Theobald, Shakespeare and Homer on 'Looking Before and After'; Is Every Sadness Contrary to Every Pleasure? (Summa I-II, Q35, A4)

Orientation #

He says “we are on article four, remember at the end there” and proposes to “go over the body again” because the text is “a little difficult.” Before that he announces “a little poetry here today.” The previous class worked through the earlier articles on pain, sadness and pleasure, and the next takes up sadness against the pleasure of contemplation and whether sadness is fled more than pleasure is desired.

The class, in order #

1. Theobald’s emendation of Falstaff’s death (“a babbled of green fields”) #

Point: Shakespeare’s words have two excellences, wisdom and poetic excellence, and Theobald illustrates the editor’s service to the second.

• Editors in order as he gives them: Nicholas Rowe first (poet laureate), then “Dryden,” then Theobald, who criticised the previous edition for taking liberties; the offended editor attacked Theobald in the Dunciad [ed.: the Dunciad is Pope's; the transcript has "Dryden" throughout].
• Henry V, Act II Scene III, the hostess describing Falstaff’s last moments (“nose as sharp as a pen”): the folio reads “a table of green fields,” which “makes no sense”; Theobald read “a babbled of green fields,” “sustained by the preceding play with flowers.”
• Editorial verdicts he reads out: White, “the most felicitous conjectural emendation ever made of Shakespeare’s text”; the new Hudson Shakespeare, “perhaps the happiest emendation in all literature”; Kittredge (Harvard, Chaucerian and Shakespearean scholar), “a stroke of genius.”
• Aside: the hostess’s “Arthur’s bosom” for Abraham’s; Bardolph’s “would I were with him, in heaven or in hell” shows the thoughtless young man; “turn of the tide” is the old prejudice about the moment of death.
• Aside: scripture on the “little man” and no field escaping his eyes, offered to make “babbled of green fields” plausible.

2. Hamlet’s definition of reason and the five reasons to use it (“such large discourse, looking before and after”) #

Point: the second excellence, words of wisdom, is shown in Hamlet IV.iv, where Shakespeare defines reason.

• His rendering: reason is “capability, or I have shortened it to ability, for large discourse, looking before and after”; the speech also tells what it is to use reason and “touches upon five actually excellent reasons why you should use your reason, or use it more than you do” (the five not enumerated here).
• Rolfe’s edition of Hamlet (a copy inscribed George Woodward, Worcester, 1896) gives two notes on the phrase: Samuel Johnson’s and Theobald’s. It is “kind of funny” both are quoted, since Johnson was influenced by the attack on Theobald.
• Johnson: “such latitude of comprehension, such power of reviewing the past and anticipating the future.” His comment: Johnson gives only the first meaning of before and after, the one in time; for the five senses one must go to Categories ch. 12. That Johnson begins there confirms “Aristotle knew where this begins.”

3. Theobald: “an expression purely Homeric” (“who alone of them looked before and behind”) #

Point: Theobald refers the phrase to the poet (as Aristotle calls Homer), Iliad III.109 and XVIII.250, and both places tie looking before and behind to reason and age.

• Iliad III: after Hector’s proposal of single combat between Menelaus and Alexander, Menelaus speaks; key sentence: the hearts of younger men are always frivolous, but an elder among them “looks behind and in front,” so all comes out better for both sides. Homer’s before/behind is in place, Shakespeare’s more in time, “but they go together.”
• Iliad XVIII (transcript says “book 16”; the scene is Achilles’ return after Patroclus’ death, which he himself places after XVIII.250): Polydamas, born the same night as Hector, “better in words” while Hector is better with the spear, “who alone of them looked before and behind him,” urges retreat inside the walls before Achilles re-enters battle; Hector overrules him; Homer’s verdict: “fools,” since Pallas Athena had taken away their wits. Contrast Polydamas: “that’s just marvelous.”
• Conclusion he draws: the two greatest poets, Homer and Shakespeare, see the same thing as characterizing reason. It is even a stock phrase in the Odyssey. He has “many other testimonies” from fiction writers but will not belabour them.
• Aside: applied to the election, the young re-elected Obama; older men expected wiser (“no fool worse than an old fool”; “play the young man” = play the fool).
• Aside: Aristotle calling Homer “the poet” is antonomasia.

