Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
46. Metaphysics IX, Reading 1: Substance, the Categories, and the Senses of Ability (Active and Passive Potency)
Class of 2005-10-27
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/046-metaphysics-ix-reading-1-substance-the-categories-and-the/

[0:00] In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels, drink in the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and rouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, pray for us, and help us to understand all that you have written. In the. Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

[0:25] Amen. Okay, let's look at the first paragraph here of reading one of Book Nine. Aristotle is recalling a little bit what he's done, and then continuing it into what this book will be about. He has spoken, then he says, about the first being to which all the other categories of being are brought back. He's not talking about God there, the first being, but substance, right? In the division of being according to figures of predication, the being that is first is what substance.

[1:06] That is about substance. For the other beings, how much or quantity, and how or quality, and the others thus said towards what, where, when, and so on, they are all said according to the thought of substance. They're all defined in reference to substance. So quantity is the the measure of substance, or the size of substance, or quality is the disposition of substance. So they all are defined reference back to substance.

[1:42] For all have the thought of substance, as we said in the first discourse, as their definition all unfolds that of substance. And this was pointed out back in even the fourth book.

[1:59] Okay, and since being then is said in one way as what or how or how much, and notice here Aristotle instead of saying substance, he says what. Okay. I think I mentioned how there are two places in Aristotle's logical works. In fact, two places, as far as I know, in the whole works, where he enumerates all ten of the highest genera. And I mentioned is one place of course is in the Categories, which is explicitly about that, and the other is in the first book of about places there, the so-called Topics.

[2:40] And he gives exactly the same ten, right, in both places, in exactly the same order, right? Except that in the Categories he calls the first one usia, substance, and in the Topics he calls the first one what it is. Okay, and that kind of explains how we get the idea of substance as distinct from the other ones. Aristotle will refer to this in the fifth book of *Wisdom* here, and he distinguishes these senses of being, quantity, quality, and so on.

[3:20] He called this the distinction of being according to the figures of predication, according to the figures of being set up. Right. Well, what does that mean exactly? What's being said of what? Well, it's by reason of the way in which something is said of individual substances, like Socrates or Socrates' dog, right? And some things are said of Socrates or his dog by reason of what they are, and that gives you the category substance, right?

[3:57] Other things are said of Socrates or the dog by reason of how big they are, and so on. That's quantity, and then how they are healthy or sick or whatever they are, and then you get the different categories: where they are, when they are, and so on. Okay, so they're distinguished by the ways that something can be said of individual substance. So, in the categories, he just calls the first one substance, but in the topics, he calls the first one "to ti esti," what it is, and that kind of shows you how you get that particular category.

[4:38] And notice how, in some ways, people even daily life, they do see a distinction between what a thing is and its size, right? It's one thing to say, you know, my pet. What is my pet? So, a dog or a cat or something like that. And then, what's the size of it? Right? Because some people got these little tiny dogs, and so you've got these big dogs that almost knock you over, huh?

[5:05] And so that's two different figures of predication. The one is what it is, and the other, how much it is, or size, quantity, and this is one of the fundamental what distinction of beings, or you could say distinction of things, that

[5:30] they are different kinds of things. Substance and the quantity and the quality—they're different kinds of things. So you have ten different kinds of things, but especially the first four: substance, quantity, quality, and what relation?

[5:50] Um, it's interesting how this comes up in the treatise on the Trinity, because the Father. Son and the Holy Spirit are distinguished relation to each other, so they're distinguished by being towards another in a certain way. But if you take something not towards another, but something in itself absolute, then you're talking about the divine what substance, the divine nature, okay?

[6:25] And I was seeing a little, you know, apparent contradiction. Some might bring and say, are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit one thing or three things?

[6:43] What would you say? Is it. how abuse this thing? Yeah, yeah. But because there's no difference between the Father and the divine nature, and there's no difference between the Son and the divine nature and the Holy Spirit, the divine nature, we can say the three persons are one thing, namely God. Okay, but if you don't admit that there's a real distinction between the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, you're heresy.

[7:14] And as the word "real" indicates, from Latin word "res," right? There's a real distinction. You have three things here, right? Well, the the sophist might say, well, it's one thing or three things. Because you seem to be contradicting yourself. On one hand, you say it's one thing; other hand, you say it's three things. Huh? Well, as as the great Boethius says, the only categories that carried over to God are substance and relation, and so they're one thing in the absolute sense.

