Summa I-II Q52 A1: How Habits Grow – The Form Itself vs. How Fully the Subject Shares in It

Orientation #

He says “some of you saw last time” question 52, and that it “is tied up with what’s going to be in Article Two”; he decides to go through the body of the article again and then, “unless you demand” otherwise, the objections too, because “it’s really a very important article for many reasons.” The previous class treated the same article and its distinction between intensification in the habit itself and through the subject’s participation; the next goes on to articles two and three on growth by addition and by acts. (Verified source: q. 52 a. 1 is read for about 20 minutes; the close may run toward a. 2.)

The class, in order #

1. Quantity-words carried over to spiritual things (“on account of the connaturality”) #

Point: Thomas opens by saying augmentum (growth), like everything belonging to quantity, is transferred from bodily quantities to understandable, spiritual things, because of the connaturality of our understanding to bodily things, which fall under the imagination.

• He has seen Thomas begin this way many times: our words for immaterial things are taken from the continuous and from time.
• Beginning and end: first meaning is of a magnitude — the point at the beginning of a line, the end of the table or road — then the beginning of a motion, of the time it takes; only gradually carried over.
• God compared to the point at the centre of the circle: Thomas compares the nows of time to points on the circumference, one before another, yet each “right opposite” the eternal now at the centre. The imagination helps the thinking, “starting from the imagination.”
• Shakespeare’s “reason is the ability for large discourse”: discourse taken from running (continuous), large from quantity; the words are carried over though they do not mean exactly the same.

2. What “great” first means, and what it means in forms (“arrived at the suitable perfection of quantity”) #

Point: in bodies something is called great when it reaches the perfection of quantity suitable to it; in forms, something is called great because it is perfect.

• A midget is not great; what counts as great in a man is not great in an elephant. Aristotle on fiction [ed.: Poetics]: why a play is more beautiful than a sonnet — it has a certain magnitude. Midsummer Night’s Dream: the short girl thinks the other mocks her for lacking full size; a short man is looked down on too.
• Large discourse revisited: discourse about the universal “covers a large area,” being said of many — but not as a blanket covers, which is young Socrates’ image in the Parmenides that lands him in contradictions.
• Aside on ratio: Thomas uses ratio where we say “the reason why” something is so; that reason is on the side of the thing, not the mind (the reason why we had a civil war). He proposes we might start saying “the reason what” — the reason of what something is, since what a thing is is more in the thing than in the mind or definition.
• His sophistical syllogism: a square is an equilateral right-angled quadrilateral; that is a definition; therefore a square is a definition. Fallacy of accent, and, a student adds and he accepts, also of simply/not simply: the definition is the square as understood, not square simply — both fallacies could be involved. Hence truth defined as adaequatio intellectus et rei intellectae, the thing as understood.
• Augustine, De Trinitate VI, quoted for “great” in forms: quae non mole magna sunt … idem est esse meum quod magnum — “four M’s,” alliteration lost in English; moles first means a pile.

3. The central distinction: perfection of the form itself vs. as partaken (“The perfection, however, of a form”) #

Point: “a very important distinction” — a form’s perfection can be considered (a) according to the form itself, (b) according as the subject partakes of it.