4. Article 4 re-opened: what contrariety is (“things that are farthest apart in the same genus”) #

Point: to re-read the body one must first fix what contrariety is.

• Contraries: things farthest apart in the same genus; hence only two contraries, as only the two endpoints of a line are farthest apart.
• Thomas cites the tenth book of Metaphysics (he calls it “the tenth book of wisdom, the tenth after the books in natural philosophy”): contrariety is a difference according to form. Contrast: having vs. lack (the lack is an “unbeing”), and being vs. non-being (contradiction).
• Form is general or special, so some things are contrary by the form of the genus (virtue/vice), some by the form of the species (justice/injustice). Temperance and injustice are opposed as virtue and vice in general, not in particular as temperance/intemperance.

5. Aside: reason sees distinctions (“nothing is before or after itself”) #

Point: Thomas “sees a distinction,” which is implied in reason’s looking before and after.

1. Axiom: nothing is before or after itself (today is before tomorrow, after yesterday, never before itself).
2. So what is before and what is after are always distinct.
3. So reason must see a distinction before it sees a before and after; if reason is the ability to see before and after, it is also the ability to see distinction, hence division (a kind of distinction) and definition (which involves distinction).

• Examples of the presupposition: Cabernet Sauvignon vs. Pinot Noir, no ranking without tasting the difference; two students he cannot distinguish, he cannot say which is better.

6. Absolute forms vs. specification “ad aliquid” (“the Greek is very precise, pros ti”) #

Point: some things are specified by absolute forms, others by comparison to something outside.

• “Absolute” in Thomas is opposed to “relative,” towards another. Absolute: substances (dog, cat, horse), qualities (virtues, vices), the number seven. Relative: double and half; half can be more than double (half of Worcester vs. double my house).
• Ad aliquid is the Latin of Aristotle’s pros ti: pros = towards, ti = something; his old teacher said pros ti/ad aliquid rather than “relation,” a more concrete way.
• His “great discovery” in John 1:1: the Greek has “the Word was toward God” (pros); Augustine and Thomas distinguish the divine persons by relations, Father to Son and Son to Father; the distinction is not absolute, the persons having the same nature numerically (“the Father and I are one”; “you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” said playfully to the apostles who saw only his human nature).
• But Thomas here applies ad aliquid not to the category but to passions and motions: a motion is towards something, as coming into this room; wanting, getting angry (“I’m going towards you”). Not a relation in the category, but “something like pros ti,” and neatly specified by it.
• Anecdote: pro-life talk in Leominster at the Knights of Columbus, hall with a real bar; the long bars at Essler’s in St. Paul where he went with his father; an open bar: “you tend towards it.”

7. The two cases and the body’s argument (“to recede from white, but you approach blackness”) #

Point: species of contrary genera behave differently in the two cases.

• Absolute case: species under contrary genera are sometimes not contrary by the species’ ratio: temperance and injustice (nobody jumps to “injustice” as the contrary of temperance the way one says black/white, hot/cold); justice and injustice contrary by genus and species. In neither case any affinity or agreement.
• Relational case (Thomas’s word habitudinem, another word for relation): species of contrary genera not only may fail to be contrary but may agree and be alike. If they stand in the same way to contraries they induce contrariety (approaching white vs. approaching black); if in a contrary way to contraries, they have the ratio of likeness (receding from white and approaching black seem the same). Students’ cases: a lover of wisdom must hate folly; one who loves virtue hates vice.
• This appears most in contradiction, “the beginning of opposition”: white vs. not white; but saying “black” and saying “not white” agree.
• Application: sadness and pleasure are passions, emotions (“emotion” takes “motion,” said to be towards another). By genus contrary, since one is pursuit, the other flight, in the desiring power, like affirmation and negation in reason (steak, yes; the seven, no). Hence: about the same thing, contrary by species; about diverse merely disparate things, disparate (sad at a friend’s death, delighting in contemplation); about contrary things, not contrary but in agreement (rejoicing over good, sad over bad).
• Reply to obj. 1: whiteness and blackness do not take species from relation to something outside, as pleasure and sadness do, so the reason is not the same.