[7:46] The substance, what it is, the divine nature, but they're three things in the sense of what towards each other they're really distinct. Okay, I think I mentioned how

[8:01] if you look at the Greek there of the beginning of St. John's Gospel, I think I mentioned this before. What the Greek actually says was, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was towards God." pros ton theon. Well, when Aristotle talks about relation, the words he uses in Greek are precisely "pros," "ti," and in Latin, there in the in the Latin logicians, they'll translate that as "ad aliquid," right?

[8:38] Okay. But for some reason, in our Latin and English translations of the Gospel of St. John, they'll tend to translate it maybe not so correctly as "with." Right? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Right? But the Greek actually already. By using the word pros, to a man who's been educated by Aristotle, he recognized right away that the distinction is one of being towards another.

[9:11] So, I was reading, as I mentioned earlier, the Commentary of Thomas on the Gospel of St. John. But as far as I remember, neither in the Commentary when he's quoting you know Augustine and Chrysostom and some Greek fathers, I guess, and or even his own commentary, does he seem to be aware of the exact Greek word there. And to me, as an Aristotelian, it's very striking, huh?

[9:41] You know, they've used the word pros there, but I can't be the first man to have noticed this. Not so presumptuous as to say that, but but but the Greek is is very clear, huh? But doesn't seem to be reflected in our translations, huh? Although Augustine, you know, and Boethius and Thomas, they they know That the distinction of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, is towards one another, right?

[10:07] But anyway, but it's kind of interesting the way even understanding the ten categories and there being different kinds of things, right, is something to know when you come to ask questions about are the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit one thing or three things, right? Well, if thing had only one meaning, then you'd be in a contradiction saying there's one thing and what three things, huh? Okay.

[10:39] When you said that he said that the the only categories that carry over speaking by God are substance and relation, is he is he starting from dogmatically from the belief in the Trinity and arriving at the relation part, or is that from just from Boethius? sir Yeah, But Boethius of course has got Augustine before him, right? So it's Augustine who saw this maybe most fully, and so Boethius is following Augustine, and Thomas is following Boethius and Augustine.

[11:08] So Augustine sees it very clearly. But Augustine's an unusual mind, you know, because he doesn't have the benefit, I would think, of knowing much of Aristotle, right? But or having access to it, but

[11:22] the greatest mind it seems among the Church Fathers, huh? It's interesting, you know, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You know, if you look at the references, how many quotes there are from Augustine, now even more so than from Thomas. It was quite a few of Thomas too, but Augustine and Thomas came to stand out. Augustine and Thomas started theology a little bit like Plato and Aristotle, philosophy, you know, like the chief chief theologians, you know.

[11:57] So now the two main distinctions of being are according to the figures of predication, and then this other way he says by ability and act, and by doing, huh? Because act will have first of all the sense of motion, and then some kind of doing, right? And eventually we'll see act as said even a form, but it's going to be equivocal by reason. So he says we will now determine about ability and act, and that's the subject here of Book Nine.

[12:33] So the consideration of being as being in the in wisdom is mainly a consideration of substance in Book Seven and Eight, and then a consideration of ability and act here in Book what Nine.

[12:52] And he says, and first about the ability which is said most properly, although not the most useful towards what we want now. So he's going to be talking about. In the first part of the first four readings, he's going to be talking about act mainly in the sense of motion, which we know from natural philosophy, and then ability, right, in reference to motion or change. And he says, "Well, this is a little too particular for our sapiential considerations here, but this is where we first meet ability and act, like Shakespeare says, 'Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stir.

[13:39] ' So the act which is most known to us is actually the least actual act, motion itself, and then the abilities that are first known are in reference to the motion. But then he gets to the second part in the fifth and sixth readings. Then he's going to see act in a much more universal way, and as a result, he's going to see ability in other ways besides ones he sees in the beginning.

