Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 49: The Unity of Matter and Form Through Act and Potency

Transcript
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Back to Plato's problem, you have to go back to the first matter in philosophy and gradually build up to this high point. So it's quite a process to do that, but you really can't go from the corruption of philosophy back to philosophy. That would be like getting wine from vinegar. There are other criticisms you might make of Plato's argument there, or Socrates' argument, but you could argue that there is in some sense a change from the, what, non-living to the living, right? And that's seen every time we eat them, because the chicken, when we eat the chicken, it's not a lie, right? But eventually, so it becomes some living flesh, blood or bone or something. So there must be somewhat change in both directions, right? Not exactly from the dead back to living, right? Strictly speaking, or from vinegar back to wine. I should take a little break now, because this is right between the fourth and fifth reading, and that's... We'll go to reading 5 now. Now, as we said, reading 5 is basically about the union of matter and form. He recalls what we were saying before about definitions and about numbers. What is the unity of them, right? And that was a question kind of raised before, but he's going to solve it again, so to speak. In regard to the force of difficulty about definitions and about numbers, what is the cause of there being one thing? Now, he says, all things which have many parts and which the whole is not, as it were, just a heap, but the whole is something besides the parts, there is some cause. For even in bodies, contact is the cause of unity in some. And others, stickiness, there's some such other undergoing. And a definition is one speech, not by being bound together like the Iliad, but by being a one thing. Why, then, is it one and not many? For example, animal and two-footed, huh? He always gives the definition of man in the metaphysics, two-footed animal, right? They're a rational animal. So, why is animal and two-footed, not two things, right? Why are they one thing, right? The two-footed animal. And then the second paragraph, the first complete one on page 8, allusion to the platonic problem, right? Further, if there are, as some say, these universals separated, right, from singulars, then there would be an animal itself and a two-footed itself, right? Why is not man these, then? Plato said that, what? Man and dog and so on, we partake of these universals, right? So, if animal is one universal and two-footed is another, then we're going to partake of two, what? Universals. Yeah. And in general, man would not be one thing, but many. It would be animal and, what? Two-footed. Okay, so that's the problem there, huh? What makes these things what? Definition of number, right? Okay. And then the second difficulty is one more for the Platonists, right? Of whom he was one for 20 years, right? In the school of Plato. Her daughter was there from 17 to about 37, huh? He left because Plato died. Okay. She must have been one hell of a good teacher there, Plato, right? Must have been an awfully good school, if you spend 20 years there. Must have been 20 years with me. You're not a good, you're not a good enough Platonist. It was a very good school, right? And as I tell the students, where does the academic world get its name, you know? Where does the academy get its name? Oh, yeah. Where do academic programs, the academic deans get their name, right? Well, the whole academic world is named from Plato's school. So, if you're in the academic world, you should know something about Plato's school, huh? I said to one of my philosophical colleagues, how are your geometrical studies coming? Geometrical studies? Yeah, you wouldn't get into the academy without that. They say that, or the interest of the academy was the words, let no one ignorant of geometry come in here. So I said, you wouldn't get into it. The University of Paris, if you wanted to study theology, you had to be a master of the first book of Euclid, at least. You wouldn't get into the theology program without knowing the first book of Euclid. Okay, now, in the third paragraph, the second complete one on page 8, he begins to, what, solve it again, right? It is clear, then, that if people proceed thus, as they are accustomed to define and speak, it will not be possible to answer and untie the difficulty. So looking for some third thing to unite the matter and the what form, right? But if, as we say, this is matter and that is form, and this is an ability and that an act, so that one is merely the, what, act of the other's ability, right? What is sought would no longer seem a, what, difficulty. Okay? So if the union of matter and form, you could say, is immediate, huh? One, in the sense of having no middle, right? Because one is merely the actuality of the other's ability. So it's now like two things in act, like the parts of the chair, right, that have to be glued together or screwed together or something of that sort, right? You don't need something else to unite them. Now, he's going to exemplify this a bit in natural things by comparison to artificial things and then he'll talk a bit about it in mathematics and then, strange as it may seem, he'll talk about it in the things that have no matter. Okay? For this difficulty is the same as with a rise is spherical bronze the definition of cloak. Now, he takes bronze. I always take spherical clay myself as an example, right? So if you have clay in the shape of a, what? Sphere, right? What unites the shape and the clay? Do you look for something to unite them? Do you glue together the shape and the clay? Or do you nail them together? Screw them together? Tape them together? Put a