De Anima (On the Soul)
96. Order Among the Powers of the Soul, Foresight, and Replies to Objections (ST I q.77 a.7, Part 2)
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/096-order-among-the-powers-of-the-soul-foresight-and-replies/

[0:00] Okay. Now let's read what he says here. We'll come back in a moment. Notice, notice the way Thomas has ordered the the before and after here, Article Six and Seven. He had to see Article Six first, how the powers of the soul flow from the what? Soul itself, the essence of the nature of the soul, right? And then among these powers that are flowing from the soul, one flows from the soul before another one, not before known in time, right?

[0:36] But in the way that a cause is before, right? An effect, huh? And so it goes back to the way in which the soul or the nature of the soul, the essence of the soul as he calls in Latin, is a cause of the powers, right? And it's a cause of the powers in more than one way. But he contrasts the way in which it's a cause that's more perfect than them.

[1:02] It's a before, according to a kind of cause that's more perfect than its effect, right? And that's the the mover or maker and the end, and a cause that is not more perfect, namely the matter or the subject, which is going to be perfected by something better, right? But which would be before in the generation when it's coming to be, huh? Okay. So if I talk in man, let's say about the senses and the reason, huh?

[1:34] Well, the reason comes before the senses in terms of perfection of being better, right? And in a way, at the end or purpose, you might say of of sensing, huh?

[1:48] But in the order of what generation, the senses kind of dispose for reason. So he's going to point that out now, huh? And because the essence of the soul is compared to the powers as an active principle, like the mover and an end, and also as a principle that is receptive, huh?

[2:17] Either apart by itself as it's receptive of the ability to understand and the will, or together with the body, receptive of these other powers like powers of sensing and digestion and so on.

[2:34] The agent and the end is more perfect, and the receptive one, the beginning that is like like matter, as such is what less perfect, huh? It follows that the powers of the soul which are before. Now, before, always means some kind of order, right? But by the order, perfection and nature are beginnings of the other ones in the way in which an end or an active principle is a beginning.

[3:14] For we see that the sense is for the sake of the understanding, and not the reverse. For the sense is a certain deficient partaking of the what? What understanding is? And you find sometimes even students will not want to say that seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting is knowing. One reserved the word knowing for what the reason does, right? But in some sense, you have to say that seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching is knowing, right?

[3:47] But sometimes the fact that they hesitate to call it knowing is that they see it as being a kind of imperfect knowing compared to the way the mind knows.

[4:00] Whence? By a natural origin, in some way, it is from the from the understanding, just as the imperfect comes from the what perfect. But according to the road of a receiving principle, it is the reverse. For the more imperfect powers are found to be beginnings with respect to the others. As the soul, according as it has the power of sensing, is considered as a subject and something like matter with respect to the what understanding, huh?

[4:42] An account of this, the more imperfect powers are before in the way of generation. For man is generated before what man, huh? Okay. For an animal is generated before man. Yeah, what I say, yeah, okay. Animal generate before man, huh? That's why when I explain the natural road there, I say well, because man is by nature an animal with reason. An animal by definition has senses. Man has senses and reason.

[5:16] But what is generic? Animal comes before in generation, huh? So the natural road will be from the senses into what reason, huh? But in another way, you could say reason is before the senses. It's the end, huh? Yeah.

[5:39] So he sees two different orders, huh? And in one order, reason is before the senses, for example, and in the other, the senses are before what reason.

[5:55] And that corresponds to the fact that there's more than one meaning of the word cause. And therefore, the order that's based upon the beginning that is a cause will be of more than one meaning. And the fact that this can be before that, and that before the other, is a sign that you have more than one meaning there.

[6:23] It kind of used to say every respectable word in philosophy is a word that's equivocal. But not by chance, equivocal by reason. The the first philosopher that I know of to really recognize that clearly was Aristotle. Although Plato's kind of on the way, you see Plato kind of hinting at this, huh? But Aristotle first went

[6:53] to the words we use everywhere. Like whole and part, before and after, and he found that all these words that were used everywhere, and that we especially used in the axioms, and especially used in wisdom, that these words are all equivocal by reason, and so he would distinguish the central meanings of these words, and show the order among them, and that helped him to be much more clear in what he was saying and thinking, enabled him to avoid the fallacy of what, equivocation, huh?