[14:09] And then he says, in a sense, like I was saying last time, it's kind of arising from the more particular, less universal consideration of ability and act in the first four readings to a completely universal one in the fifth and sixth ones, where act and ability can be found even in what immaterial things,

[14:34] and of course, in the case of God, you just have act, right, pure act, but even the angels or the separated substances are some kind of ability and act. So ability and act are to being something like matter and form, or to the things that move, but matter and form are more particular than ability and act. There are other kinds of acts besides these, and so on.

[15:06] So Aristotle is hinting at what he's going to do here in the first two parts of the book. For ability and act are in more, they're said of more than those that only are according to motion. But having spoken about this, we shall, in our determinations of act, which is in the fifth and sixth reading, as I say, mainly in the fifth one, show the other kinds of ability.

[15:29] Okay. And to some extent, this is done with substance, and it's done with the study of the one and wisdom. You start off with something more particular, so you start off with the one, that is the beginning of number, you know, kind of material one, and then you go up to the one that's convertible with being, and it's very hard to move in that direction.

[15:58] Aristotle distinguishes the opinions of the Greek philosophers before him. What they said about the causes of natural things, they kind of identified the causes of natural things with the causes of being. And when he gets to the fourth book of Natural Hearing, and he talks about place, he quotes the famous what opinion of his predecessors that whatever is must be somewhere, and if it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist.

[16:34] So it seems to be a property of being as being to the early Greeks to be in some place, to be contained in some place. But that's pretty proper to what natural bodies are. So you are thinking of being in a concrete or particular way is the same as a material being, right? And it's kind of natural. If you want to ask a man in the street, he'd probably agree that whatever is must be somewhere in some place.

[17:04] If it isn't some place, it doesn't exist, right? Okay. And you know, Thomas sometimes will be quoting Avicenna and so on the first thing our mind understands is being. First thing our mind considers is being. But sometimes Thomas is not as explicit about that what that really means, as in other places, because sometimes he'll scot out. He'll say that being considered immaterial things, is what our mind first knows, and you can see it very clearly.

[17:44] Their opinion, the Greeks, there about place, right? That they're identifying what is with bodies and what are in bodies, right? And so they have a hard time rising from that to a more universal consideration of what of being. It's not until you you have some reason to think that there are immaterial things that your mind could ever start to separate being from being in place, right?

[18:16] If all that existed was bodies and what is in bodies, then to be in place would be a property of being as being. But it isn't, then, so it's hard to rise to a more universal consideration of being. When they when they spoke when they spoke about being in place in that as as a property of being as such, yeah, the early the earlier Greeks were they were they referring to place in a very particular way or a general way?

[18:48] Because even if I have something moving, like from from this end of the table to that end of the table, in a way I can say it's in place in that it's in the room, but t here is a way in which it's not even in place while it's in motion. Yeah, you can see you can see it's not a definite place. Yeah, yeah. But that doesn't change their basic thinking, though, right?

[19:09] That they're thinking that these things are in place in some way, right? And they can't rise above that. It's hard for our mind to separate things that, in our experience, never separate. Yeah. And so, since through our senses and imagination we never know being without bodies and extensions, so on, it's very hard for our mind to separate being from body and extension and so on. Cajetan has kind of a scholastic phrase for the first being.

[19:50] we know. he says "ends," meaning being, concretum in quidditati sensibile but being In a concrete way, right? In the sensible, what it is, huh? But that's Thomas doesn't say it quite so. scholastically, but he'll say being considered in sensible things—that's the being we first know—and then we have to kind of rise to a more universal consideration of being, and that's very hard for our mind to do, right?

[20:20] The kind of separation. But as they say, you see it most clearly in Book Nine, and it goes to the first part and considers ability and act there, then rises to ability and act as its universal way in the second part. Then there'll be a third part where he talks about the what the order of ability and act, huh? And there you'll see that in almost every way, act is before ability, and that's the beginning for realizing that the beginning of all things would be pure act, that God is pure act, huh?

[20:59] But Aristotle here in this first paragraph is just distinguishing what he's going to begin with in the first part, and then he's going to go to something more universal in the second part.

[21:18] Now, second paragraph, he's alluding back to the fifth book of wisdom, where he distinguished the words used, especially in wisdom and in the axioms, but to some extent everywhere. Ability is one of those words they talked about a little bit back in the fifth book.

[21:40] It has been determined by us elsewhere, back in the fifth book of wisdom, that ability and to be able are said in many ways.

