Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
42. Metaphysics VIII, Reading 3 (Part 1): Form Compared with Plato's Separate Species
Class of 2005-10-13
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/042-metaphysics-viii-reading-3-part-1-form-compared-with-platos/

[0:00] Nine eight seven six five four three two one. In the name of the Father and the Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, the lights of our minds, ordinate their images and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas Angelic Doctor, pray for us. Help us to understand all that you've written. Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:31] So, in the first two readings of the eighth book of wisdom, Aristotle has shown that in material substance, there's matter and also form. And

[0:50] now, in the third and fourth reading, he's going to talk about form, what it is, and so on. And in the I mean the third reading, which we're going to look at today, and then in the fourth reading, he'll talk about. Chalkboard? What Chalkboard. I'm sorry. Oh, okay. Okay, we need. And then the fourth reading, he's going to be talking about the about matter, and in the fifth reading, he'll be talking about the union of matter and form.

[1:29] So it makes sense to talk about matter and form by themselves, so they can talk about their union. Now, in this third reading, he does something like we saw in the third book of wisdom: the prominence of what Plato. And Plato, we said in the third book, was the philosopher before Aristotle. The only philosopher, you might say, that talked much at all about anything besides the material world, with the exception maybe of Plato.

[2:09] But the other philosophers were, for most part, just natural philosophers. And Thomas himself sees the principle of division here, and Aristotle's way of considering form in reading three, that he does so in comparison to the positions of Plato. And Plato had tied up forms with the universal, separated from things, which he calls species here, the texta, the particular kinds of things that are defined, and so on.

[2:45] And then Plato had compared forms to numbers, kind of his Pythagorean background. And we're not sure sometimes whether Plato sees a likeness only, or whether he thinks that the forms really are numbers, right? Aristotle also sees a likeness. Is there between form and number? So this third reading will have basically two parts, and in each part there will be a fourfold comparison. But in the first part, he's comparing the forms and the natures of things to the species, the separate species, The ideas as they call them in English, but there's not a very good translation of eidos in Greek.

[3:30] Eidos is also the word you use in logic when you talk about genus, species, difference. Using the Latin words, genos in Greek, and then species would be eidos i-d-o-s, kind of anglicized. Um, a form might be morphe, right in the Greek, kind of something like that. But so it's going to have a fourfold comparison between form and species. species, and then or four points to be made, so to speak.

[4:06] Or actually, some of them will have only one point in them, and then a fourfold comparison or likeness between forms and numbers. Huh? Okay.

[4:19] So let's look at the beginning here of the third reading, where he's going to compare form with the separated species that Plato has. It's not until the second paragraph on page five of your text that he's going to begin to second comparison to numbers. Okay.

[4:43] Now, as we said, there's a fourfold comparison, and the first comparison is in the first two paragraphs here of reading three. And what the Platonists did is kind of a strange thing. They seem to try to make the whole nature of these material things be form.

[5:08] And Aristotle said, "Well, that's obviously not correct." But maybe there are some things whose whole nature is to be just what form. Thomas is often quoting Boethius, you know, "divina substancia, Forma Est." The divine substance is a form, and the same thing can be said about the angels.

[5:36] So he begins by kind of alluding to this question that's raised because of the Platonists. One should not ignore, he says, that sometimes it is hidden, right? Whether a name signifies the composed substance and signifies therefore the combination of matter and form,

[5:59] or merely the act. In the what form, okay? A little bit like you know, what is a Manhattan, right? Huh? Is it whiskey and sweet vermouth put together in the ratio of two to one, right? Or is it just the ratio of two to what? That's what Manhattan is. Well, the Platonists, to caricature them a little bit, would be saying that the essence of Manhattan is two to one, just the formal aspect.

[6:37] Aristotle would say, no, no, you know, two to one is important in Manhattan, but you got to have the whiskey and the and the sweet vermouth, right? And maybe in a in a Stinger you have the ratio of two to one. So how's two to one? It gives you the whole nature of Manhattan, huh? Because in a Stinger you have two parts brandy, one part white cream de menthe huh So just the forms, it would then the Manhattan and the what?

