De Anima (On the Soul)
81. The One Substantial Form: Being Simply vs. Being in Some Way, and How Higher Forms Contain the Lower
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/081-the-one-substantial-form-being-simply-vs-being-in-some-way/

[0:00] Okay. Let's look at this. said. contra, here but against this, huh of one thing there is one substantial what being, huh? Now, would you try to prove that first sentence, or would you say that's known to itself?

[0:30] It's known to itself. Yeah. See now, my accidental being can be many, right? Right. I can be healthy. I can be five foot ten. I can be a geometer. I can be many things, right? Mm-hmm. But can my substantial being be many?

[0:53] Can, I be a man and be a dog and be a cat and so on. But the substantial form gives the substantial what being, right? Mm-hmm. Therefore, a one thing there is only one substantial form. Mm-hmm. But the soul is a substantial form of the man. Mm-hmm. Therefore, it is impossible that in a man there be some other substantial form than the understanding soul, right? Mm-hmm. It's a very good objection, huh?

[1:26] Very good reply. Okay. Now we come to the respondeo here, huh? I answer that it should be said, huh, that if one lays down that the human, that the understanding soul is not united to the body as a form, right? But only as a mover, as some of the Platonists laid down, huh?

[1:59] It would be necessary to say that in man there is there would be another substantial form through which the body, right, that is movable by the soul, would be constituted in its what being or existence, huh? Notice that the soul only was the mover of the body, right? Okay. Um, the way I'm the mover of this what glass, right? The way I move the the cat around or something like that.

[2:34] Um, then there would have to be what in the body a substantial form other than the soul, right? Right. Just that to be a substantial form in the cat, whereby it's a cat, right? But if the understanding soul is united to the body as a substantial form, as we have said or shown above, it is impossible, right, that there be another substantial form. Besides the one found in what?

[3:09] In man. Now, for the evidence of this statement, huh? It should be considered, right, that the substantial form differs in this way from the accidental form,

[3:33] because the accidental form does not give being simply, right? But being in some way, such, just as heat does not make its subject to be simply, but to be what? Yeah. I know. So you say simpliciter, right? Huh? We sometimes, you know, use the word simpliciter to to bring out the way we're speaking there, right? The way we're understanding that. But in in language, you wouldn't use any word at all, huh?

[4:10] So, before I went out to Omaha here, I was kind of sick. I got very stuffy. I couldn't even breathe through my nose. And so, you know, I wake up in the night and I got to breathe through the mouth, you know. And almost your tongue is always sticking to your thing. Oh yeah. You get little fevers and so on. So I said I don't go out.

[4:35] to, you know, see the grandchildren in this condition. So I called the doctor, you know, to give me some medication, right? Now, after taking medication for a number of days, I became what? Healthy, right? I was breathing through my my nose and so on. Okay. But no, so I would say I came to be healthy, right? I wouldn't say I came to be after taking medicine for a number of days, right?

[5:00] Okay. So I came to be in some way. I came to be. I have to qualify it though. I came to be healthy, right? Okay. Now, when I graduated from college, one day my old professor, Monsignor Dionne says Duane you should get a copy of Euclid's Elements and read it. I said, "Why?" He said, "Go get a copy and read it." He said. So I got a copy, and I started reading, and this is kind of interesting, right?

[5:36] Okay. Now, through studying Euclid, did I come to be? No, but I came to be a geometer, right? See. But when my parents generated me, right? Then what? I came to be, right? Okay. Now the other side of the coin, huh? If I leave this room, will I cease to be?

[6:10] Cease to be here. Yeah, I'll cease to be in this room, right? Okay. If I should forget my geometry, they used to always emphasize, you know, people go over these things they get away from you, right? "

[6:31] So if I forget my geometry, I can no longer prove anything, right? Would I cease to be? No, I would cease to be a geometer, right? But what I wouldn't cease to be, right? No. But if I died, right, then I would what? Cease to be, right? Here. Well, I would cease to be. My soul would go. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. If I'm not just a soul, say, okay.

[7:03] Okay. So you know, Thomas says sometimes he's speaking. Says Saint Peter is not in heaven. The soul of Saint Peter is in heaven, right? Right. Okay. But Mary and Christ are in heaven. Right. And not just the soul, right? Mary's there. Yeah. And this is part of the the reason, you know, for the the Assumption, right? Sure. See that if there was not the Assumption, Mary would not be in heaven.