rope around them and pull them together? No, because the shape of the clay, right, and the clay are like two actual things that have to have a third thing unite them but the shape is the actuality of the ability of the clay to be a sphere. So the union is, what? Immediate. Yeah. And Aristotle brings this out when he talks about the soul, right? There's some looking for a way to unite the soul with the body, not realizing the soul is the form of the body and therefore the union is something immediate. And he could speak of whatever it is that shapes the clay as being a cause, right? Because it's reducing the ability to act. But it's not like there's an intrinsic thing in uniting the two. For this would be a sign of the definition so that what is sought is the cause of sphere and bronze being one. But the difficulty no longer appears is because the one is matter, the other form. Now what is the cause of this, huh? Of what was a sphere and ability being actually a sphere besides the maker in those things of which there is coming to be? Okay? There's no intrinsic thing there in uniting the two, huh? But you could say in some sense the, what, the man who shaped the clay, huh? Shaped the wood or whatever the material was. He's responsible for the union, right? But he's not in there between the two of them holding them together. They're united immediately. Now in the next paragraph he turns to the mathematical, huh? And he says of matter some is understandable and some sensible. Well, usually Aristotle will speak in two ways. Sometimes he'll say that there's no matter at all, right? In the definition of the geometrical sphere. So, if you had a material sphere if I threw a rubber sphere against the wall here it would, what? Bounce back, right? If I threw a glass sphere against the wall it might shatter, right? If I threw a metal sphere it might go through the wall or stick in it, right? You see? But you couldn't say anything about the geometrical sphere, right? Okay? Or, you know, if you didn't go over a helium balloon it would go up, right? If you'd go over a helium balloon it would go down. Or if you didn't go over a geometrical sphere. They can't say it goes up or down but there's no reference to motion, huh? So matter in the ordinary sense and motion there's no reference to them in the definition of the geometrical sphere. But, if you want to speak of the extension, right? The length and the width and so on. Or the length and the width and the depth if you have a solid figure. You can speak of that as a kind of understandable matter, Aristotle calls it, right? But maybe it would be better named an imaginable matter, right? Okay? This is the extension that you have on a plane or in a few dimensions in geometry, huh? And then you can say that triangle and square and circle and so on is like form in what? A kind of imaginable matter. Okay? And sphere and cube are in three-dimensional imaginable matter. Okay? So that's what he's speaking of here. Sometimes then he speaks of two kinds of matter. Of matter, some is understandable or imaginable and some sensible. But I think he used the word understandable if he wants to make sure it's something quite different, right? Okay? And always in the definition, this is matter and that act. For example, the circle is a plane figure, right? So the plane is like the matter, right? And then you, what? Give it a certain, what? Shape, huh? Okay? Now, in the next paragraph, he's going to allude now to the things that are what? Property to science, right? Things that don't have either sensible matter or understandable matter, right? And they are just, what? Forms. Forms. Okay? Like Brinkha says, divina substantia forma est. Divine substance is form. It's dying. But whatever things have no matter, and have either understandable matter or simple matter, are right away each something one, right? Okay? Just as being itself, huh? It's right away individual substance. How? How much? Now, Thomas says that's a reference to, what? But the distinction, you're making a comparison here, to the distinction of being according to the ten highest genre. Okay? Well, what a thing is, its size, right? Right away they are what? Something distinct, huh? They're not as if being is being determined by a difference here, right? Being is not really a genius, right? Okay? So being, you might say, right away means either substance or how quality or how much quantity right when it goes again, right? He says, that's the way these separated substances are, right? They're right away what they are, and not through some matter being formed, right? And so they're right away through themselves something one, rather than what they are through a form that comes to a matter, right? And makes them to be one this or one that, huh? Okay? Whence there is no other cause of being one for any of these, meaning intrinsic cause now, nor there being a being and act, huh? Well, in the case of you and me, anything material, right? The material is a man or a dog, or in the other case, it doesn't matter, a triangle or a circle, only an ability, right? And through the form, it's actually one or the other, right? And this matter could be many things, but it's one thing to its form, right? So it has being an act and unity to its form, and not, what, right away being unity. Because the matter doesn't have being an act, right? Nor is it one this or one that until it gets the form that makes it to be one this or one that, but these immaterial things would be just, what, forms, and therefore they would be right away, immediately, right, both beings in act and something, what, one, okay? There'd be no cause within them of their being or their being one, but they are through themselves beings and what, right? Okay? Intrinsically, right? Okay. With angels, though, where their being is