8. Objection 2 and the two replies (“genus is taken from matter”) #

Point: “any pleasure is a medicine against any sadness” (Ethics VII) does not make every pleasure contrary to every sadness.

• Setting up the objection: medicine works by contraries; “purgation” was borrowed from medicine; the great comic authors define comedy as purging melancholy, by contraries. Shakespeare shows anger eliminating pity: Hal, having snatched Falstaff’s horse, watching him “larding the lean earth,” says “were it not for laughing I should pity him”; laughter can eliminate pity, and anger can too, since anger wants to punish, not to feel sorry.
• Reply: genus is taken from matter (Metaphysics VIII, on matter and form); in an accident the subject stands in place of matter (so accident-in-subject is like form and matter, “not exactly the same”). Pleasure and sadness are contrary by genus; so in every sadness there is a disposition of the subject contrary to that in every pleasure: in pleasure the appetite accepts what it has, in sadness it flees. Therefore on the side of the subject every pleasure is a medicine against every sadness and every sadness impedes every pleasure, but most of all when they are contrary also by species.
• Reply to obj. 3 is clear from that; or otherwise: though not contrary by species, they are contrary in effect, since by one the animal’s nature is strengthened, by the other “in a way molested.” He ends there.

His words #

• two excellences of Shakespeare’s words: wisdom, and poetic excellence.
• reason: “ability for large discourse, looking before and after” (Shakespeare’s “capability” shortened to “ability”).
• before and after: five senses in Categories ch. 12; Johnson takes only the first, in time.
• contrariety: farthest apart in the same genus; a difference according to form.
• having vs. lack; being vs. non-being (contradiction) [ed.: privation; contradiction].
• axiom of before and after: nothing is before or after itself.
• absolute: as opposed to relative, “towards another.”
• ad aliquid / pros ti: “towards something”; his teacher’s rendering rather than “relation.”
• habitudinem: Thomas’s other word for relation, “to something extrinsic.”
• emotion: from “motion,” which is towards another.
• purgation: borrowed from medicine; comedy purges melancholy.
• genus taken from matter; for an accident the subject stands in place of matter.
• antonomasia: Aristotle calling Homer “the poet.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Shakespeare, Henry V II.iii (hostess on Falstaff’s death; editors’ notes from White, Hudson, Kittredge)
• Shakespeare, Hamlet IV.iv (“What is a man…”), with Rolfe’s notes quoting Johnson and Theobald; handout “The First Definition of Reason,” p. 68
• Homer, Iliad III (Menelaus’ speech) and XVIII (Polydamas and Hector), located by Theobald at III.109 and XVIII.250
• Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II q. 35 a. 4, body and replies to obj. 1-3 (printed volume DHB Vol. III, p. 833)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories ch. 12 (five senses of before and after)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics X (contrariety a difference by form), Metaphysics VIII (genus from matter), Ethics VII (pleasure a medicine against sadness), all as cited in the article
• John 1:1 (“the Word was toward God”)
• Homer, Odyssey (stock phrase, “the man who looks before and behind”)
• Pope’s Dunciad (as “Dryden’s” attack on Theobald)
• Shakespeare, the Hal/Falstaff horse scene (unnamed play)

His questions #

• What kind of opposition is contrariety? Things farthest apart in the same genus; so only two, like a line’s endpoints.
• Can today be before or after itself? No; so before and after presuppose a distinction, and reason must see distinction.
• Which is better, Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir? If you cannot taste a distinction, you are in no position to say.
• What is half, what is double? Not absolute but towards another; half a city can exceed double a house.
• Is temperance contrary to injustice? Only by genus (virtue/vice), not by species, and with no affinity.
• If you recede from white but approach black, what are those two? The same, alike: opposed in a contrary way to contraries.
• If I am a lover of wisdom, I must be a hater of what? Its contrary (the students supply it); likewise loving virtue means hating vice.
• Is every pleasure contrary to every sadness (obj. 2)? By genus and on the side of the subject’s disposition yes, hence any pleasure a medicine; by species only when about the same thing.