[7:06] Stinger would be what? Have the same nature, right? No, I think we'll have a two to one thing or something. Aristotle is an equally homely example here. For example, whether house is a sign of the common, that is a covering consisting of bricks and stones laid thus, thus, right, which involve therefore both the matter and the form, right? Or simply of the act and form that it is a covering, right?

[7:40] Huh? Okay. What do you think the house is? Aristotle would think it's both, right? Huh? That's an example taken from what artificial things, huh? And then an example taken from math. And whether a line is two in length or just two, you know, the sometimes the Greeks would say

[8:11] the point is is a one, and then a line is a two, because two points in a way determine a line, and then three lines are a surface, or I mean, three three is a surface, and then four is what a body, right? Huh? And so the Platonists would tend to say, well, maybe you know, a line is just what two, right? And the other is just the kind of material which it is.

[8:41] You can see how man is influenced by what maybe mathematics, right? Huh? We'd say, well, sphere is what? Is it rubber or is it glass or is it just just a sphere? What is a sphere? You just think of it being the form and leaving out the matter. And whether an animal is soul in a body, which Aristotle would think, right? Or just a soul, right? Huh?

[9:12] Which is substance in the act of some body. You know, at the end of the Phaedo, Socrates seems to be thinking that he's just a what? Soul, and maybe a soul kind of imprisoned in a body in somewhere other. And

[9:31] his friend Crito says at the end there, "Where shall we bury you, Socrates?" And Socrates' famous remark is, "Well, you have to catch me first." And of course, if he's just a soul, it'd be hard to catch, huh? And you still think that Socrates being the body, but

[9:54] I suppose you have this idea carried over into Origin a bit, huh? And we're all created kind of like a spiritual. Substance, and then those of us who sinned got stuck in bodies and so on. Was our whole nature then just form? huh?

[10:11] Now he says, if you use the word animal to mean both the soul by itself and also the combination of soul and body, then you would have the word animal being used equivocally, huh In a sense the separated species are almost doing that, right? Because they'd speak of of the separated species, right? Man himself and dog himself, and then you and I, are material. material things, we kind of partake of the species of of man, and the dogs partake of the species of dog, right?

[10:49] So then we're not really a man in the same way that the species man is, huh? That's just form, huh? We're kind of partaking of this form in some way, but we've got some matter.

[11:05] So he says, animal might even be said of both, huh? But you'd be using it equivocally, right? Not equivocally by chance, but by reason, not the one definition, but as towards one.

[11:22] Incidentally, in ethics, we do talk about something being rational essentially, and then something else being rational or reasonable by partaking of reason. So Aristotle would distinguish between the part of the soul that is reason itself, then the part of the soul like the will or the emotions that can partake of reason. But would they be reasonable in the same way?

[11:55] But not in the purely equivocal sense would they be reasonable, because they're partaking of reason. So if your a will is is ordered by reason, or your emotions are measured by reason and ordered by reason, then they partake in some way of what reason. They listen to reason, but they're not rational in the sense of being essentially rational.

[12:22] Now he says this makes a difference towards something else. It's being kind of obscure, right? But nothing towards the investigation of what sensible substance. Aristotle's already clear that sensible substance, material substance, what a man is involves matter as well as what form. It's a composite, huh? But maybe there are some things he's hinting that are just what form. I was quoting Boethius there, divina substantia forma. est and the same thing would be true about the angels.

[13:01] huh? They would just form. Now it's hard to talk about that, right? Okay. And so he's pointing out now the next sentence there that if you had an immaterial substance that was complete, we don't really know that these immaterial substances are complete, but the nearest thing to it would be what the human soul, right? But if the human soul is a complete substance, then it would just be what form that substance, and then a soul and what it is to be a soul would be the what same.

[13:44] But what it is to be a man and a man are not the same unless even the soul is to be called man. proposition. And also he's touching upon here. This is in some ways developed more in Book Seven, but we talked about it before. That immaterial things,

[14:06] what a thing is and the thing are not entirely the same. So Socrates and what a man is are not entirely the same thing. If they were entirely the same thing, you couldn't have more than one man to be Socrates and be to be a man, right?