[21:53] Now I'm translating the Greek word dunamis, right? By ability, some people want to translate it by the Latin-derived word potentia right? Potentia, okay. Dunamis only comes in English when you use words like dynamo, dynamite, okay.

[22:30] Sometimes potentia, Latin, or dunamis in Greek, is translated into English by the word power, okay. But as we'll see shortly here, although the first sense, really, of ability or power dunamis, is an active sense, huh?

[22:58] The ability to act upon other things, the ability to move other things. Nevertheless, the word ability is also moved over to the ability to undergo, the ability to be acted upon, the ability to be moved by another, and

[23:19] the English word power doesn't seem to be moved from the active to the passive sense. But the word ability, and to some extent, even more clearly, the word able is, in fact, in English. So the word ability in English

[23:40] is more used for all the senses of dunamis in Greek or potentia in Latin, what in Latin they call potentia activa potentia passiva. potentia, why the English word power is not what moved there to the passive sense. So that's why you translate it by the word ability.

[24:12] A lot of times we talk about the abilities of the soul. we translate it as the powers of the soul. A lot of the translations will have that. But the word power seems to be stuck on the what? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's like the problem you have with the translation of paschein there in Greek, right? First sense of paschein or passio would be what to suffer, right?

[24:43] Okay. If he if he translated by to suffer in English, it captures the first meaning of it. But suffer in English almost is stuck on the original sense, which is to be acted upon in a way that's harmful to you. It's you know painful and so on, right? So you speak of the the passion of our Lord or something of this sort. Suffering, while the Greek word, the Latin word, has been what moved to

[25:17] senses where you receive something that is not necessarily painful or contrary to you, and even to receiving something that perfects you. So I think I mentioned before how I tend to translate paschein by to undergo, right? Because undergo doesn't seem to be stuck as much to the sense of what being acted upon in a painful or destructive way. Even though probably originally under to undergo has a little bit that sense of the bad, right?

[25:56] We say that he's undergone a lot. It's pretty, it kind of implies it's not good what he's undergone. right, Now it's been bad for him, right?

[26:10] But you can move; you can use the word more, right? So that's why I translate by the word ability here. But now I was going to say there are some senses of ability or power. if I want to use that word, which are not our concern here because they're almost what purely equivocal compared to senses we have here. The ones we have here are going to be equivocal by reason, but not purely equivocal.

[26:40] And he's saying there's other meanings, and he's thinking of the fact that we sometimes speak and say geometry, you know, three to the second power or three to the third power. But all the senses of power or ability we're going to talk about here are ones where it's the beginning of some kind of motion or operation. This sorry, and

[27:11] sometimes we use the word able to in logic when we say that the predicate is not incompatible with the subject, right? So, say, man is able to be white, okay, but man is not able to be a dog, let's say, right? That's a different sense of able that's not really connected with the senses here.

[27:37] So, it has been determined by us elsewhere that ability and to be able are said in many ways. Let us leave aside whichever of these are called abilities equivocally, and by equivocally he means purely almost equivocally. There's any likeness there? It's kind of metaphorical likeness. For some are said by some likeness, as in geometry, we call something possible or impossible for being or not being in some way.

[28:08] But then I almost have to get the sense of an image, use the English word power, right? But we do speak of you know, you know, two to the second power or three to the third power, you know. But that's we'll set that that meaning aside, and and also that that that you find in logic where the predicate is said to be compatible or possibly with the subject.

[28:41] But then there's a number of meanings he's going to take up now, and there's many meanings, but they all refer back to the ability to act upon or the ability to move another. Okay, well, which whichever are said towards the same form are all beginnings. They're beginning of some kind of motion, but not necessarily when they act, in sense. And are said towards one that is first, which is the beginning of change in another as other.

[29:14] Notice he calls that the first meaning, right? Another is the ability to undergo a beginning in the one undergoing or being changed, huh? When acted upon by another as other. Let's stop in that for a moment there, right?

[29:39] Suppose you put Berquist in the ring there with Cassius Clay or some other boxer, you know. And before they stop the fight, it won't be long. I'd say Berquist shouldn't be in there at all, right? He Didn't have any ability, right? He didn't get any blows, in, he's just getting thrashed and whacked around, right? Okay, So you'd see. Ability only in Cassius Clay, none in me, right? Don't you say that?

