De Anima (On the Soul)
77. Summa I q.76 a.3: One Soul or Three? The Objections, Substantial Form, and the Meaning of Per Se
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/077-summa-i-q-76-a-3-one-soul-or-three-the-objections-substantial/

[0:00] of charity, right? Music should have a place in it, huh? But therefore, he has to connect music and love. So that's my little sermon for today. Yes. That's kind of stuff. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels, come to the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly.

[0:44] Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand what is written. So we get another long article here, huh? Today, question seventy six, article three, huh? You realize it's hard to think about the soul because you can't sense the soul. You can't imagine the soul, right? If you try to imagine it, you imagine it falsely.

[1:20] So let's look at the third article. To the third, he proceeds thus: It seems that besides the understanding soul, there are in man other souls, huh? Differing by their nature, right? Namely, the sensing soul and the feeding soul, huh? Now, I guess four arguments, huh?

[1:47] The first one is the corruptible and incorruptible are not of one substance, not one kind of thing. But the understanding soul is incorruptible, as we saw before. But the other souls, namely the sensing soul and the feeding soul or the reproducing soul, are corruptible, as is clear from what is meant before.

[2:19] Therefore, in man there cannot be one essence or one nature of the understanding soul, and the sensing soul, and the what? Feeding soul, right?

[2:35] So, the objector is saying that the soul by which I nourish my body, right, and the soul by which I sense, and the soul by which I understand, are not the same soul, right? Because one is incorruptible, or two of them are incorruptible, two of them are corruptible rather, and one is incorruptible, right?

[3:01] Now, if it be said in reply to this, huh, the second objection is going to deal with this. If it be said that the sensing soul in man is incorruptible, against this is the famous saying in the tenth book of the metaphysics that the corruptible and incorruptible differ in their what? Genus, right? Different kind of thing altogether.

[3:27] But the sensing soul in the horse and in the lion and the other brute animals is corruptible. If therefore in man it be incorruptible, it will not be of the same genus or kind. The sensing soul in man and the brute

[3:50] animal, therefore, which is named from having a sensing soul, then animal will not be one genus common to man and the other animals, which is a difficulty, right? So when you say animal of man and the dog, animal means the same thing, right?

[4:16] But if the animal is so named for the sensing soul and the sensing soul of man is incorruptible, right? And the sensing soul in the other animals is corruptible, they're not being named for the same sort of thing, are they? Therefore, the name animal is said equivocally of you and the dog, right? Okay. Right, genus, as you know, is said univocally with one meaning of many things.

[4:36] Okay? Moreover, the philosopher says in the book about the generation of animals that the embryo is an animal before it's a man. But this could not be if there was the same essence of the sensing soul and the understanding soul. For it is an animal through a sensing soul and a man through an understanding soul, therefore in man there is not one nature of the sensing soul and the understanding soul.

[5:28] So, Aristotle, right? What you might call the seed or the fertilized egg doesn't have a human soul right away, huh? Okay. But first of all, it has what you might call a plant soul, right? You see cell division, you see what growth and so on, what we have in common with the plants, but you don't see sensation at first, huh? Then later on you have the sensing starting, right, in the embryo.

[6:01] Then finally, has something that's recognizably human, huh? More, the philosopher says in the eighth book of metaphysics. That the genus is taken from matter, and the difference from what form?

[6:32] I just recall that from logic a bit. Why is the genus taken from what is material in a thing, and the difference from form?

[6:48] Why is the more general taken from matter, and the more specific or determinate taken from the form? Let me just take a simple example from artificial things. If you have a wooden chair and a wooden table, and a wooden desk, right?

[7:20] What do these things have in common? The wood. Yeah. And they differ by their what? Shape. Shape by their form, right? So the genus is stating what's common to the different forms of a thing, right? Is going to be taken from what is more like what matter, right? And the difference is going to be taken from what is as form.

[7:50] But rational or reasonable is the difference that is constituting of man, and that's taken from the understanding soul. But animal is said from the fact that he has a body animated by a sensing soul. Therefore, the understanding soul is compared to the body animated by a sensing soul as form as to matter. Therefore, the understanding soul is not the same essentially as the sensing soul in man, but it presupposes it as a material what subject, right?

[8:31] Okay, so you kind of imagine, huh, what takes place in man is what that he has the life of the plant, right, by certain soul, and then on top of that comes what the sensing soul, which is another life, and on top of that the what understanding soul.

