Summa I, Q.29, Art. 2: Person, Hypostasis, Subsistence and Essence, with Asides on Fiction, Shakespeare and Mozart

Orientation #

He opens with “the second article here now” and closes by saying the first two articles are more general, the next two more particular, “and we have to see them for next time”; he also refers back to the earlier point about matter under quantity as the source of individuation (“this goes back to what we say”). The previous class worked through Boethius’s definition of person in q. 29 a. 1, and the next takes up a. 3, whether “person” applies to God.

The class, in order #

1. The three objections: all four names seem to mean one thing (“this second article is really to clear up”) #

He reads objections 1–3 of a. 2, with glosses, and states the article’s purpose: to distinguish the meanings of the words.

• Obj. 1: Boethius (On the Two Natures) says the Greeks call an individual substance of a rational nature hypostasis; we signify that by person; therefore the same.
• Obj. 2: we say three persons and three subsistences in God; so person and subsistence signify the same.
• Obj. 3: Boethius in the commentary on the Predicamenta (Aristotle’s Categories) says ousia, i.e. essence, signifies something composed of matter and form; that is the individual substance, hypostasis, person.
• Aside on Albert the Great: the paraphrases of Porphyry’s Isagoge give the predicabilia (genus, species, difference, property), the Categories give the predicamenta (substance, quantity, quality, the ten).
• Aside on ousia: it names just the one meaning of “substance,” what a thing is; Plato and Aristotle sometimes call a definition logos tes ousias, ratio substantiae.
• “You see how confusing I can get with all these uses of the word… But Thomas will clear it up. Have no fear.”

2. The sed contra and the translation problem (“how do you translate hypostasis into Latin”) #

Two contrary texts from Boethius, and the historical difficulty they reflect.

• Sed contra 1 (On the Two Natures): genera and species only subsist; individuals also stand under; so subsistentia from subsisting, hypostasis from standing under; since hypostases/persons do not belong to genera and species, they are not the same as subsistence. He notes this reaches back to the earlier point: man or dog is not the kind of thing that exists in a subject, as geometry, health, shape do.
• Sed contra 2 (Commentary on the Categories): hypostasis is said of matter, ousiosis (subsistence) of form; neither matter nor form is a person.
• The great early problem: etymologically hypostasis = substantia; but Latin substantia also means the nature; so “three hypostases” rendered “three substances” sounds like three natures — heresy. “It shows you difficulties until they clear these things up.”

3. The body: two senses of substance, four names for the second (“according to a threefold consideration of substance”) #

Thomas’s answer, which he then restates in his own way.

1. According to Aristotle, Metaphysics V, substance is said in two ways: (a) the what-it-is of a thing, which the definition signifies (“the definition signifies the substance of a thing”), Greek ousia, which we call essence; (b) the subject or suppositum subsisting in the genus of substance — “individual you or me.”
2. The second can be named by a name signifying an intention — suppositum, “placed under” — and by three names signifying a thing: res naturae, subsistence, hypostasis.
3. Threefold consideration: as existing by itself and not in another, it is subsistence; as placed under a common nature, a thing of nature (this man is a thing of human nature; the dog of canine nature); as placed under accidents, hypostasis or substantia — both words etymologically “stand under,” and accidents exist in it.
4. What these three signify commonly in the whole genus of substance, person signifies in particular in the genus of rational substances.

• Restated on Socrates: not in a subject, so subsists; individual of human nature, so res naturae; stands under courage, wisdom, so hypostasis or substance. “A little different reason for giving each of those three names.”
• Caution on “exists in itself”: in Physics IV, before defining place, Aristotle gives eight unordered meanings of “in”; Thomas orders them as Aristotle taught in Metaphysics V, and then shows inductively and by reason that nothing is in itself; but sometimes we say “in itself” — an affirmative grammatical form with a negative meaning, i.e. not in another. “That way of speaking, I’d be careful with.”

4. Why substance is named from standing under accidents (“accidents are more sensible”) #

He pauses on the word substantia and why the subject is named by its relation to accidents: because accidents are more known to us, being sensible as such, while substance is not.

• “I see your color and I see your shape. In a way, I don’t see you” — something else in me understands you when I see these.
• Bertrand Russell: Mr. Smith’s accidents have no more need of a substance than the earth of an elephant to rest on. His reply: “then what would you call them accidents?”
• Descartes: identifies the substance of material things with their quantity (size), confusing an accident with substance. The common-man test: is what a dog is and the size of a dog the same thing? No — what a man is comes in different sizes, and your size changes through life while you remain. Joke: “Descartes never grew up.”
• Note in Descartes’ favour: Aristotle gives quantity as the first category of accident, closest to substance; the Platonists went that way too “to some extent.”
• Einstein: ends up thinking you are a hypothesis — “the existence of his wife is an hypothesis to explain a bundle of smells and colors and sounds.”