[30:06] Okay. But Berquist is beatable. Berquist is breakable. Berquist is bustable, right? We do say that, don't we? Especially after we saw it in the fight. Yeah, and notice they're using the word able there, aren't you? Breakable, bustable, so on

[30:29] and so. So, what sense of ability corresponds to that use of the word able there? You say Berquist is beatable. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, he's able to be acted upon by Cassius Clay in this way, right? Okay. But my being beatable has reference back to his ability to beat me, oh, yeah, to hit me, right? Okay.

[31:01] When the pianist, when the great pianist, is down to play the piano, you know, like what's his name here, Benedict the Sixteenth, right? Did you see that in the Catholic World report? There, just saw the issue that came in the house a few days ago. But they're talking about his going up to North Italy there, vacationing in the summer. There, the same place for John Paul the Second used to go on.

[31:28] But they had to bring in a piano, right? Oh man. For because both Benedict the Sixteenth and his brother are pianists, right? I guess his brother's even more professional, you know. But but so it said that the the chalet was was full of Mozart every evening. Oh man! So oh boy. You know, I got Paul the Sixth there for Shakespeare, you know, and I got Benedict the Sixteenth for Mozart, you know.

[31:57] They say they say he plays Mozart every day. This is another little confirmation of that, right? You hear Mozart all over the place. So.

[32:08] But notice now you see that the pianist there playing the piano, and you talk about his ability to play the piano, right? And you wouldn't even think of of attributing ability to the piano itself, would you? Not first, right? No. But you could say that piano is what playable, right? Okay. It can be acted. It's able to be acted upon by the pianist in this way. But the fundamental and first meaning of ability is his ability to play the piano, right?

[32:45] But in a second meaning of ability, you can say that the piano is playable by the great pianist. The keys don't stick, you know. They don't, you know, they behave the way they should, right? So that's the second one, okay? I sometimes call the primary meaning. The ability to act upon another, right? In English, huh? Or the ability to move another, right? Okay. And the second ability is ability to be to undergo, or the ability to be acted upon, the ability to be moved or changed by another.

[33:27] So you can see in these first two meanings of ability how you're speaking of ability in reference to motion or change. The names are very concrete when we say the ability to act upon, the ability to undergo.

[33:48] I saw that with my little nephew there when he was first at the house. My brother Richard and his wife came back. He's going to teach at the College of Saint Thomas. And they're looking for apartment and a very reasonable apartment given their their finances. And so each time they saw an interesting apartment advertised in the newspaper, they would leave the little boy with me, you know, and rush off to see that apartment.

[34:15] before it got taken, and so I would amuse him, you know, building these little towers and things, you know, in the the sunroom. We used to have to, you know, knock over these towers that I built, right, and kind of laugh and knock them over. But if he was distracted with something else, and we turned back, I had the tower taller than him. He would poke his little finger and say, "Oh, oh, ah!"

[34:41] Admiration, see? But if it was lower than him, he'd knock it over with contempt, you might say. Well, you see, if it's taller than him, it might what act upon him, right? Man, see, has some respect for it, huh? But if it's shorter than him, he's you know going to act upon it, right? So it's kind of that spatial idea. You pick a fight with the guy in the bar, and he gets off his stool and raises himself up to his full height, and you realize that he's towering above you, right?

[35:16] You better back off, huh? He still can. But you all know how. I mean, if you're you're pounded nails into a ceiling, how tired it is on the arm, right, or the hand, right? But if you're, you know, above an acting pot, you do it much better, right? But eventually, we drop the spatial idea there with acting upon, undergoing, it. You have to be spatially above something to act upon it.

[35:41] But it's easy to do so, right? Okay. What does Anthony say about Caesar? The day he overcame the Nervii, huh? What's the expression there? To overcome.

[36:01] Yeah, it's taken from the spatial idea, but being above, right? Okay. You know what an underdog is, right? So those are the first two senses he gives of ability, and that's the most basic distinction: the active ability and the what? Passive ability, huh?