[8:54] And one is taken from what is as matter, and the other from what is as form. Okay, but against this is what is said in the book of ecclesiastical dogmas, right? That's kind of like what we have the Enchiridion Symbolorum. You've seen that, huh? Sure Okay, and we have other little. Books like that, so it's a collection of authoritative texts here

[9:26] from the Church's magisterium. Nor do we say that there are two souls in man, in one man rather, as James and the other Syrians right, huh? That's your confrer is there, right?

[9:48] One being animal, huh, which animates the body, and is mixed with blood, and another spiritual, right, which ministers to reason. I notice that contrast with the word there, anima, and the word spirit there a bit. Huh? They'll come out again, huh? And we'll talk about a little bit some scriptural texts if we have some time today when we get through with this article here.

[10:20] But we say that there is one and the same soul in man, which both the body, body. By its society or by its association, vivifies, and itself by its own reason disposes. Just one the same soul, right? Whereby the body is a sensing body, right? And the soul by which you what understand, right? Any chance does your book have a note about identifying this Jacob or James here?

[10:52] It doesn't know. Okay, so now it has a reference down here to the min Latin men. Yeah. But for that work, for that matter, yeah. This one says that. Oh. It's by. It doesn't give anything about the Jacob. Syrians but the collection of these texts was by Gennadius Okay. So Thomas says, "I answered should be said that Plato laid down that there are diverse souls in one body.

[11:46] " Plato, even distinct according to their what organs, right? To which diverse operations of life are attributed, saying that the nourishing power was in the what liver, liver, huh? In Shakespeare's time, the liver is what the seat of love, huh? So it's gotten quite a history, the, liver, right?

[12:15] The Frenchman is always complaining, but his ailment's always a liver ailment, right? Which may be because he thinks too much, but. The sense desire, the cubicle, is in the heart, right? And the knowing is in the what? Brain, right? It's kind of interesting, incidentally, huh? That

[12:40] the Platonists, people like that, they tie up the knowing powers with the brain, right? But a lot of other ancient peoples, a lot of the heart is the center of of thought and so on.

[12:54] I was reading something there. They're talking about the Egyptians there. You know, they used to, you know, mummify a lot of the body, but they just, you know, pull out the brain. because that's not an important part of the body. You mummify it. They didn't think that they thought the thought was what in the heart, right? You see that in Homer and you know the Greek poets sometimes too, huh?

[13:14] So. I wonder, you know, we tend to think people tend to think they're thinking up here, you know, rather than thinking down here. But is that just because they've been told that the brain is up here or something? Huh? They are sort of aware the sense is being concentrated here in the head, right?

[13:41] Which opinion Aristotle disproves in the book about the soul, as regards those parts of the soul which use body organs in their operations, huh?

[13:58] From this fact that in animals, like the worms, right, which live when they are cut, right, it seems that they have what? In each part of them, you find the diverse operations of the soul. You find, let's say, sensation, right? The different parts of the worm both sense, and there is pain, right, when you stick them with a pin or something, right? So you don't have, you know, the sense here and the desiring power here, and another one here, right?

[14:28] They all seem to be what spread somewhat through the body, huh? This soul would not be able to be soul if the diverse principles, and operations of the soul, as it were, diverse in nature, right, were distributed in diverse parts of the body, right. But about the understanding part, Aristotle at that point in the thing seems to leave under doubt, right, whether it be separated from the other parts of the soul only in definition or also in place, huh?

[15:08] Now he says the opinion of Plato could be sustained if it was laid down that the soul was joined to the body not as a form but as a what? Mover, which is what Plato said, right? So Plato imagined the soul to be in the body like a sailor in the boat, right, or a man in his car.

[15:34] Now nothing absurd would follow if the same mobile thing was moved by diverse movers, especially if it was moved in different parts, huh? But if we lay down that the soul is joined to the body as its form, as its substantial form, as we saw in the earlier articles, it is altogether impossible, it seems, for many souls differing in nature to be in one what body, right, huh?

[16:12] Now this is coming to the heart now, the article, the body, the article, right? He's going to give three arguments, right, against there being right

[16:21] two or three souls in man, right? One by which he grows, right, and another by which he senses, another by which he understands, huh? But rather, these are by different powers of one and the same what soul.

