De Anima (On the Soul)
28. Senses vs. Reason, Excess of Objects, and a Discussion of Evil as Privation
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/028-senses-vs-reason-excess-of-objects-and-a-discussion-of-evil/

[0:00] Now the last part of chapter twelve is taken up with a discussion here of whether the objects of the senses act upon things that don't sense,

[0:18] and. With the possible exception of those ones like hot and cold and wet and dry, right, which are qualities of bodies, such Aristotle seems to say that the other ones, as sensible, don't act upon their object, right? So if if if sound knocks out the door, it's not as sound, but as what? Motion. As wind or air or something, right? Okay, but not as sound, huh?

[0:57] But that's fairly tangential to what we want to say here, right? So as others, seems like there's maybe different senses of that expression as others. Yeah. You're receiving the form, so in somehow you are receiving a form. Yeah, yeah. And Aristotle will say that, right? You know, just I mean, sometimes we say that that knowing is alteration, but if you say that, you got to say it's in a different sense, right?

[1:29] Yeah. Oh yeah. So you are receiving the form of another, so in some way you're going to say later on in Book Three that of the soul is in some way all things, and because by senses, right, it's all sensible things, and by reason it's all understandable things. So in some way it does receive, right, the natures of all things, huh, or the forms of all things, but they don't become, right,

[1:59] an actual form of the thing, huh? It's a very kind of mysterious thing, but you know, coming down to it, it's a very, very, very wonderful thing, right? But it's

[2:17] kind of anticipation what you're going to find with reason, because reason is going to be something altogether immaterial. Reason doesn't have a what? Sensory receptor. Yeah, it doesn't have a body, yeah. It doesn't have an organ. And Aristotle will point to this difference, you know, that you to what you have here. That when you consider something very understandable, you're not able less to understand other things. You can understand other things even what better, right?

[2:53] But if you taste something very strong, right, in flavor, it prevents you from tasting other things temporarily, huh? See, if if you have a bright light shine, you face you kind of temporarily what blinded to look around, huh? And so that difference is a sign of the fact that reason is not a body, but the senses are what bodies, right? And therefore they are temporarily affected or even can be destroyed by too strong an object, huh?

[3:29] But not the what reason, huh? I happen to be looking at Thomas's fourth book of the Summa contra Gentiles as I came down here last day or so, and I'm up in the part now where Thomas, in the fourth book, he's talking about the Trinity, right? And he's

[3:56] showing from sacred scripture, right, the truth about the Word of God, the Son of God, and he's refuting, you know, Photinus and Sabellius, and especially the most formidable opponent there is Arius, right? And then he gets through showing, you know, the Scripture is really teaching us what the Church teaches, right? And answering the objections, you know, sometimes that Photinus or Arius, you know, give. Then he starts to give things drawn kind of from reason that create some difficulties about these things.

[4:39] And of course, one of the difficulties is that the God the Son receives the divine nature from God the Father. And then the objection says, "Well, the receiver and the received are not what the same thing, right? So if God the Son receives the divine nature, there'd be some kind of composition in God the Son. And of course, God is altogether simple, so then he can't be God, right?

[5:07] So you have to understand in what way the Son receives the divine nature from the Father, and it's much more difficult, much more profound than any of the kinds of reception we're talking about here. See? And the first thing you have to understand is the way that matter receives, okay? And especially that receiving that is suffering, right? That's undergoing, right? And then you have to understand the way that what the senses receive, right?

[5:41] And that's harder to understand. See? And then the way the reason receives, right? Yeah. But then we understand the sense in which God, the Son, receives the divine nature. That's even more difficult to understand. So I've been exercising my mind, you might say, on this. I said, how would I how would answer this objection, right? And of course Thomas, you know, answers it in chapter 14, right? Okay.

[6:13] Now things you do that stuff during the day much more kind of easy, you know, compared to this stuff. You see, but in other words, in thinking about something much more understandable and much more profound, I'm not what incapacitated to think about these things. I can now think more easily about these things, you know. But in the case of the senses, you see, if I eat something hot and spicy and so on, then I can't what.

[6:45] Taste anymore. Yeah, yeah. If you have pizza with pepperoni, you know, you know, you don't have Cabernet Sauvignon because you can't do justice to the wine; it's kind of overwhelmed by that pepperoni hotness, right? And and if you're having, you know, pastrami with mustard on it, you know, you don't have a good red wine with that because it's just overpowered by the by the spice of the and I mean real mustard I'm talking about, not this French stuff, you know, Real the real stuff, you know, the the gravy stuff, you know, from Dijon, right?