[7:30] I think I told you the time when I was a young professor there before I had my doctorate at St. Mary's in California, and this was a time when you know the evil empire was quite active, so I was going to teach a course on Marx, huh? Okay, and so in those days, you know, if you are going to use books that were really perverse, you had to get official permission from the diocese, huh?

[7:59] And it was done through the registrar, so I think I told you that story. No, I mentioned I might use a little bit of the Essence of Christianity, which is this perverse little work by Feuerbach huh? And Feuerbach is was read enthusiastically by Karl Marx in English, right? And of course, in this perverse little work called The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach is claiming that Christianity is kind of a symbolic poetic way of saying that man himself is God, so it's taking you know the mystery of the incarnation, which is along with the Trinity the greatest mystery of the faith, the mystery today, right, of the Annunciation, and blasphemously, right, saying that means that not that God became man, but that man himself is God, right?

[8:54] Well, what does he? How does he reason? Try to reason this, huh? Well, one of his syllogisms is that man's mind is infinite, huh? Okay.

[9:15] And there is some way in which man's mind is infinite. We can always learn something more, right? We know the universal. I know what an odd number is, and so I know in some way an infinity of things. Yeah. Because odd number is said of an infinity of things, right? And then he quotes some theologian saying the infinite is God. Isn't it?

[9:48] Well, now this would be laughable to Aristotle and Thomas. Because not only do they know in general that the most common mistake in thinking is due to what mixing up different senses of the same word, right? But if you look at the first book of Natural Hearing in Aristotle,

[10:14] this is one of the words that shows up there as having more than one meaning. So it's a common example of a word, right, that has more than one meaning. Well, without trying to be too profound here, when you say that man's mind is infinite, among other things, you mean is that he can always learn something more, so that his mind is always what, in some sense, Incomplete or imperfect, right?

[10:42] So it's a kind of potential infinity. When you say the infinite is God, you mean that He's not lacking in any perfection; He's universally perfect. So Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and so on they buy that right up, right? And so if you look at Karl Marx's doctoral thesis and the famous preface to it, you know he's saying that we reject human and do not admit the human mind has a highest ability.

[11:18] So in some sense, the Marxists claim we're atheists, right? We claim that man is God, huh? Yes. But I mean, that's kind of gross, but it's a common thing. This kind of mistake, huh?

[11:36] I told you, you know how when I give the final exam in philosophy of nature, and we spend a lot of time at the end of the course showing that nature acts for an end. By end, we mean purpose, not for the sake of which something good. And I told you how students, you know, will say, "Well, nature can't be acting for an end because then all things would come to an end, and all things would not come to an end.

[12:05] " Well, it makes two different senses of end. Aristotle touches upon that in the beginning of Nicomachean Ethics. You know, someone said, "You know, the end of man is the happiness is the end of man, meaning the purpose of man's death is happiness. " But the end of man is death. Now, if happiness is death, right? Aristotle loses the fact that the word "end" has got these two different meanings.

[12:34] And so when I say death is the end of life, I mean it's the purpose of life, like when I say the right end is the end of the ballpoint pen.

[12:47] So people mix up the word "end" and the word "infinite," right? And use it again again. John Locke, in the third book of his *Human Understanding*, he has some awareness of the fact that there's all kinds of confusion and conversation because of words having more than one meaning. But he doesn't really go back then and let's think out the meanings, the basic meanings at least, the central meanings, right, of the words we use all the time.

[13:22] They don't do that, and the only guy that does it, you know, is Aristotle and a few of those who follow him. Maybe the only guys, you know, Thomas.

[13:36] I think I mentioned how in his commentary in the fourth book of the Physics, Aristotle distinguishes the eight central senses of in, but he doesn't bother there to order them, right? Or he had a text where he orders them, like he does in the fifth book of Wisdom. So Thomas says we'll order them the way we learned from the fifth book of the Physics. Thomas orders them perfectly.

[13:59] It's really really marvelous the way he does it huh. I don't think anybody else could do it. You know it's incredible, I think Thomas does it, right? You know, but other people are being deceived all the time, right? Yeah. So it's important here to realize that one power of the soul can be before another power of the soul in one sense of before, right? Corresponding to one kind of cause, the kind of cause is more perfect than its effect, right?

