Replies on the Separated Soul; Does Beatitude Need a Perfect Body or Outside Goods? (I-II, Q.4, aa.5–7)

Orientation #

He begins in the middle of the replies to q.4 a.5 (“we’re in the first objection”), recalling that he has already talked to the class about understanding not taking place in the body, and refers back to “looking before and after” (prev. lecture) and to the treatment of scriptural metaphor “back in question one”. The a.6 reply to the third objection points forward to “the third part of this work” on the spiritual body. The previous class worked through the objections and body of a.5; the next takes a.8 and q.5.

The class, in order #

1. Reply to obj. 1: the soul transcends the organs of the body (“a blow to the eye interferes with seeing”) #

Point: beatitude is a perfection of the soul on the side of the understanding, by which the soul transcends the body’s organs, not as form of a natural body; so he must show that understanding is not in the body.

The student who held the brain is the organ of thought, and the argument answering him:

1. A blow to the eye interferes with seeing, therefore the eye is the organ of sight; a blow to the brain (or alcohol) interferes with thinking, therefore the brain is the organ of thought.
2. Light-bulb example: in a windowless room lit by one bulb, smashing the bulb interferes with my seeing you, but not by interfering with the organ; it removes the object (as your leaving the room does). So interference proves a connection, but “whether it’s that of organ or object, it doesn’t tell you which.”
3. Separate arguments show thinking is not in the body:
   • Aristotle’s gradual way through the senses: the liquid in the eye has no color, no actual sound in the ear; a sugary tongue (an all-day sucker) would interfere with tasting; in the shower the water no longer feels hot once “the heat has become the heat of your thing.” The senses lack the object they can receive; reason is open to understanding all material things, so it must lack material nature.
   • The common argument: whatever is received in the continuous, in the body, is by that fact individualized; a triangle sensed is singular, understood is universal; so reason is not a body.
   • His own favourite: a square is continuous (parts meet at a common boundary, divisible forever); its definition, “equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral,” is not. The thing known is continuous, so the non-continuous way of knowing is due to reason itself. “A beautiful example of how truth does not require that the way we know be the way things are.”
4. Hence the interference from a blow to the brain is on the side of the object: as Aristotle shows in the third book, reason’s own object is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined, and the soul in the body is naturally turned to the image.

How we know the soul transcends the body: you must be before you can do; if the soul’s being were only in the body, its doing would be only in the body; since it has a doing not in the body, its being is not “immersed” in the body. So the perfection of nature to which beatitude is owed (operation of understanding as transcending the body) remains after death, though the perfection as form of the body does not.

2. Reply to obj. 2: the soul’s being differs from other parts’ being (“the being of the whole is not of any of its parts”) #

Point: the parts-argument fails because the soul stands to being otherwise than other parts.

• Ordinary parts: either wholly cease when the whole is destroyed (parts of an animal), or if they remain have another being in act (a part of a line vs. the whole line).
• The human soul: the being of the composite remains to it after the body’s destruction, because form and matter have the same being, which is the being of the composite; the body shares in the soul’s being, imperfectly; the soul “subsists in its own being.”
• Evidence again: it has its own operation (understanding the universal, the continuous non-continuously), so it has its own being.
• Conclusion as Thomas gives it: after separation it has perfect being, hence can have perfect operation, though not the perfect nature of the species.

3. Digression: the most universal before and after in being (“nothing is before after itself”) #

Point: since being is of all, the first before-and-after the reason sees should be in being; he canvasses candidates.