[14:30] But in the case of an immaterial substance, huh a Raphael, and what it is to be Raphael right? What he is would be the same, okay? And this goes back to the thing we're talking about a little bit last time, I think, alluding to Book Seven, that immaterial things,

[14:54] ah, it's possible to have many individuals of exactly the same kind, and this is possible also in what mathematics, huh? But what is the beginning of this possibility?

[15:14] What's matter and what follows upon matter, namely extension. So matter, in that sense, is subject to quantity, is divisible. Is the reason why you can have many of the same kind. And someone says, "Why can we have many chairs here of exactly the same kind? "Huh? " Well, simplest answer is you have enough wood, or if it's a metal chair, you have enough metal, right? Why can you have many glasses, maybe of the same kind here?

[15:46] Well, it's because you have enough glass, right? So it's wood or glass or some other kind of matter as subject to what quantity. So when your mother made cookies, maybe or something like that, and they spread the dough out, and then they dump, dump, dump, dump with the little cookie thing, and made all these gingerbread men or whatever they are. One is here, one is there, right?

[16:10] But in the immaterial substances, you don't have any, what matter, and you don't have this extension part outside of part. So we can't have one here and one what there, okay? And have the same thing in, let's say, in geometry, because you do have part outside of part, huh? So like in the first what theorem, and you put there, where on a straight line to construct an equilateral triangle, huh?

[16:41] and you take one end of it and use as a center, and rotate the line around that, and you get a circle, and you take the other one and rotate around there. Well, one circle is here, one circle is what there, right? But even before that, the two endpoints are two, even though they're exactly the same kind of thing. There's no difference in kind between the point one of the circle or the straight line and the point of the other end, huh?

[17:06] But they differ because one is here and one is there. You got part outside of of part, huh? And this is the way that they say that your soul and my soul are distinct, even when they're separated from the body, because your soul is made for your body, and my soul is created for my body. So it goes back to matter, right? The distinction between your soul and what my soul.

[17:38] Now in the material substances, a thing and what it is would be altogether the what same, okay? So this is the first comparison Aristotle makes, huh? And although he disagrees with Plato as to the what it is of the sensible substances, saying that they involve matter as well as what form, right? Yet Plato, in a way, in speaking of these forms apart from matter, makes only one of each kind, huh?

[18:09] And therefore he's kind of anticipating what we're going to say about the separated substances, or what in theology we call the angels, right? They can only be one of each what kind, okay?

[18:27] And that's why they can only be one God, right? Why they can't be two sons in God too, okay? So that's the first comparison he makes between Plato's species up there, you know, and form in the sense or substance in the sense of what form, okay?

[18:52] Now in the third paragraph, he makes the second comparison. And you might state two things here: that the form is not one of the material ingredients of the whole,

[19:11] and the form doesn't come to be from the matter in the sense that the matter is made into the form. Now, take a take a simple example here.

[19:34] Take the word "cat," right? And when you ask somebody what are the parts of the word "cat," they think of the letters C, A, and T first, right? But then you confront them with the word "cat" that has the same letter, right? You say, "Well, then, in the word 'cat, ' besides the three letters, there is a an order, right?"And the order is different than in the word act, right?

[20:05] Because order means before and after, and the C is before the A in the word cat. But in act, it's reversed. The A is before the C, right? Okay. Now, is that order that's in the word cat, or the order's in the word act, for that matter? Is that another part of the word in addition to the letters, the three letters in there?

[20:32] In other words, I take a C and an A and a T, and then I take a certain order and I put them all together, and I got the word cat. And I take the same three letters in a different order, and I put them together, and now then I form the word act. Is that the way you do it? No. Would it be a formal part of the way?

[20:52] Well, in a sense, you could speak of the parts of the word cat as being the letters and the order of them, right? Which would be like speaking of matter and form as the parts of us, right? But is the order a part like the letters, or is it a little different?

[21:16] And is the order made out of the letters? Sort of. Well, notice, son, if you go back to the need to introduce order as something here besides the letters, right? The reason why we were forced to say that was that the word act and the word cat, were made out of the same letters, right? But they're not the same word, right? So there must be something in the word cat that isn't in the word act, and vice versa.