[14:33] And then another kind of power can be before the former, right? The first order, according to another kind of what? Cause, in the sense the matter which is by its very nature imperfect compared to other causes, and it receives its perfection from

[14:56] something else. Yeah. As an example of showing something to be flawed, could you take like the arguments that were leading up to invading Iraq, you know, and so forth, Bush's arguments and saying, okay, here's his arguments. Can you show how his arguments are flawed, or would that be too complicated for philosophy to be able to do? Well, notice, this is a question of not a philosophy directly, but of the virtue of foresight or prudentia, right?

[15:28] Okay. Now, if you go to the secunda secunda, secundae, right, where Thomas takes up the virtue of, of in Latin it's called prudentia right? But prudentia comes from the Latin word for foresight. So the English word to really bring this out is foresight. And you can see very clearly when Thomas distinguishes the the integral or composing parts of foresight. One of the objections is that providentia is not a part of of prudentia because it's the same thing.

[16:01] And Thomas says, well, yeah, it's the main part of prudentia and therefore it gives its name to the whole. And actually, Thomas's etymology here is correct. If you go to Latin dictionaries, prudentia is a contraction of providentia meaning foresight. But you get a man like you know a man of foresight like say Winston Churchill, the Second World War, right? I notice in his book, you know, I sometimes copy out the way he writes.

[16:28] He'll use the word foresight rather than the word prudence, Of course the word prudence has lost you know its full meaning. So this is a matter of foresight, of political but also military foresight, huh? I think what's kind of interesting here is this that

[16:47] one of the the integral parts of foresight is called caution, right? Okay. And sometimes. The intended result, something other than intended result, that is bad, is going to happen, right? Okay. And sometimes even the opposite of what you intend, right? And I was noticing that when I was teaching the apology there, because when Socrates is addressing those who have voted for his condemnation and for his sentence of death, right?

[17:24] Why do they want to silence Socrates? Because he's going around pointing out that their life is unreasonable. Life is based on a mistake, right? They don't want to have their life examined. They want to leave an unexamined life. And Socrates says, "But you know, I'm 70 years old. In the course of nature, I won't be around much more. " But now, by killing me, you'll make an example, of me a martyr of me, right?

[17:51] And now, lots of other people will say, Why did the Athenians kill the wise man Socrates? " Other people will be looking into you. They wouldn't look into you. Otherwise, if you let me die in the course of nature, you could, you know, forget about me and go on your very unexamined life. And I tell the students to say, "This is the year 2003, " and this trial took place in 399 BC.

[18:15] This is 2, 400 years later, and we just got to examining again what was wrong with the way the Athenians were living, right? And I said, "Plato never would have written this thing if, you know, Socrates had not been, you know, sentenced to death, right? " Well, I think the best argument, in a sense, against the war would be to say that you're going to unintendedly, in a sense, produce more terrorists, right, than less, because Al Qaeda and these other groups will be able to use the um uh Hate of America, right, and these because of the war as a way of recruiting more people, right?

[18:59] You see? See? Now, the reply to that, of course, would be to say that, well, okay, maybe you're right. Maybe, maybe this is going to result in more terrorists than less, huh? But maybe there'll be the quality of terrorists. You can speak of the high quality. Their terribleness, right, will be less, right? Because if they got their hands on some of these chemicals and biological things, right, they would make 9/11 look like a minor incident, huh?

[19:35] And you know the the the ricin that they discovered in one of the apartments there in London, right? And then they discovered ricin in in the ricin. It's one of those very, very dangerous, very deadly things, you know, officially off, right? Do you know? No known cure for it, right? And then they found ricin. In in some kind of container inside one of the it was the railroad stations there in France, and undoubtedly been dropped off by somebody to be picked up by somebody else, right?

[20:08] Well, you know they had a terrible you know thing in Japan over there in the subways there back a few years ago, right? See, see, so it might be that if we don't go in and and knock out these rogue governments, right, like that are will be supplying the terrorists, the terrorists won't be as potent as what they can do, right? It's that it's a very hard thing to what to balance, isn't it?