[16:42] Now, what's the first argument that he gives here? Let's just review for a second. A little bit of the difference there between a substantial form,

[17:04] which is what the soul is, and an accidental form, huh? Okay. And to come back upon these things again to him, because otherwise your imagination takes over, right? Oh yeah.

[17:23] Now, there's something that these two have in common, and then there are some differences between them. Okay. Now, what do these two have in common? A substantial form like the soul, and accidental form like the science of geometry in me, or my health in me,

[17:52] or the shape that's in the table or something. What do those two have in common? In some way, they distinguish. Okay. They're both animals. Well, no, I'm not taking the table is not an animal, right? Okay. What does health or my knowledge or the shape of the table or my shape for that matter, right? In a substantial form, have in common why they both call a form rather than matter.

[18:26] Put it differently from what I said in the sense of sort of like defining. Well, let me give you a hint here. Remember how Aristotle calls the soul not just a substantial form of a natural body, right? Composing tools because of the first act. Yeah. Well, both of these are an act. Okay. Okay. Both are an act. Okay. Rather than a potency, right?

[19:12] And secondly, by both something is an act, huh? So by my health, I'm actually healthy, right? By my knowledge of geometry. I'm actually a geometer.

[19:39] By its shape, the rubber is a what? Ball, I'd say, right? By the spherical shape, huh? Okay. So my body is able to be healthy, but it's not always healthy, right? Wood is able to have the shape it has, but it doesn't always have that shape. So it's as ability, right? So that's as common to the two of them. Both are an act, and by both, something is an act.

[20:10] But now, what's the difference between the two, huh? Okay. Okay. It's a set. So then, with substantial form, substantial form causes the thing to be to be simply as. Yeah. Yeah. So you could say substantial form.

[20:32] create this here. It comes to a subject that is only in ability, a subject, in other words, that doesn't actually exist at all, and will actually exist only through the substantial form.

[21:00] Right, the accidental form, right? Certain way. Yeah, it comes to a actual substance, right? Yeah. To a subject that is already actual. Okay. Sure. It's an actual substance, huh?

[21:27] Now, tied with that is what you were pointing out: that through the substantial form, something exists without qualification. Okay. So you can say it gives existence simply, and the accidental form gives existence

[21:54] in some limited qualified way. Again, the difference here between what they call in philosophy substance and what accident, right? Okay. Um. If I'm sick, right, and I recover my health, right, Did you say I came to be. No. And say I came to be healthy again, right? Right. But you have to qualify, right? I came to be healthy, right? When the wood, huh?

[22:43] Came to be a chair, a table, right, huh? Did the wood come to be? No. No. It already actually existed, right? Okay. So in the case of an accidental form,

[23:03] actuality is already in the subject, in the subject of it before it gets the added actuality from the accidental form. In the case of substantial form, the subject has no actuality until the form comes to it.

[23:29] Another difference that Thomas sometimes talks about is that matter here, the subject of substantial form, matters for the sake of form, but the accidental form is more for the sake of the completion of its what subject, huh? Okay. So geometry there, I am not for the sake of geometry, but geometry is for the sake of the completion of Wayne Berquist and health for the sake of that, right?

[24:01] And my virtues of the heavenly, right? The sake of completing me, right? But matter is to me for the sake of form. Okay. So if there were three souls in me, or even two souls in me, would I be actually one thing? No. No.

[24:33] There'd be a plant there, and an animal, and a man. Yeah. Yeah. Which is absurd, right? Yeah. Okay. Now Thomas goes back to something that we develop at some length in wisdom: that nothing is simply one except through one form, through which a thing has existence, right? And from the same thing, a thing has that it's a being, and that it is what one, huh?

[25:07] A lot of times, you know, when we're explaining that a bit, we point to the fact that a thing tries to preserve its unity in the same way tries to preserve its what existence, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so, if you divide something, it's going to cease to be, right? Yeah. Yeah. So from the same thing, he says, a thing has that it is a being and that is one.

[25:37] And therefore, those things which are denominated from diverse forms are not one simply, right? He gives example there of what the accidental being in metaphysics, homo albus, right? A white man.

[25:55] If therefore a man from another form had that he is alive, namely from the vegetable soul, and from another form that he is an animal, namely from the sensible or sensing soul, and from another the man, namely from the rational soul, it would follow that man is not one thing simply, as Aristotle argues against Plato in the eighth book of the what metaphysics, huh?