[36:32] Notice, it's the passive ability we're going to deny of God, right? Okay. We say God is omnipotent. It's the active sense, huh? Okay. Again, the meaning of ability changes a bit there, because God's ability is not just an ability to act upon something; it's the ability to create something. You don't have to have something to act upon. The whole thing is being produced by God.

[37:09] Now he gives a third meaning here of ability, and this now is kind of a negation of what's gone before. And another, he says, is the firm disposition not to undergo change towards the worse and corruption by being acted upon by another as other. I notice the image again through the word "able." There, we say something is durable, right? It's able to endure, right? So the weather, whatever it is, is not going to what corrupt the thing or destroy it, right?

[37:48] Huh? So this is another meaning now, but it refers back again because it's existence, huh? Ability to resist being acted upon, huh? Okay. So it's

[38:04] not as important as the first two meanings, but like the second meaning, it refers back in some way to the first meaning. So he says the thought of the first ability, the ability to move another, is in all these definitions, right? Huh?

[38:31] When you say that I am beatable, what does that mean? Something can beat the heck out of me, right? When I say that the paper here is burnable, right? It's able to be what acted upon by the fire in this way, right? So it refers back to the ability of the fire, right? Okay, the paper is burnable by fire, right? So you're going back. kind of to that active sense of ability as the first what meaning.

[39:06] Now, the end of the paragraph, he adds two other meanings, which obviously are defined by the previous ones. Again, these abilities are said to be of only acting upon or undergoing, or of doing so well, right?

[39:23] So that also these definitions exist in some way. The definitions of ability. So, if I have the ability, what to play the piano well, in the definition of that ability to play the piano well, is included the ability to play the piano, right? Okay.

[39:46] There used to be a Mrs. Berquist that sang you know, solo in church, huh? And people would call up our house sometimes with the wrong telephone, and they'd ask my mother, you know, are you the Mrs. Berquist that sings? my mother would sing sometimes, but she'd say, "Yes, I do sing. I don't think you'd want me for your wedding or whenever they wanted to hire Mrs. Burkos to sing for."

[40:14] So sometimes you might deny that someone is able to sing. If he can't sing, what? Well, well, huh? My father-in-law used to say, "You know, I'd sing something. You know, people who can't sing usually don't," he says.

[40:34] So, so, or my my friend Juan Maria said, "Dwayne, we're going to learn how to speak French." Well, am I able to speak French? Well, he would he would say no, right? Okay, okay. But I can say a few things in French and so on, and so there are two different meanings here: ability, right? Sometimes you're said to be able to do something only if what you are able to do it well, right?

[41:11] And Thomas gives the example there, you know, of how you might say wood is burnable, right? But if the wood is not dry, it's not what burnable well, right? It's moist or something. It's not going to burn very well. So, but obviously, in the ability to do something well, is included the ability to do it right. So, all the back, right, to the earlier senses and back ultimately to that first sense.

[41:43] So it distinguishes, you might say, your five senses of ability, right? Okay, the ability to act upon something, right? The ability to undergo, the ability to resist being acted upon, the ability to act upon something well, right? And the ability to be acted upon well, right? Okay.

[42:09] Now I didn't have much ability really to type, you know. I mean, and self-taught, which the old saying is you have a fool for a teacher if you teach yourself. So I never really learned how to use my fingers on the typewriter. So I never really became a very good typist, huh? And

[42:33] but in the old typewriters, huh? There always seemed to be a key that didn't work right. I don't know if you remember the old typewriters. And so you type out a word and six letters, and five of the letters would be nice, clear, and distinct, and one of them would be kind of what faint. So you have to back up and hit that key again, and then back up again, hit again, maybe three or four times, and finally you get dark enough, you know.

[43:00] So, what do you say about the ability to take it? But it was long. Yeah, yeah. See, so it was. It did react. My fingers didn't just get stuck, but it didn't do well. Do it well, yeah. So that's another sense, right? So you see those five senses then of ability.

[43:33] But again, the most important distinction is between the ability to move another and the ability to be moved another, right? If I like to say in English, the ability to act upon another is the ability to undergo, right? Okay.

[43:53] Aristotle says that understanding is an undergoing, right? And of course, in English, you got the same what? Etymology there, you got the word under there, right? Okay. And notice how we sometimes speak as if the matter is what the underlying matter, and as if the form is above the what matter. Okay, but the form in the matter is a result of the agent acting upon the matter, right?

