47. Undergoing, Immateriality, and the Object of Understanding

Subscribe in Podcast App | Download Transcript

Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

The Problem of Immaterial Reception (Objections 331-332) #

Two major objections are raised about how an immaterial intellect can undergo or be acted upon:

1. The First Objection: If the mind is simple, impassible, and has nothing material in it, how can it be acted upon (undergo/suffer) if undergoing requires something common to exist in both agent and patient? Two material bodies can act upon each other only because both are material. How can a material body act upon something immaterial?

2. The Second Objection: If understanding in act is the intelligible in act (they are the same), and the understanding and the understandable are identical, why doesn’t everything that is understandable also understand? Why isn’t understanding found everywhere?

The Multiple Meanings of Suffering/Undergoing #

Berquist emphasizes that the Greek word πάσχειν and Latin word passio have acquired multiple meanings that English “suffering” fails to capture:

• First meaning: Suffering that is destructive of nature (e.g., the Passion of Christ)
• Second meaning: Receiving something not destructive of one’s nature (e.g., emotions as “passions”)
• Third meaning: Receiving something that actually perfects and fulfills one’s nature (e.g., senses receiving their proper objects)

Berquist proposes “undergoing” as a better English translation because it preserves the sense of “being acted upon” without being permanently stuck on the first, destructive meaning.

Translation and Terminology Issues #

The Problem with “Suffering”: The English word “suffering” is locked into its first meaning and cannot convey the perfecting sense of reception. Examples:

• “I’m under the weather” = acted upon harmfully
• “He has undergone a lot in life” = suffered many things
• But “undergoing” can also mean being acted upon in ways that fulfill: losing one’s heart to God (a gain, not a loss), receiving sensible objects that perfect the senses

The Problem with “Power” for dunamis: Similarly, the Greek dunamis has multiple meanings:

• First sense: active power (to move or change other things)
• Later senses: passive ability, capacity to be acted upon
• English “power” is stuck on the active sense; “ability” better captures the range
• We say “breakable,” “beatable,” “meltable” to express passive ability

Theoretical/Speculative Philosophy: The Greek theoria and Latin speculativa both mean “looking at” or contemplation, but modern English:

• “Theoretical” suggests abstract constructs disconnected from reality
• “Speculative” suggests guessing (stock market speculation)
• Neither captures the concrete meaning: looking at things with the mind to understand them necessarily

Key Arguments #

Reply to the First Objection: Different Modes of Undergoing #

Berquist explains Aristotle’s response: the word “suffering” or “undergoing” has multiple meanings, and the intellect undergoes in a fundamentally different way than material bodies do.

• Material bodies undergo: through alteration, losing their shape when acted upon (like clay pressed into a new form)
• Senses undergo: by receiving their objects in a non-destructive way that perfects them (seeing color, hearing sound)
• Intellect undergoes: even more purely—it cannot be corrupted like a bodily organ; its receiving is purely a perfecting (becoming actually understanding)

The intellect is compared to a blank tablet (writing tablet, slate, blackboard) before anything is written on it. It has nothing in act before receiving intelligibles, just as a piece of paper is unmarked. This resolves why material things cannot act upon the immaterial intellect the way one body acts upon another: a different principle of action is required.

The Remaining Difficulty: How Can Material Things Make the Immaterial Intellect Understand? #

The solution points to a further principle: material things, as singular and continuous, are not actually intelligible. Therefore they cannot act upon the intellect to make it understand. What is needed is an ability within the soul itself to separate the universal from the singular—the active intellect or agent intellect, which will be discussed in the next chapter.

Reply to the Second Objection: Material Things Become Intelligible Only When Separated From Matter #

Why doesn’t everything intelligible also understand?

The Key Principle: A thing is intelligible to the extent that it is separated from matter. Therefore:

• Material things (dogs, cats, chairs) are potentially intelligible but not actually intelligible in their material nature
• Angels and God are actually intelligible in their very nature because they are immaterial
• What actually understands must be actually intelligible
• Therefore: material things remain material and lack the faculty of understanding; they become intelligible only through the immaterial act of understanding in another being (the human intellect)

The paradox resolves: the understandable becomes actually intelligible when separated from matter, but this separation exists only in the mind, not in the thing itself. The thing remains material and cannot understand. Only what is actually immaterial—angels, God—both understand and are understood.

The Connection Between Immateriality and Intelligibility #

Aristotle’s principle (330): “As things are separable from matter, thus also are they things which concern the mind.”

This explains the three divisions of speculative (looking) philosophy:

• Natural philosophy: Things cannot be understood without matter (sensible matter must be included)
• Mathematical philosophy: Things found in matter but understood without sensible matter (understood with intelligible/imaginable matter—extension)
• Metaphysics/Wisdom: Things studied involve no matter at all

As things are diversely separated from matter, they are intelligible in different ways. The more immaterial a thing is, the more intelligible it is.