[21:53] It's a different order, right? As he said. And that explains why the words are not the same word. Okay. But notice now, if the order, the two orders, were made out of the same letters, just as the two words are made out of the same letters, then why wouldn't they be the same order, being made out of the same letters? You have to have an order of the order, a form of the form, right?

[22:30] To explain there being two different orders, because they're made out of the same letters, that doesn't explain their difference, does it? So they have to be a form of the form, order of the order, right? Then we ask, now, was that order made out of the letters? And you have to have a form of the form of the form, right? This would go on forever, right? Because you have to have a different form in each case, right?

[22:55] And if you have to have a form of the form. The same thing if you had you know like a wooden chair and a what wooden table made out of exactly the same kind of wood.

[23:09] Well then wood the fact that they may have the same kind of wood doesn't explain their difference that one is a chair and one is a table right. So then we distinguish between the wood and the shape of the wood and the arrangement of the wood. And then someone would say now is the shape of the chair is that made out of wood just as the chair itself is made out of wood.

[23:34] Well if you said it was then you'd have to say that the shape of the table was also made out of that same wood right. Now you're back to the same thing you said before right that the chair just as the chair and the table were made out of the same wood so there must be something else in the chair and the table besides the wood to explain the fact that they're not the same thing one's a chair and one's a table.

[23:57] So likewise since the shapes are not the same shape right. If the shapes are made out of the wood but out of the same wood you have to have another what shape of the shape a form of the form right to explain the difference huh. Because they're both made out of the same material doesn't explain the difference. There has to be something else in there right. And then you'd ask about that was that made out of the wood right.

[24:22] Then you'd have a form of form it's going on forever. So it's better to stop at the beginning and say that the what form is not only not a material part but it's not made out of the what matter. Okay. It's a very strange thing huh.

[24:42] It might seem to be where did it come from you know. Was it was it created so that was created right. You can say that the letters are able to be in this order right and able to be in that order right. And the wood is able to be in this shape and able to be in that shape huh.

[25:08] In which you can't say strictly speaking that the order is made out of the letters or the shape is made out of the wood huh. Okay. This is the second comparison he's making huh.

[25:21] To those examining the syllable does not seem to be from the elements in composition. Nor is a house bricks in composition as if it's a material part right.

[25:33] And this is right. For neither the composition nor the mixture is from those things which it is a composition or mixture. So the Manhattan is two to one made out of whiskey and sweet vermouth.

[26:00] Yeah, they're in the ratio of two to one two to one. Yeah, but is is two to one made out of these things? Huh. Likewise in none of the others. Huh. For example, if the threshold is by position, an example in the second reading, the position is not from the threshold, but rather the latter is from the former. Nor is man animal and two-footed, but there must be something else which is besides these.

[26:30] If these are matter, right? Neither an element itself, neither a material part, right? Nor from an element, but when taking away, they state the matter. If then this is the cause of the being and substance, because the form that makes a thing to be what it is, right? They will be saying this is the substance itself. Aristotle tend to call form substance sometimes, huh? Because it's much more substance than what matter is, huh?

[27:02] Now the third comparison is in the fourth paragraph, and this in a way follows from its not being what made from the matter, right? And that is that either it's not what generated and corrupted at all, or it's generated corrupted only what accidentally, right? Okay. This then must either be eternal, or it must be corrupted without ever being corrupted, and have come to be without ever coming to be.

[27:46] Now, happen that's a moment, huh? Um. If you talk to a carpenter, driver, poor guy, crazy. Um. Did you make a chair today? Yes, I made a chair today, right? Did you also make the shape of the chair? What would he say? Yes.

[28:09] Yeah, but did he make the shape of the chair in the same way that he made the chair? Not the same way. It doesn't come from there. Yeah. You make something out of some material, right? And he said the shape was not made out of the material, so he didn't really make the shape, except in accidental sense, right? You can say he brought the shape into existence, right?

[28:36] Yes. In bringing the chair into existence, huh? He didn't bring the shape into existence by itself, huh? The shape as such didn't come to be, huh? And if he were to break up the chair, right, well then the shape would no longer be there, but would the shape as such?