• Substance before accident (met already in the Categories; shown in the Metaphysics), some accidents before others.
• Act before ability (Metaphysics IX, “the third part”): before in knowledge, time, being; in some sense more universal than substance/accident, since God is pure act and “not really substance in that genus.”
• Cause and effect: everything is cause or effect or both; God is a cause; cause is one sense of before.
• Student: “before oneself”? Answer: nothing is before itself; “that’s the axiom.”
• The through-itself before the through-another: substance is being per se, accident only in substance; act actual through itself, ability only through some act like form. In what sense of before? Class: the second sense (sugar can be sweet without the coffee, not the coffee without the sugar); also the fifth (the coffee is sweet because the sugar is), and maybe the fourth. Aristotle picks “through itself” up among the words attached to perfect: what is so to itself is more so (sweet to itself is more sweet than sweet to another, “even if sugar was not good”). Applies to knowledge: statements known through others presuppose statements known to themselves.
• Application: matter has being through form, form could have being to itself; so beside composites there could be a world of just forms but not a world of just matter (“what has being through another would be existing by itself”). So the soul may have being through itself which the body shares in; known from its operation.

4. Reply to obj. 3: beatitude is of man by his understanding (“the teeth of the Ethiop”) #

Point: since beatitude belongs to man according to his understanding, it can be in him while the understanding remains, as the Ethiop’s teeth can be white even after their expulsion, by which the Ethiop is said to be white (“strange example”).

• Aside: the example “comes down to the civil rights movement”; a sign in Manhattan; the head of an organization, a black cleric, upset that a business concentrated on the black population; its founder Sanger “definitely racist.”
• Aristotle, Ethics X: two happinesses, the looking life (wisdom) a divine happiness, and the human happiness of political foresight, the head of government.
• Aside: Churchill said he had been happy; back to head of the navy before becoming prime minister, “Winston is back.”

5. Obj. 4 and reply: two ways of being impeded (“by way of contrariety, as coldness impedes”) #

Text: Augustine, XII on Genesis (a student’s translation): the soul’s natural desire to rule the body holds it back from tending wholly to heaven, a “division of minds.” Distinction: impediment by contrariety (cold against heat) is repugnant to happiness; impediment by defect (lacking something required for perfection in every way) is not repugnant to happiness, only to its being perfect in every way. So Thomas admits our beatitude is not perfect in every way, though essentially there in seeing God. The soul desires to enjoy God so that enjoyment overflows to the body; without the body its appetite rests in what it has, yet wishes the body to share.

• Example: seeing your first grandchild while your wife has not yet arrived: perfectly happy, but wanting her to share. Student: if the grandchild were dead, that would be an impediment (the other kind).

6. Reply to obj. 5: rest on the side of the desirable, not of the desirer (“not intensive, but extensive”) #

Point: the separated soul’s desire wholly rests on the side of the desirable (it has God, which suffices) but not on the side of the one desiring, since it does not possess the good in every way it can wish and possess; when the body is resumed, beatitude increases extensively, not intensively.

• “A distinction Thomas will make a lot”: joy in heaven over one repentant sinner is joy extending to more, not more intense; my guardian angel is not more happy when I turn from evil, his joy now extends even to me.

7. Reply to obj. 6: not equal to the angels (“inequality of quantity … inequality of proportion”) #

Point: Augustine’s statement that spirits of the dead do not see God as angels do is to be taken not of inequality of quantity (even now some blessed souls are taken up to higher orders of angels and see more clearly than lower angels: the apostles maybe, certainly Mary) but of proportion: even the lowest angel already has every perfection of beatitude it will have; the separated saints not yet.

• Aside: the priest telling his aunt her dead little girl “is an angel now”; according to Augustine, not yet.
• Summary he draws: substantially the separated souls have their beatitude, with a desire for the body to share. Applied to a married couple, one spouse dead (“Gardening’s a lot easier”).
• Asides: reading Thomas in a shack vs. Shakespeare at Versailles; mansion libraries (John Adams’s house, Biltmore, the old university faculty of English). Break.

8. Article 6: is a perfect disposition of the body required? (“the body shows nothing”) #

Objections (his glosses): (1) bodily disposition is a bodily good, and beatitude is not in bodily goods: can you be blessed missing a leg, ugly? (2) beatitude is the vision of God, for which the body contributes nothing: Socrates, ugliest man in Athens, will see God. (3) the more the understanding is separated from the body the more perfectly it understands (Socrates’ argument, which Thomas develops: the road to perfection and to destruction are contraries, so it cannot cease when separated; the absent-minded professor; St Paul in the third heaven not knowing whether in the body, Teresa of Avila in elevation), so the soul must be abstracted from the body in every way. Sed contra: beatitude is the reward of virtue (John 13); the saints are promised also the body’s good disposition, Isaiah: “you shall see and your heart will rejoice [gaudium de veritate], and your bones like herbs will germinate.” Thomas gives no reply; “the contrary is going to stand.”