5. Reply to obj. 1: Greek usage of hypostasis, and words shaped by custom (“ex usu loquendi”) #

Point: hypostasis by its proper meaning names any individual in the genus of substance, but the Greeks by custom take it for the rational individual, because of its excellence.

• The three names (subsistence, res naturae, hypostasis) apply to a dog or even a tree; person names what has those three “in a more particular way,” in rational substances only.
• Greek theological usage: the “hypostatic union” means the human and divine natures joined in the one person of the Word — as if hypostasis meant person.
• Parallel from English: “someone” is etymologically “some one thing,” so this glass is someone; but by usage “someone” is always a person — we wouldn’t call a cat someone. His French teacher’s rule: “Don’t fight it, just accept it.”
• No sound signifies by nature but by human custom; it is surprising we have as much agreement as we do “given the irrationality of human beings and their willfulness.”
• Greek ouden, from ou and hen, means “no one”; English says “nothing.” We oppose something/nothing and someone/no one, so ouden can’t be rendered “no one.”
• The main trouble with hypostasis was not its use for person but its translation as substantia — “three what-it-is’s” — heresy.

6. Reply to obj. 2: three subsistences rather than three substances (“substantia is equivocal”) #

Point: as Latins say three persons and three subsistences, the Greeks say three hypostases; substantia properly answers to hypostasis (hupo = under, stasis = standing), but since it is equivocal — sometimes essence, sometimes hypostasis — “lest it be an occasion of error” we transfer subsistentia rather than substantia for hypostasis.

• Even daily speech uses “the substance of the thing” for what is essential, so that sense is “so common” in our minds.
• Student: what is the difference then between persona and subsistence? Answer: subsistence applies to any individual substance, since it exists not in another; person is such a thing with a rational nature — more particular.

7. Reply to obj. 3: essence leaves out the individuating principles (“this soul and this flesh and this bone”) #

Point: essence is what the definition signifies; the definition gathers the principles of the species, not of the individual; hypostasis and person add the individuating principles above essence.

1. “Animal that has reason” gives the principles of the kind, not “what makes me to be me as opposed to you.”
2. In things of matter and form, essence signifies neither form alone nor matter alone but the composite in common: animal is more the material, reason the formal, but as beginnings of the species.
3. What is composed of this matter (“this flesh right here, it’s falling apart”) and this form (this soul) has the notion of hypostasis or person.
4. Soul, flesh and bone are of the definition of man; this soul, this flesh, this bone would be of the definition of this man “if individual had a definition.”
5. So hypostasis and person are not the same as essence in composites, “as was said when one treated of the divine simplicity.”

• Back-reference: matter as subject to quantity is the source of individuation; matter divided up — my flesh, your flesh — is tied to individuality. You are in the definition of man, but not part of it.

8. Reply to obj. 4: how genera and species “subsist” (“man is a kind of thing that doesn’t exist in others”) #

Point: Boethius says genera and species subsist insofar as subsisting belongs to some individuals, because those individuals are under them in the category of substance — not that species themselves subsist, except on Plato’s opinion that species subsist apart from singulars.

• Man in general doesn’t subsist; only individual men do; but man is the kind of thing that doesn’t exist in a subject, so its individuals subsist. Quality or quantity is not that kind: health exists only in another.
• Why Plato erred (recalled from earlier): he thought truth required that the way we understand things be the way they are. Aristotle: you can truly understand in separation things that don’t exist in separation. Thomas starts with the accidental:
  • Grandfather/philosopher example (his thirteenth grandchild, Thomas Jerome): the nurse knows him truly as a grandfather without knowing he’s a philosopher; his students the reverse. Incomplete, not false. Only “this grandfather is not a philosopher” would be false. (A student’s interjection here is partly [unclear in recording].)
  • Mathematics: cube knowable without ice cube or wooden cube; sphere without rubber or glass; the mind is not false in knowing sphere in separation.
  • Time: can we know the past truly now, though our knowledge is in the present? Lady Macbeth: “transported me out of the ignorant present” [ed.: usually “beyond”]; Dickens picks it up in David Copperfield at the engagement.
• Aristotle in the books of wisdom compares Plato to the poets: the poets make Zeus and the gods superhuman beings; Plato makes the forms a purified nature of man, dog, cat, not knowing what separate substances are really like.
• The second half of the reply: substare belongs to the same individuals in order to accidents, which are outside the notion of genera and species. He: I subsist because I’m in the genus of substance; I stand under my health and my geometry, outside that genus — “I can have a lot of accidental being: be a philosophical grandfather.”

9. Reply to obj. 5: hypostasis to matter, subsistence to form (“matter is the source of standing under”) #

Point: the composite individual has standing-under-accidents from what is proper to matter, since matter is like a subject; it subsists by itself from the propriety of its form, which does not come to an already subsisting thing but gives actual being to matter so that it can subsist.