[7:19] And but you can't drink a beer or something, you know, but you can't drink a fine red wine. You're going to waste your money on it because you can't taste it because your tongue has been destroyed temporarily.

[7:32] And but I say when I think about the lunatic, I'm back and think about this stuff. It's it's easier, you know. It's like some students at TAC would see, in mathematics, right? You go on to more difficult things in math, and you find these freshmen, you know, they're, you know trying to understand Euclid. you know, and, Oh, that's so easy, you know, that's so simple, you know.

[7:58] But because you go on to something much more difficult to understand, even in mathematics, right? The earliest theorems seem very what easy and facile, right. So we can understand the lesser things even more so. I see that sometimes, you know, in these great minds like like Charles De Koninck and Monsignor Dionne and so on, these great philosophers usually have pretty good judgment in in fiction or in music, right?

[8:36] And music is not as understandable as philosophy, but to a man who's understood these things that are more understandable, he can see better, right?

[8:51] What makes sense in music than someone who hasn't? You can kind of judge a man unless he has unless he just totally lacks experience, right? I mean, if you find a philosopher say who whose avocation is jazz rather than Mozart, you know there's something wrong with the guy. You know. You know.

[9:18] What did you say? By the way, the first kind of reception was before senses. Well, material reception. Oh, yeah, like imprint. on the senses. Yeah, and we kind of understand better material receptions. Easier for us to understand. I'm just saying it's more difficult to understand the sphere, right? Yeah. And but then you go and talk about you know reception there. In the Trinity, this is very understandable, but not to us, right?

[9:48] Yeah. So we have an object that is very understandable, but thinking about those things, we don't find it coming back to these lesser things. They're impeded from understanding them, but they seem now kind of easy and relatively easy, right? But that's not true about the senses. See, you taste something very strong, or you hear something very loud, and you're kind of what? Impeded from hearing other things.

[10:16] That's because of the material. face of the senses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that that's a sign that the the senses are material, but that the reason is altogether immaterial. Yeah. You know, we've warned a lot of times, like Reverend Father, you mentioned, that people are real hot not to go into the cold shower, because you know people have died from the shock to the system. Yeah. Now, is this damage done?

[10:44] For instance, like could we listen to louder rock music if we proportion our ears to it? Is that causing the damage? Did the shock, or is it the just this level capacity we can't handle? Do you understand? Well, I mean, the problem with the kids there is that is the music they're hearing is too loud, right? They play the thing too loud, right? Mm-hmm. This guy's driving down the street.

[11:07] Sometimes you know, and and it's annoying everybody because you know it's just blaring. You know, but the guys inside the car there, he's about what he's doing to his ear, right? I mean, you know, the doctors have been saying this about you know the kids go to these rock concerts, you know, and. I can even tell that the side of the ear has been turned to the the band because that's the ear that's been what affected, right?

[11:32] So that works differently than your body, like the shock with the cold water to a hot body. Well, the thing I was pointing out there was the fact that that

[11:43] this difference between these two kinds of reception, right? That I feel the warmth of the water in the shower, or I feel the cold of the water in the in the ocean more when I first go in there. Yeah. And then

[11:59] because my body is receiving the warmth of the water or the cold of the water as its own temperature, right? Because it's a material organ, then it doesn't feel so cold anymore or feel so warm, right? Ah. See, and what I'm saying by that is that your sense organ receiving in this way, right, gets in the way of it receiving in this way, which shows that these are two different kinds of reception.

[12:31] But in a way, both are going on in the sense organs because they aren't material organs. Okay. And because they receive in this way, it can also what be badly affected by this, and be harmed or even like the Spanish war there, you know, they torture guy, you know, they prop up in the eye eyelids with a toothpick, you know, and shine a light into the man's face, and they went blind, right?

[12:59] You know, Spanish torture. So it could destroy you, right? And you know, if you had the sound loud enough, you you could you know make a man go deaf, right? Maybe some things you can maybe destroy the sense. Taste acclimated burn out. of taste after a while.