[44:26] So, if the form is a result of the agent acting upon the matter, it's kind of natural to imagine the form as being above the what? The matter, right? Okay, because act upon means you're above, right? And the matter's undergoing.

[44:48] Now, in the next paragraph, the third paragraph, he's talking about how, in a way, the ability to move another and the ability to be moved by another are one ability, huh? Okay. In that they are connected, right? Okay. So, in a sense, you could say the piano's ability is an ability to be played by the pianist. So it kind of unites the two abilities together, right? But nevertheless, the ability to play the piano is in the pianist, and the ability to be played is in the piano.

[45:28] They're not the same thing, right? Now, sometimes it's a little more difficult because sometimes a thing has parts, right? And one part is able to act upon a what? Another part, yeah. But still, there's a distinction there of what parts, huh? Okay.

[45:53] The problem there in the great fragment of of. Anaxagoras, right? Where he says that the greater mind must be separated from things in order to act upon them. If it was mixed up with things, it couldn't order them. And we usually develop that point, you know. We say if a judge is going to rule in a case, say where you two businessmen are in dispute, the first thing we demand is that the judge should be impartial, right?

[46:32] Which means literally not a part of. I am there is a negative prefix. So if the judge is a you know has a financial interest in your company or the other guy's company, he should really excuse himself from being a judge in this case. So in order to rule others, you can't be what mixed up with them, right?

[46:56] And I've heard you know people describe you know when a priest is made a bishop, right? He can't be quite buddy buddy with the priest that he was buddy buddy with before he's made a bishop, right? He's got to kind of separate himself a bit, right? Otherwise, he can't rule, right? He's going to have his judgment corrupted, right? Well, then the problem was how can Anaxagoras turn around and say the mind is self-ruling?

[47:25] Because that seems, on the one hand, to be true, as is shown by the example of logic, where the mind rules itself. But the ruler has to be separated from the ruled. How can the mind rule itself? You may recall how we solved that problem, right?

[47:48] But we started with the idea of self-rule for a country. I see. And when a country enjoys self-rule, does that mean the whole country is ruling the whole country? No, it really means the one part, the government, is ruling the other parts. And when we say that a man is self-control in the way he self-rules, we mean maybe that his reason is ruling his what emotions. The still distinction between the ruler and the ruled, but it's hard to see because the distinction between the government and the governed is between different people, right?

[48:22] But now, when a man is self-control, self-rule, his reason and his emotions are inside of him. But the reason has to rule over the what emotions? Yeah, therefore it can't be mixed up with the emotions. So if I'm speaking out of emotion and not, you know, I can't rule my emotions. Someone else has to rule them for me. And then we had to find one. Well, what's the distinction in reason between the ruler and the ruled?

[48:51] And then we got the clue from the great Socrates. Socrates found in his conversations with men that they had mixed up what they know with what they don't know. And so you have to separate what you know from what you don't know, and then you can use what you do know to come to know what you don't know, right? So the mind is ruled in what it doesn't know by what it does know.

[49:19] So if I know the length of this table and the width of this rectangle, right, I'm going to be ruled by my knowledge of the length and the width in what I say eventually about the area of this.

[49:34] And so reason is ruled in the conclusion by the premises, huh? Now, of course, you can say it's ruled in the less known by the more known, okay? So there's always some kind of distinction there between the rule and the rule, huh? Well something like what Aristotle's saying here, right? That

[49:54] the ability to act upon something and the ability to undergo are never the same ability, but Sometimes the ability to act upon is in one thing, like say in the fire, and the ability to undergo or to be burnable is something else, like the paper. But sometimes the ability to act upon and the ability to undergo are found inside the same thing, right? But then there is always some kind of distinction, like of parts, right?

[50:20] Okay. So even when you speak, you know, in the study of living things, we say a living thing is a thing that what moves itself, right? So self-motion is is kind of the common notion of life, right? But like that self-ruling in the fragment we had long time ago of Alexander's, you've got to realize that's like when we speak of self-rule of a country, right? We don't mean there is no distinction to the ruler and the ruled, but that that phrase "self-rule" might kind of be taken to mean that, right?