[20:35] Huh? You see. So one's talking about quality and one's talking about quantity. Yeah, yeah, that's I'm saying. You know, I that's my own language. See, I think there's something to be said that this might anger many people in the Middle East, right? Whether right or wrongly, I think you know some people will get angry about this, and that will make it more easier to recruit people to be terrorists.

[20:57] So, so you can give at least a probable case, it seems to me, that this might lead to more people being able to be recruited into terrorists. You see, on the other hand, as they say, right, if there's a affiliation between the terrorists and these rogue nations that have the money to develop, right, everything chemical, biological, into atomic powers, right, and willing to pass these on to the terrorists, the terrorists are much more potent than what they can do, right?

[21:28] You see, so that might be even a greater danger, huh? See, so it's hard to balance these things, huh? You know, when MacArthur, you know, planned the Incheon landing, I always talk about that. You talk about that before, haven't you? During the during the Korean War, right? We're being pushed into the ocean there, right? And MacArthur had a plan to land there at Incheon, which is a very dangerous place to land, and the tides, you know, don't give much window of opportunity there to land there.

[22:08] And MacArthur was convinced that they wouldn't expect him to land there, and therefore not be defended sufficiently, right? And that would be close enough that he could cut off their supplies, huh? And work just the way MacArthur said was going to work, huh? You see, but Washington was extremely nervous about this, and they sent the chief of staff, Lawton Collins, huh? And one of the top admirals to see MacArthur to convince him not to do this.

[22:39] And MacArthur, they spoke first, you know, and everybody. I've read several descriptions of you know everybody there tensing for MacArthur to speak, you know, and people are you know wrapping their pencils like people do, and there is MacArthur's going very very slow. He says, "I want to do what what Wolf did in Quebec." Now, if you know, you know, I studied in Quebec. of course, Wolf came up the Hudson there, and the French defences were very strong.

[23:07] Where you expect the men to try to get up to the heights of Quebec, and Wolf went up further where no one thought he could climb the thing, and found a way up, and surprised the French. And that led to the capture of Quebec and really the British winning the you know the French and Indian War of 1754-1763. And seventeen sixty three yeah And MacArthur said he's going to do the same thing, right?

[23:31] You know. But now was MacArthur sure that the Incheon landing would, you know, he had a contingency plan if, you know, things went wrong, and he says, you know, he's going to get the men out, and nothing terribly bad will happen, except you know, my reputation as a general. And and the guy who was with MacArthur when they went out, you know, in the boat there to to watch the landing, and MacArthur called him up, and he went over the whole plan. again right, and all the steps and MacArthur, you know, using kind of the sounding board, right?

[24:07] You know, this is the right right decision he said, right? And then he went picked up his Bible and read his Bible the rest of the night. You see, okay, but there are men even to this day who maintain that MacArthur took an unnecessary what risk? Risk, yeah, you know. I mean, they can argue it, you know. See, it was a success, a great success, you know.

[24:28] Shortly afterwards, you know, they they saw the weakness in the enemy, right? Also, they started collapsing, you know. And it's not until the you know the Chinese came in from China, you know, but but they really you know finished the North Koreans at that point. So it's difficult to know, right? See, but the man of foresight, right? He can foresee right the consequence of doing this or of not doing that, right?

[24:59] You see, or not doing it. And so, really, you could say that. So, really, it's hard to use a syllogism on that because, because in one sense he's courageous if it works, and in another sense he's a fool if it doesn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and again, again, the more you know the situation, right? You see, MacArthur, you know, as I say, he studied very carefully the tides there, right?

[25:24] He knew exactly how much time he had to get the things in, right? Yeah. And of course, the admiral at first was opposed to it, and MacArthur said, "I have more confidence in the navy than you do." And finally convinced, you know, in fact, the admiral said, "A great plan for a great American," he said. Finally, he became convinced, right? You see, but those things are not altogether certain, obviously, huh?

[25:51] And but I say the more you know the situation, you see, MacArthur studied very intensely what exactly the thing was, and he thought it could be done, right? But precisely because it's kind of interesting, he compares it to Wolf, right? Because nobody thought Wolf could get up where he did get up. Of course, in Machiavelli's History of Florence, he gives the example, you know, nothing being more successful than doing something the enemy would think he can't do, Because they don't expect to do something he can't do.