[7:36] This is part of the reason that they can't agree, huh? Okay. For the Assumption. So, um, I notice in in daily life we would recognize this. You see, and sometimes I use this example with the students. I say, suppose I say to the students, "If you leave this room, you will cease to be." And you charge me with threatening the students, right? Okay. And so it comes up, it comes up trial, right, for threatening the students.

[8:13] And I say to the to the to the judge, "Well, all I meant your meant, Your Honor, when I said that Joe or whoever it is would cease to be if he left this room, all I meant was that he would cease to be in this room." Mister Burley, he says, nobody would understand what you said in that way, right? Mm-hmm. See. Um, they would understand it to mean that you would what?

[8:42] Die, right? Huh? To be killed, huh? Hmm. You know. So when Stalin said to his chief investigator, "You know, you get a get a a conviction, or we'll shorten you by a head," right?

[9:02] Terrible guy, that's. Stalin, right? But you will cease to be, right? Okay. So this is the difference between a substantial form and a what accidental form. That a substantial form, you're said to be simply without qualification, right? By an accidental form, you're only said to be in some qualified way, right? So you have to add that, right?

[9:36] That's kind of interesting, too, how in in speech, you know, adding something tends to diminish something. You know, if you say, for example, Annette or Juliet, what does that E T T added on mean?

[9:58] Yeah, Annette means literally little Anne. See Juliet, little Julie or Juliet, see, I know a woman named Annette, right? Huh. And as she got older and more mature, she she she was sensitive to this diminution force, and and and she announced she didn't want to be called Annette anymore. Just to be called Anne, so we all called her Anne from then on, right? We just call it Anne today, huh?

[10:36] You know. One of my one of my wife's cousins, right? He's named Charlie, sir Charles, and his father is named Charles, right? So, of course, when he was young, they called him Charlie Boy, huh? So to distinguish him from his father. But even to this day, he's married and has children. He's known as Charlie Boy. It's stuck, you know. Maybe it's going to be something instead. I don't know.

[11:06] So you know, to say that you um you've come to be, and you have to add something, right? See, it's a diminished sense of coming to be, right? Huh. I've come to be a geometer, right? I've come to be healthy. I've come to be in this room, right? I've come to be clothed, right? Huh. I've come to be, you know, hot or something, right? Huh. Okay. And likewise, to cease to be in one of these ways, I have to add something.

[11:42] Now, I might just as as a footnote there remarked that when you study being in the in wisdom, and there's a number of meanings of the word being, but and actually groups of meanings, and one, of course, group that's very important is substance and accident, right? Substance, quantity, quality, being according to figures of predication. But only substantial being is being simpliciter, being simply speaking, and all these kinds of being, quantity, quality, and so on, they are being in some what way, right?

[12:25] Huh. In some qualified way. To be five foot ten, right? When I came to be five foot ten, I didn't come to be. See, I came to be five foot ten, right? And when I ceased to be five foot tall, I didn't cease to be. I ceased to be five foot tall, right? Do you see that? Now, the other main division of being is into act and ability, right?

[12:54] And which is being simply. Yeah, yeah. Again, you can see in the very way we speak, huh? If I was to say now, are there chairs in this room? What would you say? Yeah, there are chairs in this room. Now, are there chairs in the trees out there? What would you say? No potential. No. Now, if you want to say there are chairs in the trees out there in some way, right?

[13:27] That there are chairs in the trees in ability, there's something in the tree, namely wood, that is able to be a chair, right? So there's a chair in ability out there. But you'd have to add that qualification, wouldn't you? There's a chair in ability, right? Okay. And again, you know, if I say about something you haven't studied, huh? Do you know this? You'd say what? Ability. Yeah, but then you'd be angry, right?

[14:00] But to say I know it, period, would mean to say you actually know it, right? Right. Said. Okay. Sometimes people don't make that distinction, huh? And and sometimes when when the ability is close to the act, they don't see the difference, huh? So if you say to the practical man, right, the man doesn't bother with these distinctions too much. You know, if you know the length and the width of a rectangle, you know the area of it.

[14:34] He'd probably say what? Yeah. Yeah. Because you're very close to actually knowing it, huh? But strictly speaking, to know the length and width of a rectangle is not to actually know the area. True. It's to be able to know it, right, huh? Yeah, yeah. But because the ability in this case is so close, right? It seems like like like actually knowing, but strictly speaking, it isn't, huh?

[15:02] And this is the problem in in in the similar problem in the Meno right? Because the slave boy comes to see how to double a square out of his own answers. And Socrates says, "Well, he's just recalling them something you already knew. " Well, that isn't true. He's recalling things through which he is able to know how to double a square, right? But he's recalling them and putting them together for the first time.

