Prima Pars
Lecture 20: God Not in a Genus: Article 5 on Divine Simplicity

Transcript
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So, let's start for a moment here before we begin the fifth article here. And if you may not recall, but we said something about it before. In the fifth book of wisdom, right, where Aristotle distinguishes the meanings of the words used, especially in wisdom, right, and in the axioms, right, but to some extent, what, everywhere, right? He distinguishes four senses of whole and part, but as you know, a distinction of four is hard to grasp. And perhaps you could see a distinction there, as he begins, between the composed whole and universal whole, right? Now, the composed whole, as the name indicates, is put together from its parts, but is not set of its parts. So, the chair is put together from the legs and the seat and the back, but the back is not a chair, the seat is not a chair, the leg is not a chair. So, it's put together from its parts, but not set of them, right? A statement is put together from a noun and a verb, right? But a noun is not a statement, a verb is not a statement. Now, the universal whole is just the reverse. It's set of its parts, but not put together from them, right? So, animal is set of dog and cat and horse and elephant, but animal is not put together from dog, cat, horse and elephant. Otherwise, when you say a dog is an animal, you'd be saying a dog is composed of a cat, a horse and elephant and so on, okay? Which would be like John Locke speaking, you know, the universal idea of triangles being, you know, all or none of these particular kinds of triangles. Now, I've asked myself sometimes, why doesn't Thomas have a question, where the question is, where the God is parts, right? And where you eliminate the God's composed role, and also that God is a, what, universal role. Well, I found in sentences, in one of the questions, you have two articles right next to each other. Oh. Those two, right? Okay. But how about the summa? Well, in a way, in this question on the simplicity of God, you're showing that there's no composition of God, and therefore eliminating any kind of composed whole, right? But when you show that God is one, there's only one God, then you're showing that God is not a universal whole, instead of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or, you know, many gods, right? So, in a way, that God is not a universal whole is shown, and you show that God is one, right? Okay. But here you show that God is not a composed whole. Now, in the fifth book of wisdom, Aristotle distinguishes three composed wholes. And the first one he talks about is the quantitative whole. The whole we usually have in mind is, say, a whole is more than one of its parts, right? Mm-hmm. And, of course, in a quantitative whole, it's most known, I suppose, as the continuous quantitative whole. And the parts meet at a common boundary and so on, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. Now, the other kind he distinguishes are, is this central whole, right? And in reality, it's matter in what? Well, form. Okay. That's quite different than the quantitative whole, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay. In the quantitative whole, all the parts are to the whole's ability is to act, right? But in the essential whole, one part is to the other's ability to act, huh? Mm-hmm. Now, the definition is more on the side of the mind, right? Mm-hmm. But the genus is taken of what is material and the difference of what is what? Formal, right? Okay? Now, what has Thomas done in these articles leading up to just the first five articles, right? Well, in the first article, he's eliminated the quantitative whole, right? Because God is not a what? Body. A body, right? Okay. Then, the second thing he did in the second article was to eliminate what? Matter and form. Matter and form, right? Okay. But you could say, like the distinction between matter and form is what he does in the third article and the fourth article. In the third article, you have the essence of nature and God are the same, right? But if they were distinct as they are in you and me, our nature is to what's individual in us, something like form is the matter, but it's not exactly the same thing, but you could attach it here, right? I don't know. It's in likeness, huh? And then, existence, right? In the nature. Deny that composition that you have in creatures. Or the existence of the creature, right? The existence of a cat and what a cat is is not the same thing, but in God, they're the same. What God is and his existence are the same. But that's a little bit like matter and form too, in so far as existence is to be what? Nature, where they're distinct as act as to ability, right? And I was mentioning how in the Summa Contra Gentiles, after he shows that in the angels there's a composition of nature and existence, he wants you to see it. That's not the same thing as matter and form, and he has a chapter devoted to showing that difference, right? But people might confuse those two because both of you have act and ability, right? But you see how he's ordered those two articles, the second, third, and fourth, right? And the third is more like the second, right? Because the nature is more like the form than existence is, right? But still there's a likeness between those three. Now we get to the fifth article where he's going to eliminate that God is in a genus and so on, and the definition is composed of genius and difference, huh? And there's several chapters, you know, go into this in Summa Contra Gentiles, right? So you can see he's following the order here, right? Okay. Now