• Geometry (he notes Thomas takes this example in the next article): knowing more theorems makes geometry itself more perfect — the form extends to more conclusions. Going over the same theorem again and understanding it better: my reason “absorbs it,” partakes of it more.
• Hence his habit of reading a thing twice and thrice; Pericles: what is worth saying can be said more than once, and (with the class) what is worth thinking about can be thought more than once. Also from the play: “truth can never be confirmed enough, though doubts can never sleep.”
• Aside: God teaches us through Boethius, Thomas, Euclid because he wants them to share the dignity of being a teacher, as he lets creatures share the dignity of being causes (Thomas on why God causes through other things); Kasurik, “you can’t be a teacher too much”; he may say this at the trivium graduation.
• Thomas’s terms: perfection according to the form itself is called small or great; according to the subject’s partaking, more or less. Ben Jonson on Shakespeare’s “small Latin and less Greek” (he is unsure of the phrase); a small or large vocabulary; “great or little health or science.”
• Rereading a text: first time barely understood, second time more. De Koninck, teaching the Physics since the 1930s, still saw something new when Dionne pointed it out: “How could I miss that?”
• Thomas’s caution, which he flags: the distinction is not because the form has some being apart from matter or subject, but because there are two considerations, one according to the ratio of its species (“the reason what it is”), the other as partaken in the subject.
• Aside: Dionne agreed “thinking out something” is good English but “you can’t say that in French”; he and Boulet thought French inferior to English, and Latin to Greek, for both poetry and philosophy; Thomas thought well in Latin all the same — mirabile dictu.

4. Four opinions reported by Simplicius (“There were four opinions among the philosophers”) #

Point: on intension and remission of habits and forms (habit being a kind of form) Simplicius, on the Categories, records four positions.

1. Plotinus and other Platonists: qualities and habits receive more and less because they are material, and so have an indetermination from the infinity of matter.
2. Others, contrariwise: the qualities in themselves do not receive more and less, but the qualia, the concrete things, are said more or less by diverse partaking — justice is not more or less, but the just man is. Touched on by Aristotle in the Categories.
3. Stoics, in the middle: some habits receive more and less in themselves, as the arts; some not, as the virtues.
4. Some: immaterial qualities and forms do not receive more or less; material ones do. Against it he sets “I believe, help my unbelief,” and that some love God more, some less. “Now, what a mess.”

5. Thomas’s principle: what gives species is fixed and indivisible (“something fixed and standing”) #

Point: that by which a thing gets its species must be fixed, standing, as it were indivisible; whatever reaches it is in the species, whatever exceeds or falls short is another species, more or less perfect.

• Aristotle (“the philosopher” by antonomasia, as Christ is “the teacher”), Metaphysics VIII, “influenced by Plato”: species are like numbers, where adding or subtracting changes the species.
• Shakespeare’s exhortation to use reason: “What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more” — the “no more” is the point: body one, living body two, animal three, man four; add life, plant; add sense, animal; add reason, man. His mother disliked his calling man an animal: “he’s not just an animal, he’s an animal that has something more.” So Aristotle in the Ethics: reason more than anything is the man, as the third unit more than anything makes three to be three.
• Of this sort are hot and white and such qualities “which are not said in order to another” — “This is very important,” because order-to-another will mark the qualities that do admit more and less. Still more so substance, which is being per se: one dog is not more a dog than another, one cat not more a cat, one square not more a square.

6. Forms specified by order to something else admit more and less (“those things which receive species from something to which they are ordered”) #

Point: forms that take their species from something they are ordered to can vary in themselves in more and less while staying one in species, by the unity of that to which they are ordered.

• Geometry is ordered to knowing lines, angles, figures; it can be known more or less, and not just understood more or less but the science itself more or less.
• Motion can be more intense or remiss yet the same in species by the unity of its term.
• Health: a body is healthy by a disposition suitable to the animal’s nature, and diverse dispositions can be suitable, so health varies in more and less while the account of health remains. Ethics X: health receives more and less; not the same measure in all nor in one always; remitted, it remains health up to a point (he calls this “kind of ontology”). The dispositions stand in exceeding and exceeded.
• If the name “health” were imposed only on the most perfect, health could not be said more or less. So: are all beautiful women equally beautiful? His granddaughters all beautiful, some more; the Valkenberg twins the teacher could not tell apart, yet one much better looking — both still called beautiful.
• Conclusion of the first way: thus it is clear how a quality can in itself be increased or diminished, and how not; the same division (some yes, some no) will hold for the second way, participation.