[50:58] Okay. And the same way, self-motion might imply that the mover and the moved are what? Yeah, yeah, but there is always some kind of distinction, huh? Of parts or something like that, sir.

[51:12] Okay. But notice in the third paragraph on page one, he's saying that in some way the ability to act upon something and undergo are so connected that they seem to be one ability, right? Okay, the piano seems to be what, and the piano seems to be together, right, huh? Okay. And the piano is able to be played by the pianist. So we get the two abilities together, but yet they're in different what things, huh?

[51:44] And therefore, they seem to be, in that sense, clearly not the same ability, right? So the one by kind of order one to the other, but not that they're one and the same subject.

[52:06] Now, in the last paragraph, having talked about ability, it's time to talk about inability, right? At least fairly brief there. So he says, inability and unable is a lack which is contrary to such an ability. Okay. So we speak of the male as being impotent, right? Okay. Well, that's a what? A lack of such an ability, right? Okay. Um. So that every ability is opposed to an inability of the same and according to the same.

[52:46] Need a kind of little footnote there about the word lack, huh? Okay. But what does lack mean in the strict sense, huh? So I need to see the Latin word privation to see the Latin word to privation. What was a lack in the strict sense?

[53:05] Wouldn't it be a privation? Well, privation is is the Latin word for lack, right? Okay, something that should be there but isn't. Yeah, yeah. So, so in the fullest sense of lack, is a stone lacking life? No. Okay. You could, in a very broad and loose sense of lack, say that the stone lacks life. It doesn't have this, right? Okay. But since the stone is not apt to have life, and it's not something that should have life,

[53:42] it's not lack in the strictest sense. But the strictest sense of lack is the non-being, the non-existence of something you're able to have and should have, right? And we should have it, right? Okay. That's the the lack which is really something bad, right? Okay. So

[54:12] as I was touching upon the different senses of lack, from the loosest sense to the strictest sense, huh? It comes up a lot. Came up the word again in logic there, the word property, the word property, huh? What's when Euclid, not Euclid, Porphyry defines property there. Property belongs to only one species, to every member of it, and always. So half of four is a property of two.

[54:52] Only two is half of four. Every two is half of four. Two is always half of four, right? See. But then you could use property in a in a lesser sense, right? Is it a property of two to be, let's say, less than ten? Yeah. Yeah. But it belongs to other things besides two, right? So it belongs always to two to be less than ten. It belongs to every two, but not only to two, right?

[55:25] See, your your a little less strict sense, huh? Is a property of man to be a logician. Well, every man is not a logician, especially a woman. And no woman, no woman is.

[55:43] So doesn't belong to every man to be a logician, right? And it doesn't belong to man, even those who are logicians, to always be a logician, right? Okay. But only man is a logician, right? There's no other animal that is a logician, right? So it has some connection with the nature of man, right? Why is man the only animal that's a logician? Because of his reason. Yeah, yeah.

[56:06] So it's connected with his nature, right? Okay. But as George Bernard Shaw said, right, the average man, you know, thinks about two or three times a year.

[56:23] Or the definition of man by Oscar Wilde: the irrational animal that gets angry when called upon to live animal that gets angry when called upon to live in accordance with the dictates of reason.

[56:41] So I told the students, we said, man is an animal, the rational animal. We don't mean to be. He uses his reason. I mean, he has reason, right? But uses it to justify a lot of things, you know, a brain and will and so on. Who gave that definition? The same one used here. Oscar Wilde. Yeah. One thing I'll never forget. I think it is Aristotle says this in the Ethics of the Politics.

[57:11] I think it's the Politics, but he talks about error being more natural to man. In the animal, yeah, the animal, In the animal he does, yeah. He's criticizing the early Greeks and said that he tried to explain how animals and men know. Aristotle said he'd give no explanation of how they're deceived. and that seems to be more common than knowing. So if we got to talk about what takes place in us, you know, I'll talk about that.

[57:35] I will teach it because Kasurik said that But Augustine says the only part of logic worth teaching is the part on mistakes and errors. I never found the text of Augustine, so I don't know whether that's. a quote or not. It was kind of interesting. Mark, it seemed to me, you know, what he said by Augustine and not. Okay,

[58:02] so should we take our break before we start the second meeting? So we can.