[26:34] It goes back to another objection there that, or, pardon, that Aristotle has in the first book on the soul, against those laying down diverse souls in the body. He inquires, what is it that what contains them or holds them together, right? That is, what makes for them something one. And one could not say that they're united through the unity of the body, because it's more the soul which what unifies the body and makes it to be one, than the reverse, huh?

[27:05] And a sign of that is when the body loses its soul, it falls apart, right? It decomposes, huh? So you'd have what? Not one thing there, right? Is that the way you think about yourself? Hmm.

[27:29] Hmm. Cohabiting with a plant and an animal in the same body. No. It's one and the same that is sensing and digesting and thinking. Isn't that your inward experience, huh? Do you see

[28:01] his first argument a little bit anyway? Yeah. Secondly, this appears impossible from the way of predication. He says those things which are taken from diverse forms are said of each other either periphrases if the forms are not ordered to each other, as when we say that the white is what sweet, huh?

[28:47] Or if the forms are ordered to each other, there is a predication per se. In the second way of saying per se, because the subject is placed in the definition of the predicate, huh?

[29:08] Now in the posterior analytics, Aristotle takes up the different senses of the word per se, huh? And he also does in the fifth book of a wisdom, huh? Let's just stop a little bit. of that word because it's a very important word. There we go. Then it slides. Let's take it up again a little bit here.

[29:45] In the posterior analytics do you know, what the posterior analytics is about. Oh I forgot. Yeah. In general, you can say that prior to the posterior analytics are about demonstration. Yeah. And demonstration, to begin with, you can say is an argument, right?

[30:07] Where the conclusion is seen to be necessarily what? True. True. Yeah. Okay. Now, before you can see that a conclusion is necessarily true, what two things must you satisfy? Premise and. the. Following right? Follow. Yeah. In other words, the conclusion has to follow necessarily from the premises, right? Mm-hmm. But the premises themselves have to be what? True. Necessarily true. Okay. Now, the word syllogism comes from the Greek word to calculate, huh?

[30:48] And you can see it more easily there because you learn the art of calculating in grade school, huh? When you add, subtract, multiply, or divide, the number you get is necessarily correct under what two conditions?

[31:16] That the numbers you multiplied were the correct numbers, right? Oh, yeah. Okay. And secondly, that you that you calculated right. Yeah. Okay. Take a simple example here, right? There are six men in this room, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. And each man has two legs, right? Now, six times two means there are what? Twelve legs in this room. Okay. Did you say the equivocation of the word leg for a chair right chair, right?

[31:49] Okay. Am I sure there are twelve legs in this room? Sorry. I have to be sure that there are what? Six men in this room. There are only six men, right? Right. And be sure that each man has two legs, right? Legs. Yeah. Right. And that six times two is in fact what? Twelve, right now? Okay. Now, what's the difference between that and syllogism, huh? Well, the syllogism, from two statements, you're getting another statement.

[32:23] By adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing, from at least two numbers, you're getting a third number. Okay. Now, to be sure of the conclusion of a syllogism, you'd have to be sure that the conclusion follows necessarily, and that the statements themselves are necessarily true. So Aristotle wrote two books, and they're called in English the Prior

[32:56] Analytics and the Posterior Analytics, huh? And they're named from kind of the ultimate thing you learn in these two books, and that is to analyze, meaning to take apart, right, an argument, right? Well, the Prior Analytics you learn how to take apart an argument to see if the conclusion follows the what? Premises, right? Okay. In the Posterior Analytics, you learn how to take apart the premises to see if they are what?

[33:31] Necessarily true or not, right? And you require both of those things in order to be sure of your what conclusion, right? Okay. Remember how we were arguing about whether the brain was the organ of thought. Remember that? And we said we have a couple of arguments, right? We said the brain was the organ of thought, but in one of them, the conclusion didn't follow necessarily. And the other case, the what?

[34:09] One of the premises was not necessarily true, huh? Okay. Now, in the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle sees a connection between necessary and what in Greek is called kath' hauto, right? Which is translated Latin by what? Per se, right? That's translated English either by through itself or by itself, right? Okay.