[26:22] You see, and and so I mean, that's a very important thing. See, so again, you know, all the pieces of information that they might have in the in the federal government as to the connection between the terrorists and in the Baghdad government, right? You got to make an estimate, right, of how much that is, huh? And what that means, and you know, you know, Churchill all along, you know, leading up to the Second World War, he was always trying to get them to intervene before Hitler.

[26:58] went too far, right? You know, the first thing Hitler did was to disobey the, you know, what he agreed to, right? Or Germany had agreed to, and he reoccupied the Rhineland. But we know from Hitler's own words, he said that if they, you know, opposed us, we would have, we would have left the Rhine like a dog with his tail between his legs, right? We would have, you know, and even Munich we could have stopped them, you know.

[27:23] But Germany was coming up so fast, see. I mean, that's an estimate, right? You see, and certainly, what's his name, Chamberlain was looked like a fool in all of these, right? He comes back, and you see these these documentaries where he's up there, you know, peace in our time, and everybody's cheering him, you know. And I was seeing on TV, you know, even London, the you know the the peace demonstrations, right?

[27:50] And somebody had peace in our times. You think they'd avoid that because everybody knows that Chamberlain, you know, was a fool when he held this thing up, you know. And the point is, as Churchill's always putting out, you know, this is not going to be peace in our times. It means you're going to have to fight them later on, and you're going to be in much worse position to do so than you would be if you did it now, right?

[28:17] And so, I mean, you know, that's the way Bush sees it. I think that that if you don't stop him now, we wait, you know, another year toward, you know, he's going to be much worse, you know. And nobody knows how bad it's going to be exactly, right? When he goes into Baghdad, this is going to be terrible. Yeah. But but if you you know wait another year or so, it'd be even worse, right?

[28:39] Yeah. So I say I say foresight is something that you can't you know syllogize about, you know. Right. It's part it's partly an estimate, you know, and some people are better at sizing up a situation, and others aren't. Right. So there is a hard part of, in a sense of, philosophy being like the the the hard sciences, but at the same time, there's a soft part to philosophy as well.

[29:08] Well, no, no philosop philosophy is about the universal, see, And foresight is about the singular here and now, which they do here and now. huh? Yeah.

[29:18] You know, the time when when Nixon was down, and we were back Well he's I vice president at the time, He was down, you know, the state vis visit down in South America. There's a lot of trouble at that time in South America, And and the American car, you know, this is a car and the other American car were coming to you know the Caracas, one of those big cities down there, And and the crowd was looking menacing and so on, right?

[29:41] Menacing, menacing, to say the least. And Nixon said, "I think we should turn off here." And two blocks away was a bomber to go off to blow the smithereens out of Nixon's, you know. See. But he had that sense that this was not the place to be, right? You know, you know, you know, MacArthur, you know, and Patton in the First World War, they were both in the First World War, and they were standing together in a little hill there, you know, watching the battle scene.

[30:11] I think it's time to move on. And as soon as they left, the thing got hit with a enemy shell, and these two great generals that we had in the Second World War, Patton and MacArthur, had both been killed, right? But but they they seem to have a what sixth sense, huh?

[30:30] I heard a different version of that story. Yeah. That Patton said that there was he was like a you know captain, and of course MacArthur was like a colonel or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. All of a sudden, this mortar barrage came. Yeah. Everybody hit the foxholes except for MacArthur and Patton. They both just stood there. Yeah. And after it all cleared up, they both were still standing.

[30:54] And he said, "That's the reason why MacArthur will not call him into to the Pacific because he showed him up by standing up with him."

[31:04] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. See, so later on, when we get into intellect, you'll see this, but but foresight and art are in the practical reason that concern with the singular contingent, while philosophy is dealing with the universal. So in the body of the article, then he's saying that there's an order among the powers, right? An order that goes back to the fact that the beginning of all this, the soul itself, is in a way a cause of the powers.