• Boethius, On the Trinity: a simple form cannot be a subject — as God, divina substantia forma est.
• So Boethius attributes hypostasis to matter and subsistence to form, “not because it’s exactly identical,” but as sources. “Is that perfectly clear?”

10. Where the question goes next (“the first two articles are really more general”) #

Aa. 1–2 are general — what a person is and how the word differs from substance, hypostasis, res naturae; the next two are more particular: whether this name should be used in divine things, “because the church does,” which Thomas takes up formally. For next time.

11. Digression: the poet moves to virtue without preaching (“to lead us into something virtuous”) #

Point: Thomas in the proemium to logic says poetae est inducere ad aliquid virtuosum per decentem repraesentationem; the poet does this differently from, and more effectively than, the preacher who exhorts.

• Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor (his last good-natured comedy) and Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro both have a moral effect without preaching. Falstaff the lustful man made ridiculous three times (the laundry basket dumped in the water; dressed as the old woman and beaten; the children in the woods); the count in Figaro brought to his knees asking his wife’s forgiveness, and the music makes you want Susanna and the barber to marry — “you’re emotionally attached.”
• Pope Paul VI’s allocution to artists: the artist has an advantage over the preacher, who is “more of an antagonist”; people move to virtue by admiring a hero, not by being yelled at; if people are represented as they really are, virtue is more attractive than vice.
• The short-lived pope’s Illustrissimi: a letter to Goethe on the artist’s moral responsibility (Werther and the suicides that followed); the moral effect must arise naturally from the play, not be tacked on at the end; his example: after Oedipus “one is anything but enthusiastic about incest.” His old teacher Kasurik: you can tell a man’s mind by the examples he chooses.
• Merry Wives’ subplots spread the ridicule: the absurdly jealous husband marching neighbours up to catch nothing; the other couple deceived when the daughter runs off with the young man; at the end all, even Falstaff, go to dinner. “Nothing preachy, but you can’t go in without some moral effect.”
• He also mentions a film or piece (“this bell”) his wife remarked on as moving without moralising [unclear in recording].
• Aside: a co-worker’s insanely jealous wife, and the bank woman’s “don’t greet me on the boardwalk.”

His words #

• predicabilia / predicamenta: the five of Porphyry vs. the ten of the Categories.
• ousia: what a thing is; the one meaning of substance; logos tes ousias = ratio substantiae, the definition.
• “books of Wisdom / first philosophy” [ed.: Metaphysics].
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics].
• suppositum: name signifying an intention; “placed under,” like the subject.
• res naturae (“thing of nature”): the individual as under a common nature.
• subsistence: exists not in another as in a subject, “in itself” — affirmative form, negative meaning.
• hypostasis / substantia: stand under accidents; hupo under, stasis standing.
• ex propria significatione nominis vs. ex usu loquendi: proper meaning vs. custom.
• ouden: from ou + hen, “no one,” rendered “nothing.”
• equivocata: substantia is equivocal, essence or hypostasis.
• hypostatic union: the two natures of Christ joined in the one person of the Word.
• divina substantia forma est: a simple form cannot be a subject.
• poetae est inducere ad aliquid virtuosum per decentem repraesentationem.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 29, a. 2 (objections, sed contra, body, replies 1–5).
• Boethius, On the Two Natures; Commentary on the Categories; On the Trinity — as quoted within the article.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (two senses of substance); Physics IV (eight senses of “in,” nothing in itself), with Thomas’s commentary.
• Albert the Great, paraphrases of Porphyry’s Isagoge and the Categories.
• Aristotle, “books of wisdom,” comparing Plato to the poets.
• Thomas, proemium to logic (Posterior Analytics, inferred).
• Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor; Macbeth; Dickens, David Copperfield; Mozart, Le Nozze di Figaro; Goethe, Sorrows of Young Werther; Sophocles’ Oedipus.
• Pope Paul VI, allocution to artists; Illustrissimi (letter to Goethe).

His questions #

• Is what a dog is and the size of a dog the same thing? No: the same kind comes in different sizes, and your size changes while you remain.
• Why is substance named from its position with reference to accidents? Because accidents are more known to us, being sensible as such.
• Would we call a cat “someone”? No — by usage “someone” is only a person, though etymologically it is “some one thing.”
• How do you translate ouden into English? “Nothing,” not “no one,” because English opposes someone to no one.
• What is the difference between persona and subsistence? (student) Subsistence fits any individual substance; person only one of rational nature.
• Is the nurse’s knowledge of me as grandfather, not philosopher, false? Incomplete but not false; false only if she denied the other.
• Can we know the past truly now, though our knowledge is in the present? Yes — the way we know need not match the way things are; left as an illustration.
• What’s the Greek word for nothing? ouden, from the negative and “one.”