caused, couldn't you say that there is some type of composition in them, their composition between essence and existence, and that's caused by God? But this composition of substance and existence is not the same thing as other forms. Yeah, yeah. Aristotle hasn't yet pointed out yet, you know? But it'd be something different from matter and form, right? Okay? So you see, the substance of the angel is just form, right? Mm-hmm. And through this form, he's actually what he is, right? Yeah. And he's one kind of thing, yeah? But the form is what he is. Mm-hmm. See? Why, our form is not the whole of us, right? Mm-hmm. But the form is something that comes to our matter, and through that form, our matter is actually a man and actually one thing, okay? So he's going to get the idea that they'll be different, huh? Mm-hmm. Now, the last of the paragraphs is just dealing in, again, with the difficulty people get into who don't understand, right? This business of how matter and form are one, and how a fortiori, what is just a form is one, right? Because of this difficulty, some speak of participation, and that's what the Platonists do, right? And ask, what is the cause of participation, and what it is to participate, huh? And others speak of being together. As Lycophon says, knowledge is of knowing in the soul. Others say that living is of putting together or binding together the soul of the body. Is that true? So you've been looking for a third thing, right? To unite the soul and the body, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? But it's the body that has the soul that is alive, right? And through having the soul, it is alive. I think I mentioned how sometimes Aristotle would distinguish four senses of whole and part, in the fifth book of Wisdom, and two of these wholes and parts are more in the mind, and two of them are in things. So in the mind, you have the whole called a definition, the genus and the differences, right? And then in the mind, you have what they call the universal whole. So sometimes we say that the general is like a whole, and the particular is like a part, and the word particular, as you can see, comes from the word part, so it seems like it's a different sense of whole and part, huh? So in one sense, you could say that Aristotle points out in the fifth book, you could say that animal, in one sense, is a part of man, that's a part of the definition of man, as a rational animal or something like this, or a two-footed animal, but in another sense, what, man is a part of animal, right? And that wouldn't make any sense if it was the same kind of what? Part and whole, right? But then he speaks of two kinds of wholes and parts in things, and one would be more the quantitative parts, huh? And the other would be the whole of what matter and form, okay? So he says, what are my parts? Well, my head and my arms and legs and all my organs and so on, that's one kind of whole and part, right? I'm composed of these parts, right? These quantitative parts. But in another sense, I'm composed of a, what, body and soul, right? Okay? And obviously, that's a different sense of whole and part, huh? And I sometimes take the simple example of the word cat, as you've heard me say before, right? And you probably see C, A, and T, the three letters, as the parts of the word cat, right? And they seem to be all the parts, right? But then when you compare the word cat and the word act, you might say, well, in another sense, you could say that the parts of the word cat are the letters and the order of the letters. It's put together from these letters, but also through an order of those letters, right? And the word act is put together from the same letters, but a different order, right? That's a different sense of whole and part than the quantitative ones, huh? And Aristotle, in the, in two places where he's talking about the whole and part, like in the dialectic we mentioned of the third book of wisdom, where he's saying that if you want to get to the, you want to get to the, you want to get to the, you want to get to the, you want to get to the, you want to get to the, you want to get to the, you want to get to the, you want to get to the, you want to get to the, you want to get to the, you want to get to the, you want To know a thing, well, you've got to take it apart, right? But there's a number of ways to take it apart, of course, by the different senses of whole and part. And he gives three ways, right? He leads out this one into matter and form. Why does he do that? Well, it's as if these are the ones that people think about first. And what he's talking about in the first chapter of physics, where he's talking about how we know things in a confused way before we know them distinctly. And therefore, we know the whole before we distinguish the parts. Well, three of the four kinds of whole and parts come up in the way he proceeds, but the matter and form doesn't. And that's, in a sense, the most important for natural philosophy, right? He doesn't bring that out until much later on in book three, I mean book one of the natural hearing of physics. So, it seems to be some difficulty for us to understand that. And I discovered years ago when I was studying Thomas here in the fourth book of physics there, he's distinguishing and ordering the eight senses of in and out. Okay? And he puts genus, species in genus before form and matter. See, that's awfully strange, right? Because species in genus, that's talking about things up in the mind, right? Like form and matter is something out here in the sensible world. And yet, in the order of the senses of in and out, species in genus comes before form and matter. Now, if you see the order of them, you'll see why that is so. Because species in genus is like part and whole. And the senses right before that are part and