[29:00] Go out of existence, or would it be the chair that ceases to be? The chair, yeah. So form doesn't come to be by itself or as such, right? If you can say, in some sense, that the form came to be and ceased to be, right? It's only through something else coming to be, like the chair, and something else, what, ceasing to be, like the chair.

[29:30] And therefore, if there was a form that is not what in matter, right? Such a form would, as far as itself is concerned, always be right. It wouldn't be generated or corrupted, even accidentally, huh? That's kind of interesting, right? Because you see, even in material things, that the form as such is not generated, that is not made out of the matter, and the form as such is not corrupted. If it, in some sense, comes into existence, goes out of existence, it's only through something else coming into existence and going out of existence, huh?

[30:10] Okay. A little bit like when we talk about accidental being, right? You know. Um. Ah, can you make a Christian geometer, right? Well, there's a way of making a Christian and a way of making a geometer, but there's really no way of what making a Christian geometer. So it's in making somebody a Christian and making him a geometer. You could say, in some sense, you made a Christian geometer out of him, right?

[30:44] But not as such, right? It's only something coming into existence, and going out of existence, due to some other what change, right? Okay. And if I'm taller than my son at one point in my our lives, then later on in life I'm shorter than him, right? Have I really changed from being taller than him to being shorter than him?

[31:17] See? No, it's really he who has changed his what height and size, right? Okay. So it's really the change is not in in relation as such. It's not a kind of change as such. Well, they can say, in some sense, I was taller and now I'm shorter than my son, right? But this would be what not a change in me as such. So there's something like that here, right?

[31:52] The form as such doesn't come to be or cease to be. So there's something necessary about the form. If it was not a form, only in matter. Okay. Do you see that? Kind of so. But it goes back in a way. I think he's ordered this third because it depends upon having seen something of the second one, right? That the form is not made out of what matter, right?

[32:24] Okay. And if he said, you know, that he he he really made the shape today, right? Well, then you say, what do he make it out of? See? Because he can't really what create out of nothing.

[32:44] See? So it's only in accidental sense one could say he made the shape at all. He made the shape in making the chair, I could say, but didn't make it by itself or through itself.

[33:05] But it has been proved and shown elsewhere that no one makes or begets the form, but is the individual that is made right is a composite of matter and form, and what is from these that is generated. This goes back even to the seventh book of wisdom, but also back to the first book of natural, hearing, the physics, because there we see that what comes to be is always composed of matter and form.

[33:35] That when the hard becomes soft, right? Hardness cannot become softness. Hardness itself cannot be soft. Even the hardness as such cannot be soft. So there must be some kind of matter underlying the hardness that is able to be soft. But when it becomes soft, it loses its hardness.

[34:00] If it became hard again, it would lose its softness, right? So this is one way a syllogism there in the Summa Theologiae that God does not change, right? You see that what changes is composed, and before that you see that God is not composed; he's altogether simple. Therefore, God cannot change. You have a syllogism there in the second figure, right? We are affirming composed of everything that changes and denying composed of God.

[34:30] Therefore, God cannot what change. So if what really comes to be and ceases to be, you know, generated, corrupted, is a composite of matter and form, then form as such doesn't come to be, or it ceases to be is a composite of matter and form.

[34:51] And if you can say in some sense that the form is begun to be and or ceased to be, right, it's because something else really has begun to be or ceased to be. But again, that kind of prepares you for thinking about the angel, right? Angel doesn't have doesn't worry about dying in our sense, okay. Nor will an angel be what generated, okay? Angel be created, but it can't be generated or corrupted.

[35:22] It's not a composite of matter and form; it's just form. Okay, and you see the problem with the odd bird, of course, is our soul, right? But if a form existed only in matter,

[35:45] then it couldn't be without the matter, right? And come to be or cease to be with corruption, the composite, right? And so the problem about the human soul is to see. Does it have an existence

[36:08] only in the body, right? Or does it have an existence that is not entirely in the body, or not entirely shared by the body?

[36:19] And that's unknown to us. The answer to that, effect. first, right? But we reason back from an effect, huh? We say that you have to be before you can do something, right? And then since Descartes is right, I think therefore I am, right? You're doing something, you must be. So it depends upon seeing: is there something that the soul does not in the body, right?