[34:50] Aristotle is seeing a connection between necessary and through itself, or between necessary and by itself. That's interesting, huh? That at one point in the Posterior Analytics, he reasons from the premises being necessary to their being kath' hauto per se themselves. Another point, he reasons from their being through itself to be necessary. And Thomas says, "Wasn't he reasoning circularly?" But notice how connected the two are, right? But Thomas says the actual

[35:32] demonstration is from necessary to their being through itself, right? But if you take it as being true that the premises in science are through themselves, then you could also reason to their being what necessary. Okay. Now, what does this mean, huh? What does necessary mean? What does per se mean?

[35:59] What does it mean to say something is necessary? Example: Is it necessary that a triangle is green? No. Okay. Is it necessary, though, that two is half of four? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. What does it mean to say it's necessary that two be half of four? But it's not necessary that a triangle be green. Was that me?

[36:33] Well, with without it, it cannot be. Yeah, you're saying that the two is not able to not be half a four, right? But a triangle is able to be what? Not green, right? Okay.

[36:56] So the necessary is what is not able not to be. What must be, therefore, right? Huh? Do you see that? No. What does this phrase "through itself" mean?

[37:25] No, itself. There is a what part of speech? Reflection. Yeah, and and it's a pronoun, right? Huh? Okay. So in order to understand what this means, you need an example, there, right?

[37:45] Could I say that two through itself is let's say a number? Could you say that? Now this phrasor hit you at first, huh? When I say two through itself is a number, I mean two through being two is a number, right? Do you see that?

[38:26] And when I say two through itself is half of four, I'm saying that two through being two, right, is half of four, right? You see that? Okay. Now another phrase we use sometimes in English for a somewhat similar idea is the phrase "as such," right?

[39:04] I'd say two as two is a number, right? Two as two is half of four. Okay. Now take. My example, right? And triangle might be green, right?

[39:38] But even if it is green, right? Would you say that a triangle is green through being a triangle? No, no. A triangle is not green through being. That's what's meant by saying that a triangle is per accidens It's a Latin word right a Latin word, right? It's per accidens. A what? Green. Green, right? It happens to to use English for it, right? Right, it does, huh? Happens. It happens to be green, right, huh?

[40:39] But it's not to be a triangle that is green, but it could happen to be so, right? Yeah. Is this something like a distinction between, say, the green,

[40:55] of the shape of something being a separable accident? Yeah. Whereas, say, something through itself refers merely a property present in all members at all times. But notice the difference here, right? So I took these two examples on purpose here, huh? Half of four is, as you're saying, a property of two, right? It's something that follows upon the nature of two, right? So half of four, a third of six, the fourth of eight, and so on, right?

[41:25] The number is something that would be in the very definition of two. Or, if I say two is is an even number, right? Okay. So these are two different modes of per se, yeah. Okay. And in the first mode of per se here, what is in the definition of the subject, right?

[41:48] Is said of it through itself, for instance. In the second one, the subject is more in the definition of the what? Property, right? Okay. It's a cause of that property. That's incidentally a third word that's tied up with these things, huh? Cause, necessary, per se. Aristotle defines demonstration the first time in the Posterior Analytics. He says it's a syllogism, making us know the cause

[42:28] and that of which it is a cause, and that it cannot be otherwise. See, notice he's tying up the idea of cause with what? Necessary, right, huh? And Plato had already pointed this out in the Meno and in the Phaedo, right? That the best reason you can give for a statement is the reason why it must be so. And the reason why it must be so is a reason giving the cause, right?

[43:00] Cause of its necessary being so. So when you study demonstrations of Posterior Analytics, these different senses of kath' hauto, right, will come up, right? But Thomas is emphasizing these first two senses of it. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Once again, the the two modes of per se. One is Where the predicate is in the definition of the subject, right? Okay.

[43:38] And the second one, where it's more the reverse, that the subject is in the what definition, right? Of the predicate, huh? Would it be a difference then? Can't be a difference because if if the definition is the genius, of the difference the difference would be said of subject, right? The first way, per se, but the property in the what second way, right? Right. Okay.

[44:21] Now you look at Emmanuel Kant, for example, right? And he talks about analytical propositions and so on. He doesn't see that distinction between these two.

[44:32] He just sees distinction between a predicate that would be the definition of the subject, right? And a predicate that's not the definition of the subject. He doesn't see this other sense of kath' hauto or per se.