the sixth article you'll see is something different because in denying the composition between substance and accident that you have in creatures of God, even in creatures, strictly speaking, substance and accident don't form a whole, okay? So I might be, for example, a man, and let's say I'm healthy. I suppose that's doubtful, but it's sad, I don't think. But is healthy man a whole, you see, strictly speaking? No. No. But there's a kind of composition there, right, huh? Okay. Or I'm a logical man, right? I'm known for my, some understanding of logic anyway, right? Okay. I don't want to say I'm a wise man, but a geometrical man, maybe. Do you see that, right? Or a white man, right? Mm-hmm. But that's not strictly speaking a whole, right? It's a unumperacidens, we'd say, huh? Okay. So that's put after the first five. You can see the first five articles are, in essence, around these three kinds of wholes, right? But the third and the fourth articles are ones that are like the second one, right? Okay. You see a little bit of the order that Thomas has here, huh? To the fifth one proceeds thus. It seems that God is not, that God is in some genus, huh? Okay. Now, do you remember the definition of genus from logic, huh? If you want to be sensible and take genus as a name, right? Is it not with the subject of many? Yeah. Differing in kind, right? Or in species. But in answer to the question, what is it, huh? Okay. So it's a name said with one meaning of many things other than kind, signifying what it is, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. So, it seems that God is in some genus. For substance is a being, what? Existing, subsisting by itself, right? As opposed to an accident, which is a thing that exists in another and can't exist apart from it, right? Okay. So this belongs most of all to God, right? That he be, ends per se, therefore God is in the genus of what? Substance, huh? Okay. Now, Thomas will point out, I assume here, like he does in the Summa Gargentele, that ends the genus per se, is not a fully adequate understanding of what Aristotle means by the genus substance. Okay? And if he doesn't give the real definition of substance. I hear we'll bring it in from the other summa, okay? Moreover, each thing is measured by something of its own kind, of its own genus. Now, in English we sometimes use the word kind for genus, and etymologically, you know, if you say something is sui generis, what would be the idiomatic way to say in English? Yeah, one of a kind, yeah, one of a kind, sui generis, of its own genus, yes. But we'd say idiomatic in English, one of a kind. But kind can be used sometimes for species as well as genus, so a general kind of thing, a particular kind of thing, right? But kind is somewhat similar, etymologically maybe, to genus too, if kin is in their generation. Moreover, each thing is measured by something of its own kind, of its own genus, as links by links, and number by number. But God is the measure of all substances, as is clear through the commentator. Now, who's called the commentator? It's Averroes, because he commented on all the major works of Aristotle, right? So he was known as the commentator by Averroes. Although I think Thomas deserves a title more than Averroes, but Thomas will follow the tradition, right, the custom, and refer to Averroes sometimes as by the name Averroes, but sometimes he refers to him as the commentator of the capital C. Just like he refers to Aristotle by Averroes as the philosopher, or St. Paul as the, what, the apostle. Now, notice it's in the commentator's comments on the 10th book of wisdom, right? 10th book of the metaphysics. And that's the book on the one and the many, right? And, of course, one we first see as the beginning of number, and then later on we realize that the one convertible with being is not the same as that. We'll see that when we get to the question on one, where Thomas would explain that again. But it's a kind of a property of the one, especially that it's the beginning of number, to be the measure, right? So every number is measured by one, huh? And then you kind of carry that idea over that the one is the measure of the many to what other genera and so on. So I've often thought, Thomas, why doesn't he have another question after the question that God is one, that God is a measure of all things, huh? Because that is an attribute of God too, huh? But he didn't do that, okay? But he would admit, you know, the commentator's saying here, and other places Thomas will talk about God being the measure of all things, but he doesn't after one, huh? Here. But against this is the genus is before, according to understanding, what is contained in the genus. But nothing is before God. Neither secundum rem, nor, what? Even in understanding. Therefore, God is not in some genus, huh? So Thomas begins by bringing out a distinction. I answer, it should be said that something is in a genus in two ways. In one way, simply, and what? Properly, huh? As a species which is contained under the genus, huh? In another way, by being led back to it, huh? As principles and privations, right? Okay. So where would you put the soul, or genus? In substance. Okay, but is the soul a substance, or part of a substance? A soul part. Yeah, or a principle of a substance, right? A principle. Okay. But you would nevertheless bring it back to that genus, right? Mm-hmm. And what genus would you put for privation, like, say, blindness, right? Quality. Yeah, you'd bring it back to quality, right? But it's not strictly speaking. Simply and properly a quality, right? A lack of a quality. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you can distinguish and order things by the categories, which are not species. Yeah. But because of the beginning of some species, or because of the lack of some species, or privation of some species. Just as point and unity are reduced to the genus of what? Quantity. As beginnings, right? That's especially clear about the point, huh? Mm-hmm. The point is the beginning of a line, right? A line is a, what, species of continuous quantity. So it's in the genus of quantity. Yeah. But is point a, what, quantity? Nope. No. So it's not simpliciter and propriae, simply and properly, in the category of quantity, right? Mm-hmm. But it's... The reduction. Yeah. And back again there, right? Because it is the beginning of a, what, quantity, right? The continuous, huh? And strictly speaking, is the one a, what? Yeah, is it a number? No. You know, it's one of these mixed-up moderns, you know? Okay. And I think I mentioned how Shakespeare, you know, in the... Is it the Turtle and the Phoenix there? The love poem there, huh? Mm-hmm. You know? Love has made the lover and the loved one, right? And therefore it's murdered number, right? So Shakespeare understands that one is not a number, right? See? Okay? And... Where is that? Where is that setting? Phoenix and the Turtle, yeah. Okay. Yeah. And as I say, I don't have a number of wives, as I tell my students. Yeah. Or a number of heads. I have a number of arms, a number of legs, because two is the first number, right? Okay. But notice, one is closer to being a number than a point is to being a what? A quantity or a quantity. Yeah. And one sign of that is that, not only that a number is composed of ones, right? Mm-hmm. But a line is not composed of points. Mm-hmm. But also, the fact that one can have to a number the same ratio that a number has to a number. Mm-hmm. So one is to two as what? Two is to four. Two is to four. Three is to six, right? But a point is not to a line as a line is to a line, right? Yeah. Okay. Now, a couple of footnotes to that. There's a theorem in the science of numbers there where you have to see, to maintain the truth of the theorem, that Euclid is calling one a number there, right? Mm-hmm. See? And it's an equivocal use of the word number, but it's not purely equivocal, equivocal by chance, huh? It's a theorem where he says that numbers in the least ratio, right? The least of numbers in the same ratio measure all other numbers in the same ratio. Oh. Okay? Well, if you take, let's say, the ratio of three to six, two to four, right? Well, two to four would be the smallest ones in that ratio, right? There are still numbers in the original sentence, but two doesn't measure three, and four is six. So you've got to go all the way down to one and two, because one measures two, and two measures four. One measures three, two measures six, right? So he's extending the word, what? Mm-hmm. Yeah. To include one, right? Okay. But that's an analogous use of the word, right? Yeah, but the difference is of the point. The point cannot have to align the ratio the number has, I mean, the line has to align, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. Of course, Thomas makes use of that fact, right? When he's talking about, is God and creatures better than God alone? Mm-hmm. And Thomas says, no. He says, well, it's the man now. I say, and Thomas gives a little likeness there, huh? That there's an infinite distance between God's goodness and the goodness of the creature. So the goodness of the creature is not to God like a shorter line is to a longer line, but like a point is to a line. And a point added to a line makes the line know what? A little longer. A little longer, yeah. Okay. That's a beautiful way of doing it, right? Mm-hmm. Or the other way he shows it, of course, is that the creature partakes of the goodness of God, right? And Dwayne Berquist, and a part of Dwayne Berquist, and the arm of Dwayne Berquist is no more than Dwayne Berquist alone. Mm-hmm. So God, and what partakes of God, divine goodness is no better than God alone, you know? And to me, that helps me understand how gratuitous is God's making us, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because it adds nothing. To his goodness, huh? So, point and one are reduced to the genus of quantity as beginnings, right? Blindness and all privations reduced to the genus of its habit, right? So ignorance we might put in the category of quality, not simplici terran propriae, but what? By reduction, right? Because it's a lack of the quality that you could have. But now he says, in neither way is God in a genus, right? Neither as a species, a particular kind of that general kind of thing, right? Nor even as a what? Principle that is limited, huh? Now, he's going to spend most of the arguments, he's going to get three arguments here, that he's not in there as a species, right? And then, later on, that he's not in there as what? Principle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in these separate reasons, right? That he's not able to be the species of some genus, he's able to be shown and to be ways, huh? You can see how important is the what? For this is Porphyry's work, the Isagogi, right? Mm-hmm. And most philosophers I run into now have not read the Isagogi. And some of them have not even heard of it. You know, what's that passage in the Acts of the Apostles, you know? And the Holy Spirit, have you seen the Holy Spirit? We've not even heard of him yet, have we? Yeah. And the Isagogi gets its name because Isagogi is the Greek word for what? Introduxio. Logically, it's the same thing. And this is like an introduction to the categories of Aristotle, but it's useful for other