[36:54] Because if there's something the soul does not in the body, there's some doing that's not in the body. Well, then the existence of the soul can't be entirely in the body,

[37:09] and it's the understanding that you first see is not in the body, the understanding of universal. And that goes back again to what we were saying earlier that the cause of there being many individuals of the same kind in material things is matter is subject to what quantity. So that a triangle or a circle that's here or there in the continuous is going to be what individual.

[37:40] So if the reason was understanding in a body, then what understands would be received in a body in the continuous, and therefore is individual, not as what universal. So the fact that we know things universally is a beginning for understanding that we're knowing something by knowing that is not in the body.

[38:13] And since you have to be before you can do something, then we have a being that is not, as we say, immersed entirely in the body, right? So the body shares in the existence of the soul, but not completely, right? I don't say the soul has an existence apart from the body. That's a very subtle thing, right?

[38:40] Plato and Aristotle, are the ones who kind of discovered this among the philosophers, but Aristotle shows it perhaps better than Plato. Okay. Well, now it comes to that fourth thing, right? About the separation, right?

[39:06] And in the truth yet here in these books, he says whether the substances of destructible things are separated is not yet at all clear. You see, Plato had the substance of these things: what a man is, what a dog is, this in the world out there, right? Aristotle has completely refuted that. He does so in the finding the thirteenth and the fourteenth books.

[39:29] But that it is not possible for some is clear. Whatever are such as not to be apart from some things, such as house utensils,

[39:40] because here you deal with what we call an accidental form, and they would hardly be able to be what separated. And Aristotle says, "Well, perhaps indeed, neither these things themselves nor any of the things which are not formed by nature."These artificial things, in other words, are substances at all, right?

[40:06] For one, would lay down only nature as substance in corruptible things. So Plato didn't put a house itself, right, and a chair itself, and a glass itself, and so on, right? But he took only substantial things: man himself or God himself.

[40:30] Now, this last part of this fourth comparison, there, you see, as we've mentioned before, Plato seems to have answered yes to the central question of philosophy: does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? And Socrates, or Plato rather, seems to have answered yes to this question, or thought yes to this question.

[41:06] And then he was convinced, with his studies with the Pythagoreans and so on, that we didn't know the truth in geometry and arithmetic because these are very certain sciences, huh?

[41:20] And since we're knowing sphere and cube and triangle in separation from sensible matter and motion, and we're knowing them truly, and truth requires that the way we know be the way things are, then there must truly be outside of our mind in separation from sensible matter and motion triangles and spheres and cubes and so on. And therefore, you have this mathematical world corresponding to the character of the science of mathematics.

[41:58] Aristotle says that that doesn't follow Plato. Our mind can consider in separation sometimes things that don't exist in separation when one can be understood or known without the other. So if I can understand the shape of a sphere without rubber or glass or steel or anything else that might any other kind of matter, I can think about sphere in separation from those kinds of matter, even though it doesn't exist in separation from them.

[42:34] But Plato had not yet seen this, right? And then he came under the influence of Socrates, and Socrates is famous for trying to define things. And you read the dialogues where Plato represents Socrates in conversation, and

[42:56] probably that's the most common thing in the dialogues that Socrates would be asking, "What is something?" right? What is virtue in the Meno, or what is piety in the Euthyphro, or what is courage in the Laches, or what is temperance in the Charmides, or what is justice in the Republic, or what is episteme scientia in the Theaetetus, and so on? Right? He's always asking what is something, and when he's being pushed, right, by our friend Simmias in the Phaedo there to come up with a necessary argument, right, for the immortality of the soul, he's trying to use definitions, right?

[43:44] And you know, if you come back and say, even in mathematics, there, why are you so certain that no odd number is even? Well, it's in the definition of odd number and even number that you see that no odd number can be even, or no prime number can be composite, or no circle can be a square, and so on. So definitions seem to be the way to know things truly and with certainty, right?

[44:14] Of course, in a definition, you're knowing universal in separation from the what singulars, right? So if truth requires that the way we know be the way things are, and we're truly knowing through definitions, then universals must truly exist in separation from singulars, and this is his so-called world of forms, right? With a capital F, right?