7. Participation: Simplicius’s reason and Thomas’s fuller one (“some features assigns from this that substance”) #

Point: Simplicius explains which forms are not partaken more or less; Thomas “sees some truth” in it but “goes beyond.”

• Simplicius: substance is being per se, not received in a subject, so every form substantially partaken lacks intension and remission — “my soul is not more or less a soul”; quantity is next to substance (Aristotle treats it second) and figure follows on quantity, so neither is said more or less. Loosely we say “more circular,” but a thing is circular or not: Lucy, “every circle is a perfect circle.” “All created equal, but some more equal than others” — equal belongs to quantity, so strictly no. Physics VII (“Natural Hearing”): when something takes its form and figure it is not altered but rather comes to be — you do not come to be more a circle, you come to be a circle. Qualities farther from substance, joined to passions and actions (sense qualities: hotter, whiter, blacker), do receive more and less by partaking.
• Thomas “unfolds more” the reason: what gives species must remain fixed, standing, indivisible; a form fails to be partaken more or less in two ways.
  1. Because the partaker has its species by it: no substantial form is partaken more or less. Metaphysics VIII: as number has no more or less, neither does substance according to species; but “with matter,” according to material dispositions, more and less is found in substance.
  2. Because indivisibility belongs to the very account of the form, so whatever partakes of it partakes indivisibly. So the species of number, each constituted by an indivisible unity (“the one is even more indivisible than the point,” against modern mathematicians who divide one — “pretty scandalous”; discrete, not continuous). Likewise species of continuous quantity taken by numbers, bicubitum, tricubitum, double and triple: is five more double of two than four? No, only four is double. And figures, triangle and quadrilateral. Aristotle in the Categories: things that receive the ratio of triangle or circle are not more or less triangles or circles, since indivisibility is of their very account.
• Aside on names: trigonum, tetragonum in the Latin; why we say triangle but quadrilateral rather than trilateral or quadrangle — just how the language grew; German says quadrilateral; his French teacher: “Don’t fight it, accept it.”
• Conclusion of the article: since habits and dispositions are said by order to something (Physics VII, the “order to” he flagged), they have intension and remission two ways: (1) in themselves, a greater or lesser health, a science extending to more or fewer things — knowing only Euclid’s first book (required in the Middle Ages to enter theology) versus the second and third; (2) by the subject’s partaking, an equal science or health more received in one than another by diverse aptitude from nature or custom. For habit neither gives the species to its subject (not a substantial form) nor includes indivisibility in its account.

8. The three objections and replies (“I’ll go through the objections again”) #

Point: he goes back over the objections he skipped when the body was done last time (“truth can never be confirmed enough”).

• Obj. 1: growth is of quantity (Physics V, where Aristotle places the species of motion in their genera: alteration under quality, third species; growth under quantity); habit is in quality; so no growth. “Something dealing with the word.” Reply: as “magnitude” is derived from bodily quantity to intelligible perfections of forms, so is “growth,” whose limit is the great — John Paul the Great, Albert the Great, Gertrude the Great. Dionne: the objector “cannot move the word,” stuck on its first meaning, too heavy to carry over. Same fault: Hobbes mocking “infused” (poured-in) virtue; Nicodemus, “how can a man be born again?”; in the Sentences on the will of God, the objection that will is appetitive and Augustine says no appetitus in God since it implies lack; “God is not perfect because perfect means completely made.” Our mind is much tied up with words.
• Obj. 2: habit is a perfection (Physics VII); perfection implies an end and limit; so no more or less. Reply: a perfection, but not the limit of its subject giving its specific being, nor including limit in its account as species of number do; so nothing prevents more and less.
• Obj. 3: where there is more and less there is alteration (less hot to more hot); no alteration in habits (proved Physics VII); so no increase. Reply: alteration is first in qualities of the third species (sense qualities); in the first species, habit and disposition, alteration per posterius: alteration in hot and cold leads to alteration in health and sickness (heat or cool a man too much and you affect his health); and alteration in the passions of the sense desiring power or the grasping sense powers leads to alteration in sciences and virtues, per Physics VII. “Watch out for those passiones appetitus sensitivi, especially young men.”