[15:35] And so he's actually in the conversation with Socrates, coming to know for the first time how to double a square, huh? And when Socrates first asked him, you know, he gave a wrong answer. He said you double the side, right?

[15:52] Okay. So I just mentioned that because this distinction between simply in some way. Is found in both of the major divisions of being, right? Being an act is being simpliciter, Thomas would say, right? Being an ability is being secundum quid in some limited, qualified way, right? Substantial being is being simply, right? Accidental being is being in somewhat

[16:25] being secundum quid in some way, some limited way, right? Diminished way, okay? Those are the two main ways of dividing out being. Yeah, being being according to figure predication, substance, quantity, quality, you know, in the categories, and then being into act and ability, right? But in both of them, you can you know see a distinction between being simply and being in some way, some limited, qualified, diminished way.

[17:00] You see, as we mentioned before, that also is involved in the second kind of mistake outside of speech. It's called the fallacy of simpliciter and secundum quid. We mix up these two, huh? Yeah. And

[17:29] you know how Meno is arguing that you can't what investigate what you don't know. You can't direct your thinking to what you don't know. How can you aim something you don't know, right? But you know the solution to that is that what you don't know you can know in some way,

[17:51] and therefore it's not a contradiction to say the unknown haplos in Greek simpliciter is known in some way. Okay. A lot of times when I you know illustrate this fallacy in a beginning way, you know I'll always pick on a girl in the class, and I'll say to her, I say, "Do you know my brother Mark? " And she'll always answer, "What? No. " I said, "No.

[18:23] Do you know what a man is? " And she'll say, "Yeah. " I said, "That's who my brother Mark is. " See, so in some way, in some qualified way, she does know my brother Mark and every man in the world, right? Because she knows what a man is, she knows what a brother is, right? And my brother Mark is a man and he's a brother. You see?

[18:47] See me? But she hasn't really contradicted herself, has she? Because when she said she doesn't know my brother Mark, she meant simply, huh? But in some way, in knowing what a man is, you know every man in the world.

[19:06] Now, another one that's very simple but helps you to understand this. You know, take the door over there, right? You can't see through the door, okay?

[19:21] You know who's knocking at the door? It's Rosie. Yeah. And you say, I don't know who's knocking at the door, right? Huh? Okay. You open the door, and it's your mother or somebody, right? You don't even know your own mother, huh? What's wrong with you, right? See? Um.

[19:41] So, in some way, you don't know your mother, right? You don't know your mother as the person knocking at the door, right? So, in some way, you don't know your mother, right?

[19:57] Even though haplos simpliciter, you do know your mother, right? I hope you know your mother. Okay, you see. See, even if the You know if the and now when the brothers here are or the abbot or something, right? Knocking the door, right? No one's knocking the door. No, I don't know who it is. But maybe somebody you know, right? So in some way you don't know who you know.

[20:26] See, but the contradiction would come if simply and without qualification you didn't know what you didn't know, simply, or, right? But that you know in one way, right? What you don't know and vice versa, right? That's no contradiction. It's kind of amusing, you know, exchange here between Hegel and and Kant, right? Kant says we can't know the world around us, right? The the world in itself is unknown, right?

[20:54] Right. And Hegel said, "Well, are you talking about then if you don't know?" Yeah, but again, somebody said that's sophistical on Hegel's part, right? I mean, I mean, Kant has his own problems not being able to know the world, right? I mean, as far as you can to some extent know what you don't know, right? See, and yeah, and when you ask a question, right? Do you know what you're asking for?

[21:22] You see. Well, someone said, "Well, if you know what you're asking for, why you bothered asking, right? If you don't know what you're asking for, I can't help you. We can help you. Do you know what you're asking for yourself? So don't bother with your questions.

[21:36] You see, but you know, people do sometimes ask intelligent questions, right? And in some sense, know what they don't know, right? Huh? Right. And that's good that they know what they don't know. And Socrates is famous, right? For knowing what he didn't know. And Einstein said he admired Sir Isaac Newton more for knowing what he didn't know, than what he did know, right? But some might say, Well, how can you know what you don't know?

[22:12] " Yeah, yeah. In some way, yeah. But you see, you're forced therefore to make a distinction, right? Yeah, yeah. Just like I, in some way, am not. I am not a a sociologist or something, right? I am not a a

[22:33] a Russian, right? Not a you know. So in some way, the one who is is not, right? Well, it's not not really a contradiction, right? Because as Aristotle points out, a real contradiction is to say that something both is and is not at the same time and in the same way, right? But to be simply and not be in some way, right? That's not a contradiction.