[44:44] So he's introducing that in order to save his knowledge by definition, and Aristotle would say, well, no, you can you can know what's common to two men, what they have in common, in separation from the individual differences, truly, even though it doesn't exist, right, in separation from these two individuals outside of our mind, separating, and the falsity comes in when you say that what is separated in our knowledge, truly, our true knowledge, is separated in things.

[45:26] Then you've got a real what mistake, huh? Okay. But as Socrates teaches in the Euthyphro, he's trying to help Euthyphro define piety, and it's natural kind of to begin with saying what a thing is in a general way, what the logician calls give the genus of the thing, and then add the what differences, right? So if he asked a student, you know, out of the blue in class, what is a dog?

[46:03] he began by saying it's an animal, right? Then you add the the differences that are on. So the definition is composed of the genus and differences, huh? Well, as you know from your study of Porphyry, the genus is the difference a bit like matter is to form. Not that the genus is exactly the same thing as the matter, or the difference the same thing as form, but the genus comes from what is more material than a thing, and the difference from what is more formal.

[46:37] So if man is defined as a rational animal, animal is taken more from his body and what's material than man, and rational more from his soul and his the difference is taken from his form, therefore. So it seems to have a definition of composed of genus and difference. You've got to have something like matter and form. Now these separated forms that have no matter in them would not be what definable, right?

[47:07] So Plato invented a whole world of forms. They have something that you can define truly, and position seems to make it impossible to to define, see. And this was something like Antisthenes, one of the guys, was saying. You know, you can't really say what anything is. You don't say what it's like. Well, he said that was maybe kind of a stupid saying, but it has some truth now, Plato.

[47:40] How can you define an angel, right? When there's nothing proportional to matter and form in it, huh? And therefore, any basis for the genus and the what the difference, huh? It's a little bit like you know the problem with Heraclitus and those who want to say that day and night are the same, right? And the hard and the soft are the same, and the hot and the cold, and the waking and the sleeping, because one becomes the other, right?

[48:15] And the healthy are the sick, and the sick are the healthy. All these other contradictions and words that they seem to be admitting, and you know how Parmenides reacting and saying, "Well, then this is all illusion, right? Day cannot be night, the hard cannot be soft, the healthy cannot be sick, right? "

[48:36] And if the healthy cannot be sick, then the healthy cannot become sick, because become means what comes to be. So if the healthy cannot be sick, the healthy cannot come to be sick. So if you're healthy, you'll always be healthy. And if you're sick, you're going to always be sick. If you're bad, you'll always be bad. But if you're good, you'll never be bad. So, in order to see the reality of change, right?

[49:09] They seem to say then that the healthy can be sick, right? And day can be night. And the famous fragment of Heraclitus, you know, they admired Hesiod the poet, you know, but he didn't know day and night. He thought they were two different things, you know. You get up in the day and do your work and go to bed at night and get your rest. As if day and night were two different things.

[49:30] I don't think they're the same thing because day becomes night and night becomes day, huh? But the point is, if day and night were really the same thing, and the sick and the healthy the same thing, and the hard and the soft, would you have any change at all? No.

[49:51] The change is from hard to soft or soft to hard, right? But if you're both soft and hard, there couldn't be any change from hard to soft. or soft to hard right? So he's admitting that something can both be and not be. He's admitting, in words, the impossible contradictions, right? In order to save change, but he ends up what?

[50:17] Not saving change even. Why go to all the work of of denying something as obvious as it's impossible to both be and not be, in order to save change when you don't end up saving change even by doing so? So Aristotle's saying, "Hey, Plato, what are you doing? You're inventing this, imagining this world of forms in order to have truth in your definitions, but if these things were really just form, then would you really have a definition of them?

[50:54] If genus is to the difference as matter is to form, a definition is composed of genus and what differences, huh? So, too bad Plato, huh Shall we take our break now because that makes the logical division here of the reading, huh? This is the end of the four comparisons between form and substance, or substance as form, the forms or species of Plato, right? huh? And I was going to make a four-fold comparison to what numbers, huh?

[51:30] Starting with the second paragraph here on page five, right? So, got it.