• Asides: St Martin of Tours’ funeral, trees blossoming as the body passed; Mary asked by a seer “why are you so beautiful?"—“because I love”: so the more you love, the more beautiful in heaven. Body: (a) beatitude of this life needs good bodily disposition, since it is (the Philosopher) the operation of perfect virtue, impeded by the body’s condition. (b) For perfect beatitude some (Socrates in the dialogues; Porphyry cited by Augustine, City of God XXII: every body must be fled) say the soul must be wholly separated. Not fitting: it is natural to the soul to be joined to the body, and the soul’s perfection cannot exclude its natural perfection. So for beatitude perfect omnibus modis (not essentially) a perfect disposition of the body is required both before and after, “looking before and after again”:
  • Antecedently: Augustine, XII on Genesis: the corrupt flesh weighs down the soul, averting it from the vision; when the body is spiritual, not animal (still a body), it is made equal to the angels. “Sackcloth”: a sack, “baggage for your bones.”
  • Consequently: a redundance from the soul’s beatitude to the body, so it too enjoys its perfection (Mary’s answer; Mother Teresa’s wrinkled face beautiful when tending the dying; your grandmother). Augustine to Dioscorus: God makes the soul so potent that from its fullest beatitude vigor of incorruption overflows to the lower nature: the beatific vision “enough to make your bones immortal.” Replies: (1) bodily good is not beatitude’s object, but can serve its adornment (beauty, youth). (2) the body confers nothing to the operation but can impede it (in heaven no distraction), so a body not impeding the mind’s elevation is required. (3) abstraction is required from this corruptible body which weighs down the soul, not from the spiritual body, wholly subject to spirit, to be treated in the third part.
• Aside: the bodies of the damned presumably weigh them down as part of punishment; Dante’s suicides with bodies hung in the trees.

9. Article 7: are exterior goods required? (“can’t take it with you”) #

Objections: (1) rewards promised to the saints pertain to beatitude, and they are promised food and drink, wealth, kingdom: Luke 22 (eat and drink at my table in my kingdom), Matthew 6 (treasures in heaven), Matthew 25 (possess the kingdom). His gloss: what got the Jews in trouble with Christ, wanting the material kingdom too. (2) Boethius, Consolation III: a state perfected by the gathering of all goods, and exterior goods are goods, though the least (Augustine, Aristotle). (3) “your reward is much in heaven”: heaven is a place, so at least an exterior place is required.

• Aside: Thomas’s three goods matched to descent into hell (beatific vision to the prophets, good of the soul), resurrection (good of the body), ascension (a suitable place). Sed contra: Psalm 72: what is there for me in heaven, and apart from you what do I wish on earth; it is good for me to adhere to God. Body: for imperfect beatitude of this life exterior goods are required, not in its essence but instrumentaliter, tool-like, since it is the operation of virtue (Ethics I): for contemplative virtue (the man sitting needs a chair; philosophers who deny matter still go to dinner; Bishop Berkeley opens the door before leaving his study) and even more for active virtue (no generosity without money). For perfect beatitude nullo modo, because such goods serve either sustaining the animal body or operations exerted through the body, belonging to human life; but that beatitude is in the soul without the body or in a body no longer animal but spiritual (St Paul’s speaking). No food; will it breathe? Student: Christ spoke after the resurrection, so vocal cords; and breathed on them, insufflatio. He: Christ also ate, just to show he was alive. Left open. And since contemplative happiness (Ethics X, divine, more like God) approaches perfect beatitude more than the active (political foresight, human), it needs such goods even less. Replies: (1) bodily promises in Scripture are metaphorical: spiritual things designated by bodily so that from the known we rise to desire the unknown (Gregory, a homily); food and drink = pleasure of beatitude, wealth = sufficiency (God suffices), kingdom = exaltation to union with God; cf. question one on metaphor. (2) such goods serve animal life, not the spiritual life; yet the gathering of all goods is there, since whatever good is in them is had whole in the summo fonte, the highest fountain of goods (the devil’s endless wine spout; “the torrent of delight”). (3) Augustine, On the Sermon on the Mount: heaven means the height of spiritual goods; still a bodily place, the empyrean heaven, will be for the blessed, not on account of beatitude but by congruence and decor; he is not sure where that is in current theories, “but you won’t be in an ugly place.”
• Aside: golden streets; his aunt Gertrude’s schoolgirl interview about relatives told in Sweden that American streets were paved with gold; his blacksmith grandfather in Parker’s Prairie.