[13:21] So you're receiving in this way here, and if it's excessive, then you can destroy your right. So there's a couple points you're making there, right? One is the fact that the excess of these objects will destroy the sense because the sense is a kind of harmony or ratio proportion, but also it can get in the way, right, of your sensing. Yeah. So

[13:51] my mother used to say, you know, eat your orange first and then eat your candy, right? And because if you eat your candy first, then the orange tastes bitter, right? So you're kind of getting in the way of tasting the orange as an orange should taste.

[14:07] Okay. Eating that hot pastrami or pepperoni or something, you know, prevents my me from tasting really the the wine, you know, good dry red wine, huh? Um.

[14:26] In some sense, you know, if you want to taste wine, maybe the best way just just with bread or something, right? You know, something that's very mild, right? You see, something that's

[14:39] too strong. There, you know, all these jelly beans there. All these sour, sour. You call these things sour this, sour that. You know, yeah, we get a sensation when you eat these sour things, but it's destroying your sense sense of taste, the subtlety of it, huh?

[15:05] Doctor, Wallette who teaches wine sometimes teaches wine sometimes. But talking about he paid some money for some very fancy tasting, you know. Of course, he's down the hospital during the day, and of course he's drinking coffee, and like you do, a doctor drinks coffee, you know. And drink too fast and got to burn his tongue, you know. Oh my gosh! I just couldn't spend all this money.

[15:25] I at least missed the wine. At least his his nose is still good, but his tongue, you know, isn't affected. But the hot coffee, you know, too quickly, huh? So

[15:43] next time we'll start with book three, huh? And in book three, our style is starting to go to what we call the inward senses, but he's primarily interested not in distinguishing all the inward senses, but in seeing the difference between reason and inward senses and preparing the way for reason. So he's going to be talking about, you know, we'll get probably too far here, this chapter or two at most, right?

[16:11] Okay. Eventually, going to get to reason, huh? So, I was thinking about one of his examples there, maybe three arguments. But one of the arguments gives the hypothetical case now where something from another planet, I guess, comes down and obliterates that say, the human race or some part of creation, right? Wouldn't this be bad, right? Okay, but since those people no longer exist, there is no privation of lack, right?

[16:52] So, and he's kind of denying that the universe can be lacking in something, right? Just not the subject, you know. Well, I think that you know the defect in the argument is is that he's kind of got too narrow a meaning of lack, right? He's thinking of a of lack as being in a substance, right, individual substance, like a blind man, right, or a man lacking an arm or a leg, right.

[17:26] So if the human race got destroyed by this meteor or whatever it is, right? There wouldn't be any subject there to be lacking something, right? Okay.

[17:38] And the universe can't be said to be lacking something because it's not a substance, you know, a conglomeration of things or something like that, right? Well, it seems to me that the defect in an argument is that he's he's got too limited understanding of what you know lack is. But it seems to me, you know, if you have like say a family, right? A family, you have a mother and a father and then the children, right?

[18:07] Well, if the father dies or abandons the family or the mother dies or something, that's all right. Then this is bad, we could say, right? And we could say that. A family that lacks a father or a mother—that's bad, and there's a lack there, right? I see. So you know, he's thinking it seems to me of lack in the sense of blindness or something of that sort, or ignorance, right?

[18:43] Where you have an individual substance that doesn't have, right, something it's able to have and should have, right? That's obviously bad, right? But how can you speak of someone who doesn't exist, right? Like an example, right? As lacking something that they should have but don't have, right? They don't exist. You can't speak of that, right? But it seems to me you can speak even in something like like a family, right?

[19:13] That's you know, even though it's not an individual substance, it's a certain what society, right? Should have a father and a mother and the children, right? And so if the father or mother through disease or whatever are eliminated, right, then the family is lacking something that it

[19:34] should have. That's bad. That's the way you can see the lack there. I see. That makes sense. Just like when somebody you know is, you know, they're having a salad dressing, you know, and they taste it. They say it's a homemade, one. it lacks something, you know. People say that, you know, It needs something, right? You know, it's just you know, sometimes a mixture of things, right?