Important Definitions #

Undergoing (πάσχειν / passio) #

The receiving of something by a patient from an agent. The word has evolved to mean:

1. Receiving that is destructive of nature
2. Receiving that is not destructive of nature
3. Receiving that perfects and fulfills nature

In understanding: the intellect undergoes in the third sense—it is perfected and fulfilled by receiving intelligibles.

Intelligible/Understandable (νοητόν / intelligibilis) #

• Potentially intelligible: Singular material things that can be understood but are not yet actually understood (the dog as sensed)
• Actually intelligible: Things understood in their universal essence, separated from individualizing matter (what a dog is)

Passive Intellect (Intellectus Possibilis) #

The faculty that is in potency to all intelligibles; it is nothing in act before receiving intelligibles; compared to matter that can receive all forms; like a blank tablet

Active Intellect (Intellectus Agens) #

The faculty that actualizes potentially intelligible things (discussed as coming in next chapter); makes things actually intelligible by separating universals from singular matter; compared to light

Examples & Illustrations #

The Blank Tablet #

The intellect before receiving any intelligibles is like a blank tablet, slate, or blackboard. As things are written upon it, it receives their forms. Berquist jokes: “I come to class and I erase the boards. That’s the way the human mind is in the beginning, you know? It’s like a blank tablet, but it still gets written. And gradually, it gets written upon it.”

The Cookie Press / Wax Seal #

Two material bodies in contact: one acts upon the other, imprinting its shape (pressing dough with a cookie press; stamping wax with a seal). This shows how material things can act upon each other through contact. The problem: how can an immaterial thing be contacted? An immaterial thing has no surface.

The Soul as “All Things” #

When you actually sense or understand, in a way you are what you sense and understand:

• The eye seeing red becomes red (the color red is in the eye)
• Having the definition of dog in your mind means you have the nature of dog in you
• Therefore the soul, by sensing and understanding, is in some way all things
• This is why it is more like God than anything else in the material world (God too is all things in a simple way)

Loss as Depending on the Recipient #

Berquist uses wordplay on “loss”: Is loss always bad?

• “To lose your mind” is bad
• “To lose your heart” depends—if you lose it to God, this is not a loss but a gain, a perfection
• The analogy: receiving sensible objects perfects the senses (unless too strong, which would corrupt them); receiving intelligibles always perfects the intellect

The Comfort of Lady Wisdom (Boethius) #

In Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Wisdom wears garments torn by men who, grasping parts of truth, boast of seeing the whole. The letter Theta (theoretical philosophy) is higher on her garments than Pi (practical philosophy), symbolizing the hierarchy of knowledge. The torn garments symbolize how men have divided and lacerated Truth through overspecialization.

Immateriality in the Three Divisions of Philosophy #

Geometry (part of speculative philosophy) is not guessing; it necessarily understands triangles. A theorem is “something to look at”—just as a sunset or beautiful painting is something to look at with the eyes, so theorems are things to look at with the mind.

Notable Quotes #

“For a thing seems to act while another suffers and undergo insofar as there is something common, present in both.” — Aristotle (De Anima III.4), quoted on the principle that agent and patient must share something in common

“In those things without matter, the understanding and the thing being understood are the same.” — Aristotle (De Anima III.4), on the identity of intellection and intelligibility in immaterial beings

“Generally, as things are separable from matter, thus also are they things which concern the mind.” — Aristotle (De Anima III.4), the principle governing the three divisions of philosophy

“When you go into a new area of physics…you have to learn a new meaning of the word understanding.” — Werner Heisenberg, quoted by Berquist on how understanding itself takes different forms depending on the domain

“Men seeing a part of the truth, they boast of seeing the whole.” — Aristotle, quoted in the Boethius commentary on how partial truth claims lead to fragmentation

Questions Addressed #

How can an immaterial intellect be acted upon by material things? #

Resolution: The intellect undergoes in a different mode than material bodies do. It receives in a perfecting, not destructive, way. Material things themselves are not actually intelligible; they become intelligible only through the activity of the active intellect within the soul, which makes intelligibles actually understandable. The key is that “undergoing” has multiple meanings, and intellection is a special kind of receiving.

Why doesn’t everything intelligible also understand, if understanding and the intelligible are the same? #

Resolution: Material things become intelligible only when separated from matter by the active intellect. They themselves remain material and therefore lack the faculty of understanding. Only actually immaterial things (angels, God) are actually intelligible in their very nature and therefore both understand and are understood. The intelligible in act is the understanding in act only when both occur in the same immaterial being.

What is the relationship between immateriality and intelligibility? #

Resolution: Something is intelligible to the extent that it is separated from matter. Therefore: natural philosophy requires sensible matter; mathematics operates without sensible but with intelligible matter; metaphysics concerns things entirely without matter. The three divisions of speculative philosophy correspond to different degrees of immateriality, and thus different modes of understanding.