whole. But, apart from the order, going back to the beginning of the word, when you stop and ask somebody, right? And you say to him, Now, suppose you have a piece of clay in the shape of a sphere. And you mold it into a cube, right? And you say, Well, it'll change you, right? What has changed? The clay or its shape? What will the average person answer? Yeah. See? Now, is it the shape that has changed? See? When you say the shape has changed, you're falsely imagining the genus shape to be, as it were, changing from spherical shape to cubical shape. As if the genus is changing from one species to the other. Is that what's going on? No. It's the clay that is changing, albeit accidentally, right? It's not changing substantially. But it's the clay that was the sphere that now is a cube. It's the clay that's changing, right? But people will invariably say when you ask them, they'll say, The shape has changed. As if the genus has changed from one species to the other, right? So they're falling back upon the sense in which the species is in the genus, rather than, what? Form and matter. As if some of that way of speaking is hard to understand. It's kind of strange, huh? But that's what they'll do. When a man goes from young to old, Is the man different or is his age different? Or when you go from sick to healthy, right? We might say your condition has changed, right? We sometimes say his condition has changed the worse or the better of what it is, right? Okay. Well, condition is really like the genus of health and sickness, right? Good and bad condition. So you're saying the condition, the genus has changed from one species to the other. Well, it's not the condition. It's the man or the body which has changed from being sick to being healthy or vice versa. So you'll find that this is a sign, you see, we'll fall back upon the earlier meaning of the word when you're trying to speak of a later meaning. And that's a sign that the earlier meaning really is more known to us. And we tend to fall back and we can't quite get to the next sense. Happens again and again with these words, huh? In plateness sometimes, you know, they speak as if place were like the matter of things, right? And just as, you know, one sheep is in the clay and then another sheep is in the clay, right? So in the same place there's not one body and then another body, right? So that the place seems to be to the two bodies that are successfully in it, like the clay is to the two sheep that are successfully in it, right? Well, there you fall all the way back upon the first sense of him, which is to be in what? In the place. In the place, yeah. So, like you're fine, right? Promises are not unique to him, huh? Yet the same account, he says, would apply to all. Now, notice how in English, we might borrow the Latin word, kind of conceding a bit, huh? We might say that man is composed of a, what? Body and soul, right? Okay. Now let's speak English. What's the English word for composed? To come together. Yeah, yeah. Now, you're putting together body and soul, right? You know, you're putting together matter and form, right? But notice those words, put together, kind of imply what? Kind of a spatial meaning, huh? You know? I put together the glass here with my briefcase here, right? Bring it together, right? Put it together, right? Even, you know, with difference in genus, huh? The word difference, and the Greek word corresponding to it, diaphora, they have the same etymology, huh? What does diaphora mean, huh? Or difference mean? Well, ferro, fora means to carry, right? And diapart, right? So to carry apart, right? So I carried apart, not the glass in my briefcase. That's the difference does, right, huh? As if the genus is kind of a common place in which the two species are thrown together, right? And then you add the differences, and that carries apart, huh? So you can see that, right? You put together the matter of the form, right? Straining of the meaning there, right, huh? It's taking on a somewhat different meaning from what it usually means, huh? And you buy things nowadays, and you have to put them together yourself, right? You go down here and get a grill, something like that, you know, and they have a price assembled and a price not assembled. Well, it's nice to pay somebody to some of them because you're under some of your problems trying to put together, right? When you're trying to put together, each of these things is what? Actual and distinct one from another, right? You put together, and you put this in there, and you screw this onto this and so on. And once you identify the parts, make sure they're all there and so on. So that's what you do with matter and form, right? You take the form here, and you take the matter here, and then you bring them together, right, in the same place, more or less. Why do you say, what do you know? As I was mentioning, it was Socrates' first argument, huh? The real weakness in the argument, huh? It's not so much what Aristotle's putting out here about vinegar and wine, right? But the idea that he's thinking of the soul leaving the body, kind of what? A man leaving his house, in my comparison, right? Or a man leaving a car, and then coming back into the house, coming back into the car, right? Okay? And maybe, maybe not... human soul, but maybe with the animal soul or something else, it's a little bit like taking a piece of clay, right, and shaping it into a sphere, and then what, shaping it into a cube, and then shaping it back into a sphere, right, okay, where you don't take the shape out of the clay and put it over here, and then later on, pick it up again and put it back in again, right, it's not like you, you know, you've got a round hole or a square hole, and you take something out and you put it back in again, right, a cap and a bottle or something, you know, take