[20:05] You can say it's lacking, right? Doesn't have something it should have. That's the way you can't speak of a lack in that case. So you have some unity, kind of

[20:24] substance, but. Well, you don't have an individual. The family is not individual substance. See, you couldn't put the family into the genus of substance as a what species, huh? See, it's a it has an order, you know, unity. It's an order, you know, unity of order, but it doesn't have a it's not one substance, right? But it seems to me you could still speak of something like that as what

[20:54] bad. Yeah, but but but the badness there is a lack. It's based on lack, yeah. See. Okay. But anyway, I I'm thinking about that now. I've been thinking about this hypothetical thing, right? Okay. As you know, God

[21:14] created the world, right? Freely, right? Okay. And he was under no obligation, right? Under no necessity of creating the world. In fact, he's under no moral obligation, right, to do so, right? Okay. Now, suppose God had not created anything.

[21:38] Would that have been bad? I would say no. No, but I suspect this guy would say it's bad. It'd be bad for us if we're not created, right? Or it'd be bad for creatures, right? See. Now,

[22:02] I think that Thomas or Augustine, you know, would say that it's not bad Because where'd that badness be? Okay? You can't have badness is not having a lack, and you can't have a lack without a subject. Right? Able to have it, so the subject of so then not being any creatures, there couldn't be any badness, right? But I assume that in his thinking, there, see, he wants to say that there's no subject.

[22:45] You know, you know, if this thing on another planet has destroyed man or destroyed some some part of the, you know, the spectrum. You know, this is bad, right? But since those things have been eliminated, there's nothing there in which could be the subject of that what lack, right? Okay. Now I say I argue against that, right, in the sense that I think you can speak of a unity of order in the universe, right, and a unity of and then we say you and I are supposed to, if we get there, to fill up the ranks of the fallen angels, right, and so on.

[23:29] You know, so there's there's a a lack there, right, that we're in a supply, right. So that's why we can't, you know, speak of that as being a lack in some sense, and therefore, you know, definitively badness, right? Okay.

[23:52] But he seems to be saying that because there's no subject there left, apparently, therefore there can't be any lack, right? And yet it's still bad,

[24:07] and therefore he's saying that that for them not to be is bad, right? Well, then it seems to me he'd probably say the same thing when talking about creation, right? For for no creatures to be would be bad, and of course no creatures were. It wouldn't be any privation or lack,

[24:31] so Aristotle Thomas would have to reply, "Well, then it's not bad." And he probably became, "Well, yeah, obviously you think you're denying the the truth, right? It wouldn't be bad for us not to be, right? " See, and I can see how some might think that, right?

[24:59] But I wonder if that isn't, you know, false. The imagining, right? You know, sometimes Thomas says that the you know creation is not really a change, right? But sometimes you imagine, you know, the creature as not having existence and having existence as if the creature is somehow the subject of this change of non-being to being, right? That's not really that, because there's really no creature there to underlie this so-called change of non-being to being, right?

[25:29] You kind of you kind of imagine creation to be a change, and you know, and that's a false imagination, really. And so, when you think of creatures not being at all, you you see them as being deprived of something they could have and should have. That isn't true. Nothing. They're not there to be deprived of anything, and and and that existence is not owed to them anyway, right?

[26:10] You know, because there's really nothing bad about that. See, but seems to me that that's in a way what what he'd have to say, though. You'd have to, you know, be consistent with his thinking, right?

[26:31] If the non-existence of part of the material world, right, whether it be man or whatever it might be, is bad, even though there's no privation or lack there, quite interesting, right? The need for it to existence of the whole of creation would be bad, right? What would it be?

[26:58] Say something is destroyed. It's not immortal like a tree, just blown up or something. Yeah. We might say that that's you know something bad happened to the tree.

[27:22] They're looking back to the tree, you know. It's already existing, you know. All these forest fires they have down in Colorado and so on. This summer they have a burning forest and so on, you know. That's bad, you know. All these trees being destroyed.

[27:40] Yeah. After the bombing here, Shima, you know, destroying people, right? Hmm. And so, what is the? But I think you can, you can, you can say something nevertheless about that, right? Huh? That that

[27:58] you are being corrupted, right? Huh? Some sense of privation there. Of course, that's a matter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but it's not the evil of matter, but of the one who had the form, right?

[28:17] That's a little problem there, you know. Yeah. But still, you still have a subject of privation, right? Right, but it's evil not of the matter, but of the one that had the form, right? Yeah. There's still a subject for the privation there, matter. You have to see that as the end of the corruption, right? And not simply by itself. For matter not to have this form is not bad.