[23:03] That's a very common mistake in what thinking, huh? Yeah. And it lies, as I mentioned, you know, when Aristotle. We look sometime at the ninth book of wisdom. There, Aristotle shows that, in some way, ability is before act, because the thing that goes from ability to act, is an ability before it's an act. But then he points out that it goes from ability to act because of something already in act.

[23:35] So simpliciter, simply, act is before ability, and therefore he's going to conclude in the twelfth book that the first cause is pure act, right? But those who say that matter or something that is an ability comes first, they're saying that what is before, in some way, is before. Period. Simply, they're making the mistake, of simply in some way, simply and not simply. About the ultimate question, what is the first cause?

[24:12] And they're thinking the first cause is matter or something like that rather than God, right? Because they're saying they're confusing what is before in some way with what is before simply. Dr Secundum Quid? How does that translate, Well, you can translate it in some way. We usually translate it, right? Right. In some respect, huh? Okay, but it's in a qualified and diminished sense, huh? Okay. Some people, there's a.

[24:48] A work that they're not sure whether it's by Thomas or not. It might be his very first work, huh? Oh. And it's the work on the fallacies, huh? And some people thought he wrote it when he, you know, was interrupted from his Dominican ways, right? You know, by his family, you know. Hmm. But it's De Fallaciis, it's called, right? Hmm. Ad Ad cuiusdam nobiles artistas, huh? Which means to some noble young men, right?

[25:15] About the fallacy, but anyway, it's very interesting work. But when it talks about this particular mistake, right? Yeah. Um, and how it's so common, right? What's tied up with something very common, in the fifth book of the metaphysics, namely perfect and imperfect, complete and incomplete, huh? Oh. And in a way, you're confusing the two, right? Huh. Right. What's you get the idea then that the secundum quid, is in some imperfect way, huh?

[25:47] Do you think? Yeah. This comes up when you talk about infinity, right? You know, is to be infinite a a unique to God? Is God alone infinite? Say. Well, God is infinite. We'd say simpliciter See, but man his intellect is infinite secundum quid. Now, if you look at that perverse little work by um, Feuerbach, huh, called "The Essence of Christianity," huh? I think I told you about that book before, right?

[26:26] But you know, Karl Marx and Engels—you know—was young man who read this, you know, and very impressed with it, right? And for Feuerbach, the essence of Christianity is a perversion of Christianity, really. Instead of man, I mean, God becoming man, right? He says the real meaning is that man himself is God, right? That's just a way of poetically saying that man is God. Wow. But when he tries to syllogize that man is God, he does through through the infinite, right?

[26:57] Man's mind is infinite, right? Therefore, and then he quotes the theologian. The theologians say the infinite is God, therefore man's mind is God, right? Yeah. Well, in some way, man's mind is what? Godlike. Yeah, in some way it's infinite, right? But not simply, right? Right. And it's like when Aristotle talks about wisdom, right? And you might recall we did the proemium or some of you anyway. And the first attribute he gives of of the wise man is that he knows all things.

[27:26] Right. And but he says in some way, see, because in knowing the most universal, what is said of all, you in some way know all things, right? Yeah. Just like in knowing what a man is, in some way you know, my brother Mark and all men, right? But simply speaking, you don't know everything yet. You know, and some of the students would be amused, and I'd say, you know, do you know everything?

[27:54] Hmm. Huh? In some way, you know everything. You know what everything means, don't you? Hmm. Yeah. So you do know everything, don't you? Everyone say, I'll go home and tell my dad that I that I know everything. And

[28:13] you know how you know how this gets back to the parents once more. You never know what you say. I'll go back, you know. But you can say man knows everything in some way, right? See, you know, it's a common thought among the Greeks: you can't get something out of nothing, right? And we we kind of understand that something is not nothing, right? But something is so universal that everything is something, right?

[28:43] So in knowing what something is, as opposed to nothing, in some way you know everything, don't you? But that's an extremely imperfect way of knowing everything, isn't it? No. What's this? Oh, it's something. What's that? You know, that's something. You know, what's this? Something. You know, they all something, right? So in sense, I know everything when I know what something is. See. But is that to know everything simply without qualification?

[29:10] Is that to fully know everything? No, it's to know everything in a most imperfect way, huh? Say, so man is wise. What? Secundum quid? Huh? In some way, man is wise, but not simply.