His words #

• augmentum: growth; carried over from bodily quantity.
• connaturality: the coincidence of our understanding’s nature with bodily things that fall under the imagination.
• large discourse (Shakespeare): discourse from running, large from quantity.
• great (in bodies): arrived at the suitable perfection of quantity; (in forms): perfect.
• ratio / “the reason what”: the reason of what a thing is, on the side of the thing [ed.: ratio, account, formal notion].
• fallacy of accent; fallacy of simply and not simply: his square-is-a-definition syllogism.
• adaequatio intellectus et rei intellectae: truth, the thing as understood.
• quae non mole magna sunt … idem est esse meum quod magnum (Augustine).
• small / great vs. more / less: perfection of the form itself vs. by the subject’s partaking.
• intension and remission: more and less in habits and forms.
• qualia: the concrete things, as against the qualities.
• the philosopher / the teacher: Aristotle and Christ “by antonomasia.”
• “said in order to another”: qualities that take their species from what they are ordered to.
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• bicubitum, tricubitum: species of continuous quantity taken by numbers.
• trigonum, tetragonum: triangle, quadrilateral.
• per posterius: alteration in habits only consequently on alteration in sense qualities.
• passiones appetitus sensitivi: passions of the sense desiring power.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 52, a. 1, body, objections 1-3 and replies (verified; possibly running toward a. 2 at the end).
• Augustine, De Trinitate VI, quae non mole magna sunt (as quoted by Thomas).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VIII, species as numbers; substance with matter admits more and less (as quoted).
• Aristotle, Ethics X, health receives more and less (as quoted).
• Aristotle, Categories, on triangles and circles not more or less (as quoted).
• Aristotle, Physics VII, taking form and figure is coming to be, not alteration; habit a perfection; no alteration in habits; alteration in sense powers leads to alteration in sciences and virtues (as quoted).
• Aristotle, Physics V, growth in the genus of quantity (as quoted).
• Shakespeare, Hamlet (inferred): “large discourse”; “sleep and feed … no more.”

Mentioned

• Simplicius, commentary on the Categories, the four opinions.
• Plato, Parmenides: young Socrates’ universal as a blanket.
• Aristotle on fiction [ed.: Poetics], magnitude of a play vs. a sonnet.
• Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the short girl.
• Shakespeare, Pericles: what is worth saying may be said more than once; truth never confirmed enough.
• Ben Jonson on Shakespeare’s small Latin.
• Aristotle, Ethics: reason more than anything is the man.
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences, on the will of God (first objection, no appetitus in God).
• Boethius (definition of trinity, of eternity — mentioned only in the aside on teachers).
• Euclid, Elements, books I-III.
• Hobbes on infused virtue; Gospel of Mark, “I believe, help my unbelief”; John, “how can a man be born again?” (inferred loci not stated).

His questions #

• What is the first meaning of “beginning” and “end”? The beginning and end of a magnitude — the point of a line, the end of a table.
• What is the reason why something is so: on the side of the mind or of the thing? On the side of the thing; hence one might speak of “the reason what.”
• Which fallacy is in “a square is a definition”? Accent — and, a student adds, also simply/not simply; both may be involved.
• Is one dog more a dog than another, one square more a square? No; substance and figure do not admit more or less.
• Are all beautiful women equally beautiful? No; some more, some less, and still all beautiful — health likewise.
• Is five more double of two than four? No; only four is double of two; double is indivisible.
• Why do we say triangle and quadrilateral rather than trilateral and quadrangle? Just how the language grew; “don’t fight it, accept it.”
• How can the objector deny growth to habits if growth is of quantity? He “cannot move the word”; the name is carried over, like “great,” “infused,” “born again.”