[31:41] But it's a cause both in the way that an end is a cause and a mover or maker is a cause, where the cause is more perfect, right? And it's also a cause in the sense of what, like matter, the receiver, what is susceptible? He says of something, and so starting from the soul, we can say that those powers that are closer to the soul, insofar as is more perfect, are in one sense before other powers, right?

[32:15] And those powers that are more susceptible, right, and prior in the order of generation, are another way closer to the what soul, right? Because the soul is receptive of these powers. So you have two ways in which one power can what

[32:37] come from the soul through another power or in a certain order. Now the first objection was about the powers being together, right, and therefore one can't be before the other. To the first, therefore, it ought to be said that. That as a power of the soul flows from its essence, not through a what? A changing of the soul, right? Huh? Not through a transmutation of the soul, but as a kind of natural what?

[33:12] Result, right? And notice I was comparing that to the way in which to be half of four flows from being two, right? It's not like you have a two there and then you change the two so it be half of four. No, in producing two, you naturally what? The natural result of two is that you have being half of four, right? The natural result of a triangle is you have angles here, two right angles, huh?

[33:44] The natural result for result intersecting straight lines is the equality of the alternate angles, huh? And therefore, it is what? Simo Together with the soul, right? Okay, not before in time, huh? So also is it the case of one power with respect to the other?

[34:13] So when you say that a power flows from the soul, we don't mean that it results from that the soul is there first and then you change it to get this power, right? But that naturally follows at the same time, right? Okay.

[34:32] Now, the second objection was saying, well, one power is not the subject of another power, huh? And Thomas agrees that one accident as such is not the subject of another accident, but one accident is received in substance before another, and he gives the famous example from the categories as quantity before what quality, huh? And that's part of the reason why we can consider quantity without quality because it's before it.

[35:06] And in this way, one accident is said to be the subject of another, as surface is said to be the subject of what color, at least as we sense it, huh? Color seems to be spread over a surface, right? Okay. In so far as substance receives

[35:27] that substance by one accident, right, as a kind of middle, receives a what another, right? Okay. So in so far as what I have a surface, right, I'm able to receive what a color, right? Okay. Or in so far as I have you know quantity, I can receive what shape. Okay, shape presupposes quantity, right?

[35:58] Okay. And the same thing can be said about the powers of the soul. So the soul is receiving one power in a way through another one, right? In the one or the other, of those two orders shown in the body of the article.

[36:21] You said? Did you say shape is quantity, or you said that? It presupposes quantity. Okay. See, so you might say that the a man or a dog or a tree is receptive of shape through being receptive of quantity. So my guardian angel is helping me think now. I hope he has no shape. I wouldn't say he's out of shape. I'd say he has no shape, right? Because he doesn't have a body, doesn't have quantity, right?

[36:54] So he's not receptive of shape, but I'm receptive of shape. bad through bad through my having quantity, having a body. The same way for the dog and the cat and the tree and so on. So when Aristotle gives the categories, he gives substance first, which stands under everything else, and then quantity, right? Which is before some qualities like color. Presupposes surface, huh And uh shape. presupposes what Quantity in general huh See that.

[37:35] So I am receptive of one thing to another. Just like you are receptive of solid geometry through Plane geometry, right? Yeah. You have to, you know, if you make a prerequisite. it makes sense to have plane geometry and prerequisite to solid geometry. Right. Yeah. And natural philosophy a prerequisite to wisdom.

[38:14] Now the third objection was saying that the powers of the soul are divided by opposites, huh? But Thomas says they are opposed to each other by the opposition of perfect and what? Imperfect, huh?

[38:30] Just as the species of numbers and figures, huh? Like two and three, right? Are they? Then you know each other two and three. Well, in a way, in three there is a two, isn't there? Right. But three is not just two; it's two plus one, right?

[38:49] And I used to say, you know, man is an animal, and my mother said, I don't like that way of speaking. You know, I'd say, well, mother, I don't mean that man is just an animal. He's an animal with reason. Well, okay, that's better. But in some way, man is an animal, right? He's not just an animal, right?

[39:10] So he says this opposition does not impede the origin of one from another, because as has been said, the imperfect naturally proceeds from the what? Perfect, huh? You understand it much better when you do the ninth book of wisdom, huh? And that's why you'll find out that the first cause is most perfect. The first cause is universally perfect, huh?