[29:28] It's interesting, huh? When Aristotle distinguishes the meanings of the word "perfect" there in the fifth book of Wisdom, huh? He points out that the way in which creatures can be called perfect, right? And you could call that as being perfect in your kind. To be lacking nothing of your kind, right? Right. So Homer is a perfect poet. He lacks nothing that a poet should have. But then Aristotle says another sense of perfect: something that is lacking in nothing. And Thomas. says, "That's referring to God."

[30:05] Sure sure Okay. So, in one sense, only God is perfect. So, perfectum dicitur, right? And since to be perfect is to be good, then God alone is what good, right? He alone is perfect, huh? Without qualification, he's lacking nothing, huh? Well, that's why our Lord is our Lord. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it's very important to see that distinction, huh? Between because of all the time between simply and in some way, huh?

[30:42] You can't do any part of philosophy without that. Okay. But the reason why it's so universal is that everything is perfect or imperfect, right?

[30:59] And so you got a basis there everywhere for this distinction. Okay. So this is all kind of coming back to this first distinction that he's making here between a substantial form and accidental form, and that the substantial form gives being what simply without qualification, right? An accidental form gives being only what in some way, right? Okay. And he

[31:37] gives an example there that to be that heat doesn't make a body or subject to be, but to be hot. And therefore, when an accidental form comes to something, is not said something is not said to come to be or to be generated simply, right? But to become such, right, or in some way, huh? To have itself, right? And likewise, when the accidental form recedes or disappears, something is not said to be corrupted simply without qualification, but in some way, right?

[32:18] In some limited, qualified way, huh? The substantial form, however, gives being simply, and therefore through its coming, something is said to be generated simply, and through its recess, is said to be simply without qualification corrupted. Now, an account of this, he says, the ancient natural philosophers who laid down that the first matter was some kind of being an act, and they didn't understand that the first matter was being only an ability, huh?

[32:57] Like we learned in the first book of the physics, right? But they laid down that the first matter was some being an act. as example, fire or air or water or all of these, or something of this sort, they said that nothing was generated or corrupted simply, but that every coming to be was only a what alteration, right? As is said in the first book of Natural Hearing, the first book of the Physics.

[33:25] If, therefore, it was that besides the understanding soul, there preexisted some other substantial form in matter, through which the subject of the soul was a being in act, it would follow that the soul did not give being simply, right? Oh yeah. And consequently, that it was not a substantial form, yeah. And that through the coming of the soul, there was not a generation simply, nor through its removal a corruption simply, but only in some respect, huh?

[33:57] Of course, all these things he says are manifestly false, huh? whence it ought to be said that no other substantial form is in man, except the understanding soul, and that the understanding soul in itself contains in its power the sensing soul and the feeding soul, right? Um, that just as it does that, so also in its power it contains all the lower forms, huh? That give the mixed body or the body aspect, and it makes whatever alone.

[34:40] It makes whatever the more imperfect forms make another, and says something like this should also be said about the sensing soul in the brutes, right? That it gives what the feeding soul gives, and what the lower forms give, huh? And the same thing can be said about the feeding soul in the plants, right? And generally speaking, universally speaking, about all more perfect forms with respect to the what imperfect ones, huh?

[35:16] That's why Aristotle makes that comparison, huh? In the eighth book of Wisdom, of forms to what numbers, right, huh? And because in a way three is two plus one, right? It contains what two has plus something more, and four contains what three has but something more, right? And five contains four and three and two and one in some way, right? So the higher form contains and does what the lower form does, but something more, okay?

[35:57] Ah, I give you example something like that in the case of friendship. Right? Okay. But could you have other examples of that? Where a better or more perfect thing can do what a lower one does, and yet what do something more? Right? Huh? Think

[36:36] of some other kind of examples. Numbers, friendship, souls, soldiers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We notice how how with even with our tools, you know, like computers and so on, right? Oh yeah. You know, the the new one comes out and it can do what the other one did, but can do other things that you couldn't do with the other one, huh? Yeah. You see. That's true. So you have something like that, huh?

[37:17] I mean, usually. Yeah, yeah. If you're smart enough, do the old thing on the new one, right? But. Yeah. Yeah. So. Now they say that the water and oxygen is virtually and are the hydrogen and oxygen is virtually in the water, right? But that's maybe it doesn't do everything. Water doesn't. yeah. But something of the power of the elements remains in there, right? Okay. So you want to take a break, or before we do the repaid objections, or?

[38:03] Yeah, that sounds good.