it out, put it back in, so if it's going back from dead to alive, or at least none living to living, right, maybe you're, what, transforming the matter back, right, in which case you have a similar form, but not the same form that you had before, numerically the same, individually the same, in which case the soul would not be immortal, right, you see, so, but Plato's argument kind of is based, or Socrates' first argument is maybe kind of based upon kind of a false imagination of what it means, huh, you know, when you say you've lost your health, you know, a thing has lost its shape or something, you start losing your keys, right, you lose your keys, they're somewhere, I don't know where, but I pray to St. Anthony and you go find them, but when you lose your health, is it somewhere? People sometimes say, I don't know where my youth's gone or something, right, I haven't gone anywhere, except he's speaking, but our ways of speaking in that way, huh, and even you speak of becoming, coming into existence, going out of existence, huh, in other words, coming and going and taking from change of place, huh, so it's like existence was a house, you come into it and you go out of it, you can't imagine it that way, right, it goes back to the original meaning, but coming into existence and going out of existence is much different from coming into a house and going out of it, existence is not like a place you come into, and it's like Shakespeare saying all the world's a stage, right, and all the characters will say, you know, I've got to play your part, my part is a sad part or something, you know, and that's the thing, okay, so you've got to watch out about putting things together, right, okay, things that don't belong together, but again, what that expression means, so in the last paragraph he says, the cause is if they seek a reason-making one and a difference of ability and act, but as has been said, the last matter, the approximate matter and the form are the same in one, the one in ability and the other in act, huh, the one is the act of the other's ability, so it's like seeking the cause of something one and of its being one, for each thing is something one and what is an ability and what is an actor in some way one, so the cause of their being together, huh, being one, is nothing other besides what is moving it from ability to what, act, huh, whenever things have no matter are all simply something one, so, enough for book, what, eight of wisdom, right, okay, now let me pass out here, at least a few words, more copies, two more you want, enough, or at least take three more, I think, okay, now, wisdom, as you may recall, is about being as being, right, and as Aristotle points out when he shows us in the beginning of book four, being doesn't mean one thing, right, well, how can there be then one reasoned out knowledge of being as being? Well, as he points out, there is a, what, multiplicity of meanings of being, but they're connected, huh, and what he emphasized in the beginning of the fourth book was the connection of being with, what, substance, huh, okay, because some things are said to be because they're substances, huh, they're existence by themselves and themselves, others are said to be beings because of something of substance, like the accident of a substance, other things are said to be because of the coming to be or the passing away of a substance or accident, and some things even said to be because of the lack of something, like blindness, right, is said to be, right, and as some reference to accidents is the lack of the ability to see, huh, but then when he got to the fifth book of wisdom, he gave a more complete, you might say, distinction of the senses of being, huh, and the fundamental distinction that he gave there was into being by happening and being by itself or through itself, right, okay, and then under being through itself or by itself, he distinguished being according to the figures of, what, predication, substance, quantity, quality, and all, right, and then being as, what, true, right, which includes those things which are really, sometimes, are not really beings at all in the world out there, okay, so, take nothing, for example, right, you can say nothing is nothing, is that true? I think so. Yeah, yeah, so then you use the word is there, right, huh, but what is nothing? Nothing, right, you see, so, the mind takes nothing, though, as if it were what? Something, right, huh, but something only in the mind, and sees it, right? So, being as true, he says, right, huh? And we can maybe truly say about some man that he is blind, right, huh? But to be blind, is that really to be something? Or is it really not to be, right? To be something. Yeah, yeah. But yet it seems to be true to say that this man is blind, or this man is deaf, right? Right, or this student is ignorant, right, huh, okay? But ignorance is really the non-being of something in a subject able to have knowledge but doesn't have it, right, okay? And then he gave, last but not least, the division or distinction of being, viability, and act, okay, and this kind of crisscrosses the division of being according to the figures of predication, because you can speak of a built-in act in all of these 10 January, but this is a different way of distinguishing being, huh? Now, as you may recall, in the sixth book of wisdom, after he finally finishes stabilizing the subject of wisdom and separating it from the other forms of reason, knowledge, and so on, then he recalls all these distinctions of being in the fifth book, huh? And he, in the rest of book six, considers briefly accidental being, being by happening, and being as true, right? But he says neither one of these are the main concern of the wise man. Accidental being is not going to be his main concern in general, because nobody...