (4) matter and form, since either can be that beginning (Physics I); (5) since form completes essence, the essence or “what it is” that the definition signifies: nature of God, of a tree, of tragedy. In English we use this last sense forgetting the earlier ones. The objection uses the third sense, not the last (“sixth or seventh, shall we say”).
• Why this matters: the commonest mistake in thinking (Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations) is mixing senses of words equivocal by reason, whose meanings are connected. Equivocals by chance are not mixed: “Roger Maris hit 61 home runs with the bat; a bat is a flying rodent” is only a joke. His students, warned about the senses of “before and after,” still mix them later, as predicted.
• Boethius in the same book: nature is what informs each thing with its specific difference, i.e. what completes what it is; the specific difference is taken from the proper form. “Nature,” naming what is in a determined genus, fits the singular better than “essence,” which is taken from being, the most common. He leaves aside “another subtlety.”

11. Reply 5: the separated soul is a part (“the soul is a part of human species”) #

The point: the soul, even separated, retains the nature of being united to the body, so it is not an individual substance/hypostasis, no more than a hand or any part; person applies neither in definition nor name.

• De Koninck, among the theologians consulted by Pius XII before defining the Assumption, argued that Mary would not be in heaven unless her body were assumed; it impressed Pius XII and rests on this reply. “St Peter, pray for us” is synecdoche, the whole for the part.
• Augustine: we will enjoy seeing God more when the soul is rejoined to the body, the whole being more perfect than the part. Psalm 62/63 (“my flesh pines and my soul thirsts,” lips exulting) speaks of the body’s share.
• Thomas: in heaven there will be vocal praise, music properly, and sense pleasures compatible with immortality: not eating, drinking or reproducing (ordered to the corruptible state) but pleasures of eye and ear, the beautiful, though not the chief delight.
• Asides: Mozart and Palestrina “up there”; Benedict XVI plays Mozart on the piano, “pretty good, maybe amateur”; no one knew how beautiful the female voice could be until Mozart’s arias, and heaven’s will be better. Break before article 2.

His words #

• aggredi: “to approach,” as Aristotle approaches time in Natural Hearing IV; used here of the persons.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]; book of wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics]; book on the poetic art [ed.: Poetics]; book on fallacies / sophistical refutations.
• absolute vs. comparative consideration: absolute = not relative.
• “the rule of two or three”: follow the divisions into two or three so far as possible.
• individual substance of a rational nature: Boethius’s definition of person, from On the Two Natures.
• first substance vs. second substance: Socrates/Plato vs. species and genus (Categories); substance in general: what exists not in another as in a subject; fourth sense: what a thing is, logos tēs ousias / ratio substantiae.
• name of intention: name of something in the mind (species, individual), vs. name of a thing.
• hypostasis: Greek name for individual substance; Latin first substance.
• dominion of their own act: mark of rational substances, which act by themselves.
• assumptibility: what “individual” excludes; Christ’s human nature is assumed.
• synecdoche: naming the whole for the part or the reverse (“Peter is in heaven”; “the Word was made flesh”).
• equivocal by reason vs. equivocal by chance: connected meanings vs. unconnected (the bat).
• crisscross: two divisions of two crossed; from “Christ’s cross.”
• antonomasia: “the Philosopher” for Aristotle.
• modus subsistendi / way of subsisting: what “individual” designates in the definition.
• nativity, phusis: first sense of nature, birth.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 29, prologue (translated line by line).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 29, a. 1: five objections, body, five replies (translated and commented).
• Boethius, On the Two Natures: definition of person (as quoted by Thomas); “nature is what informs each thing with its specific difference.”
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V, senses of nature (as summarized by Thomas).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics II (definition of nature; nature vs. art), Physics I (matter and form), Physics IV (time) and Thomas’s commentary; Augustine, Confessions (time).
• Aristotle, Categories (substance, the two crossed divisions); Poetics (metaphor); Sophistical Refutations.
• Thomas on the Epistles of St Paul (figurative speech).
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy (definition of eternity).
• Euclid, Elements (quadrilaterals) (inferred).
• Matthew 16; John 1; John’s closing statement of purpose; “I am the way, the truth and the life”; Psalm 94 and Isaiah (anger of God); Psalm 62/63.
• Albert the Great (on Thomas’s death; on the universal as first in logic); Bonaventure’s life of St Francis; De Koninck; Paul VI; Pius XII and the Assumption; Benedict XVI.

His questions #

• Which is more fundamental, knowledge in words and sentences or in mathematical symbols and equations? Words and sentences: words can say what a word is; no equation says what an equation is.
• Can you define what a metaphor is by using metaphors? No; only proper speech explains figurative speech.
• What similar point can you make about singular and universal? You need universal concepts to explain singularity, not the reverse.
• Why do I get a name and my health, my knowledge of geometry, my hand do not? Substance is individuated through itself, accidents and parts through their subject; rational substances also have dominion over their act.
• Is second substance and first substance related to the common notion of substance as species to genus? No, though something like it: the common notion is involved in both.
• What would be the third sense of substance? What exists not in another as in a subject, leaving out the said-of-another division.
• Is there a word that is to the emotion of mercy as justice is to anger? No name; so “mercy of God” uses the emotion’s name for what has no name.
• Is St Peter in heaven? Only by synecdoche; his soul is there, a part.
• Will there be sense pleasures in heaven? Thomas: those compatible with immortality, eye and ear, vocal praise and music, not eating, drinking or reproducing.