[28:44] No. But you know this, the lack of this form is the end of the corruption of this other thing. Can be said in some way to be the privation of the other thing. Mm-hmm. Even though it's not the subject of it.

[29:00] But it's a hard thing to understand too. You know, I mean, I should speak of that? But it seems to me that it does not as much as his argument there, right? As the fact that

[29:15] the non-existence of these things was bad, right? Period. Yeah. And if that's so, it seems to me that you would probably think that the non-existence of creatures would be something bad. Mm-hmm. But if God did not create it, would be nothing bad, really. That kind of states to think of that, right? You know, That's a reason not to create. A more reason not to create than to create, right?

[29:52] Because creation is going to involve something bad. So what does he say is bad? Well, I mean, he gets the proposition, you know, that the root of things is lack, right? Mm-hmm. I'm not the, I haven't read this article seriously, but the whole thing, but it's kind of again a little bit you know, in the journal. Uh, might be occasion to think more deeply about this, you know.

[30:26] Mm-hmm. I mean, there is a text of Thomas, you know, where he distinguishes, you know, three meanings of the word bad. That'd be part of the case problem, because the first meaning is lack, the second is what has the lack, the third what is causes the lack, right? Mm-hmm. So what has the lack is not just a lack, and it's said to be bad in some way, right?

[30:46] But in reference to the lack, right? And what causes the lack is not is not simply a lack, right? Um. So Thomas is not saying everything that is bad is a lack. He's not saying that. So you may not understand that, you know. But

[31:08] see, one of his other arguments is is from pain, right? Huh? See, and he says even Avicenna said pain is not just a lack, right? See. Well, maybe there is another way of dividing the bad, just like you divide the good into the, you know, the honest and the pleasant and the useful and so on, right? But I think pain is something. Pain is such as something bad.

[31:33] But and pain is not, I don't think, just a lack, right? See. But the cause of pain is something that is lacking in something.

[31:45] So if the cause of pain is is something that is lacking, you expect pain itself to be lacking in something, right? Okay. And likewise, if pleasure and pain are contraries, and like we learned in the first book of natural hearing, one contrary is always privative with respect to the other, right? Pain is lacking something. in. Comparison to pleasure, huh? Of course, you see that pleasure is a perfection of the work or operation itself, right?

[32:17] Pain is not perfection of the work, is it? So. So it's lacking the health of the body. So it's lacking something, yeah. But its cause also is, you know, something is a lack, right? Um. But I don't think pain is is to be understood as just a lack. I don't think you know Thomas or Aristotle would understand as just a lack either, you know.

[32:48] Therefore, it's not just bad. Well, I I think pain as such is bad, right? You know, per accidens it can be good, right? But pain as such is bad, right? Could you say if it's not just a lack? Then

[33:25] the part of it that's not a lack would be good. Well, it's a little bit like when you talk about vice. You know, is vice part of vice good? Well, maybe so, but still, vice as such is bad, right?

[33:49] You know. Now, pain as such is bad, maybe not just in a moral sense necessarily, right? But pain is such as something bad, huh? Mm.

[34:03] It's difficult to get into when you deny the, that there's a lack at the basis of all everything bad, right? Um. Then you're saying that there's a being which is lacking in nothing but is bad.

[34:26] Well. But every being, as such, is like God, who is I am, who am, right? So then, then, then you have what? The bad is some bad is what? Godlike, right? See. Again, how difficult is that position? huh At TAC. I think I think he has some some student some girl student who went on to study in Europe and wrote some doctoral thesis on the subject too.

[35:19] You know, so I think you picked up the ideas. That's Steubenville, right? You know, But um... Mhm. I mean, it's easy to aware too the fact that this is contrary to what Augustine seems to be saying and Thomas is saying, you know, but you know. Mm.

[35:46] Yeah, I don't know. We got from Scotus. Something. I don't know. Did they say something like that? Scotus or not? I don't know. I was wondering. Yeah, Because the background had it. I mean, I've been kind of thinking about pain, you know. But since pain involves a lack, or you know, to have a lack, you know,

[36:27] we speak of sadness as dark, You know, darkness is a very common example of a lack, right? This man came and he was been having a lot of suffering. He says, "I've been in a cave for so long. "

[37:15] That's kind of a common thing that Aristotle develops in book 10, that two contraries, one is always lacking something, right? in comparison to the other, we saw that in the first book, they were. Mm-hmm. Uh, actually.