His words #

• organ vs. object of an operation; interference can be with either (light bulb).
• “the senses seem to be more or less lacking the object that they are able to receive.”
• received in the continuous is individualized, singular; universal in reason.
• “truth does not require that the way we know be the way things are.”
• reason’s object: “the what it is of something sensed or imagined”; soul in body “naturally turned towards the image.”
• “you have to be before you can do”; soul not “immersed” in the body.
• “the soul subsists in its own being”; perfect being, perfect operation, not perfect nature of the species.
• ability and act [ed.: potency and act]; “the third part” of Metaphysics IX.
• the through-itself before the through-another; senses of before numbered second, fourth, fifth.
• impediment by contrariety vs. by defect.
• “overflow”, “redunding” to the body [ed.: redundantia].
• rest on the side of the desirable vs. on the side of the one desiring.
• intensive vs. extensive increase.
• inequality of quantity vs. of proportion.
• “omnibus modis,” “in every way,” vs. essentially.
• animal body vs. spiritual body (subject to spirit).
• gaudium de veritate; sackcloth as a sack; “baggage for your bones.”
• instrumentaliter, “tool-like”; nullo modo.
• summo fonte, highest fountain of goods; insufflatio.
• congruence and decor; empyrean heaven.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, ST I-II q.4 a.5, replies to objections 1–6 (Latin read and translated).
• Thomas, ST I-II q.4 a.6, whole article.
• Thomas, ST I-II q.4 a.7, whole article.
• Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram XII (student translation in obj. 4; cited again in a.6 body).
• Augustine, Epistle to Dioscorus (via a.6).
• Isaiah, “your bones like herbs will germinate” (Isaiah 66, inferred); John 13; Luke 22; Matthew 6; Matthew 25; Psalm 72 (all via Thomas).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima III (reason’s object; inferred locus), the senses; Categories; Metaphysics (substance before accident; IX on act and ability); Nicomachean Ethics I (operation of virtue) and X (two happinesses).
• Augustine, City of God XXII (Porphyry); On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount; Boethius, Consolation III; Gregory, a homily; Thomas on descent, resurrection, ascension (ST III, inferred); Dante, the suicides; Shakespeare, Henry IV.

His questions #

• Does a blow to the brain show the brain is the organ of thought? No; interference may be with organ or object, and separate arguments show understanding is not in a body.
• Is the definition of square continuous? No; reason knows a continuous thing in a non-continuous way, due to reason itself.
• How do you know the soul transcends the organs of the body? Being precedes doing; it has an operation not in the body, so its being is not only in the body.
• What is the most universal before and after that the reason sees? Substance/accident, act/ability, cause/effect, through-itself/through-another; left as candidates.
• In what sense is the through-itself before the through-another? The second sense (sugar and coffee), also the fifth, maybe the fourth.
• Is my guardian angel more happy when I repent? His joy extends to more, not more intense.
• Can you be blessed missing a leg or with an ugly body? Yes essentially; a perfect body is needed only for beatitude perfect in every way.
• Will the resurrected body breathe? Left open (Christ spoke and breathed on the apostles, but also ate only to show he lived).
• Where is the empyrean heaven in current theories of the universe? He is not sure; “you won’t be in an ugly place.”