things, too. But it just got called from, after some time, just the Isagogi. And then they understood the name by Antonio Messiah. You know, this is the introduction to logic. And logic is the, you know, is before all the other sciences. So you had to know this thing, you know? And they haven't even heard of it, the Isagogi. How could you understand this if you didn't know what a species was and a genus is, huh? Because a species, now, is the name of a particular kind of thing placed under a genus, right? And of which that genus is said and answered the question, what is it? So dog is placed under animal, right? Or virtue is placed under habit. Or justice is played under virtue, and so on. Now, that it is not able to be the species of some genus is shown in three ways. First, because the species is constituted from the genus and the, what? Differences. Differences, huh? Okay. But always that from which is taken the difference, constituting the species, has itself to that whence the genus is taken as act is to potency. And even Porphy points that out, right? That the genus, in a way, is to what? The differences, right? As matter is to form. Its ability is to act, huh? Okay? And so when we're talking about the difficulties, say, that Anaxagoras has in understanding matter, right? And the difficulty he has is that he's putting everything matter is able to be actually in matter. And he's got to, he has problems to get all in there and so on. But in a way, John Locke has the same difficulty, right, about the genus, right? Because when he's talking about triangle in general, he wants to, what? Say it's equilateral, scalene, isosceles. It's all, none of these, right? And it's a little bit like Anaxagoras saying that everything's inside of everything, huh? And for these small pieces and all these other problems he gets into. And then you see the lightness there, right? Okay. So just as matter can be, what? Formed in different ways, right? So the genus can be determined by various differences, huh? So if you're going to ask, you know, what is the, what is triangle in general? Are the three sides equal or just two of them or none of them? It's open to all of them, but it's not in itself. Yeah, it's not actually any of these, but it's able to be all of them, right? Okay. That's something like wood that's able to be a chair, a table, a door, and so on. But as wood, it's not actually any one of these until it gets its form. So always that from which is taken the difference, constantly the species, has itself to that whence is taken the genus as act is to what? Potency. And that's where Aristotle talks about these, and Thomas will see definition as being more like a composition of matter and form than like the quantitative one, right? Okay. For animal is taken from the, what? Sensitive nature by way of concretion. For that is said to be an animal that has a sensing nature, right? But rational is taken from the intellectual nature, because rational is what has intellectual nature. But the intellectual is compared to the sensitive as act is to what? Ability. And similarly is manifested in any case of genus and different son. When, since in God, potency is not what? Joint act. It's pure act again. It is impossible that he be a species in some, what? Genus. Genus, huh? Can be a composition again of potency and act, huh? Secondly, because since the being of God is his essence or nature, as has been shown, if God were in some genus, it would be necessary that his genus be being. For genus signifies the essence of a thing, since it is predicated in regards to what the thing is, right? But the philosopher in the third book of wisdom shows that being is not able to be the genus of something. For every genus has differences which are outside the nature of the genus. But no difference can be found which is outside the being. Because non-being is not able to be a difference. Once it remains that God is not in a genus, huh? Sometimes in English you can see that more easily with something invertible with being there, namely something, right? Okay. Can something be a genus? No. No, because if it's a genus, it'd have to have differences. The difference would have to be something, right? So you'd be dividing something by something, right? Okay. So, notice that's an argument based on what? The previous what? We haven't put the previous article. Yeah. Yeah. That was the fourth article, isn't it? Okay. But the first one is going back to something more general, that God is what? Pure act, right? Which was shown at the beginning of the question, right? That's the very first article, right? The about that God is pure act, huh? And the summa conscientia is an old chapter just to that purpose, right? You know, it's more specifically laid out, right? This whole chapter. It's the foundation for the whole consideration of the substance of God, right? Third, because all things which are in one genus come together in what it is or the nature or the essence of their genus, which is predicated of them as regards what they are. But they differ by their what? Being, right, huh? For there is not the same being of man and of horse, nor of this man or of what? That man. And thus it is necessary that whatever things are in a genus, that they differ in them, their being, and what they are. For instance. In God, however, they don't differ, right? Mm-hmm. Once it is manifested, God is not in a genus as a, what? Species, huh? Okay. The second and third arguments are both from God being what? Being itself, right? Mm-hmm. And being can't be a genus, right? That's a genus it had to be. Because genus signifies a substance, right? And then because when you have, you know, any universe of that matter, the many that are underneath it differ in their existence, huh? But they have a common nature, huh? And therefore God would have to differ his nature and his existence if he could be the genus. And from this it is clear that he does not have a genus, right? Nor does he have differences. Nor is there a definition of him. That kind of whole, right? Okay. Because the definition is from genus indifference, right? Nor is there any demonstration of him, right? Because the middle term in a definition, or demonstration rather, is definition. Going back to the posterior analytics. Okay. So by those three arguments now he eliminates that God is what? In the genus. Yeah. The first one is taken from God being pure act. And the other two from God being high energy. Who am I, right? Which is being the same. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But two separate arguments, right? Mm-hmm. Now he wants to eliminate the other way of being in a genus by reduction, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay. Don't fence me in, huh? We're always amused as philosophers. The Latin word for the categories of our style of the ten highest genera is predicamentum. Mm-hmm. This is coming to English now to be the predicament. See? It's kind of funny, huh, because the more abstract word you might say, you know, has become now, you know, kind of concrete in our human situation, right? I'm in a real predicament, you know? I mean, and I guess the likeness is that when you're in a predicament, there seems to be no way out, right? You know? No matter what you do, I mean, I'm in a predicament. And if you're in a genus, strictly speaking, you can't get out. I mean, man can't go over to, you know, quality to be a quality instead of a substance, right? And geometry can't get out of quality instead of a substance, you know? Once you're in a predicament, you're fixed, right? You know? So God is not in a predicament. Okay, but Aristotle and his predicaments. Yeah, and that God is not in a genus by reduction as a beginning is manifest from this, that the beginning that is led back to some genus does not extend itself beyond that genus, huh? As the point is a beginning of nothing except, what, continuous quantity and the unit of discrete quantity, number. But God is the beginning of the whole being, right? As will be shown below. Once he's not contained in some genus as a, what? Yeah, our beginning. Speak English, okay? So I'm convinced now that God is not, right? So there's no composition of this kind here, right, huh? Thomas does it by showing that. God doesn't have a genus, right? No differences, therefore no definition. So you're eliminating these three kinds of composed whole, right? But following upon the second kind, two things that are somewhat similar to that, right, huh? Mm-hmm. And now he's talking about something a little bit different here in the sixth article, right? Because I don't think Aristotle would consider healthy man or white man or wise man as a whole, strictly speaking, huh? It's a little less unity than that, huh? It's unum prachidens, huh? Because one thing happens to another. But he's going to be complete and eliminate that kind of composition, too, huh? Okay? So in me there's a composition between me and my knowledge, or me and my health, but in God there's not going to be any composition of that sort either. To the sixth, one proceeds thus. It seems that in God there are some accidents, huh? For substance is not a, what, accident to anything, as is said in the first book of physics and natural hearing. But therefore, is an accident in one thing, cannot be a substance in another, right? Take out of his predicament, right? Just as it's proven that heat is not the substantial form of fire, because in other things it is a, what, accident, right? Third speech is a quality. But wisdom and virtue and other things of this sort, which in us are accidents, right? These are attributed to God, right? And therefore they must be, in God, accidents, huh? It's pretty convincing, right? Oh, excuse me, we didn't do the reply to the objection, did we? Yeah, yeah, okay. Okay, let's go back and do that first, huh? Okay. Now, the first objection, if you remember, was saying that substance means ends per se, right? Being by itself, or being through itself. And this, most of all, belongs to God, huh? To the first, therefore, it should be said that the name of substance not only signifies this, which is to be, what, by itself, because this, that is to be, is not able to be by itself a genus, as has been shown, Aristotle in the third book of metaphysics, but signifies an essence to which it belongs to be, that is, to be by itself, which, nevertheless, being is not its very essence. And thus it is clear that God is not in a genus of substance. Now, in the summa kind of gentiles, I think it's a little more clear. Now, we're showing that God is not in a genus of substance, huh? He says, what is meant by the genus of substance there is a res, he says, huh? Conveniat, esse, non in alia. A thing, right? Now, thing is taken from, what, having a nature, right? Okay? So, a thing whose nature it is, right? A thing to which belongs, right? To be, not in another, is in a subject, right? Okay? So, there's, in the notion of what substance is, a distinction between the, what? The nature, the thing, and the being that it has, right? And the thing that it has a nature such that it has this kind of being, rather than being another, right? Or, naturally, it would be a res, quick, convenient. It's the in-value, right? Okay? So, in this understanding of substance, there's a distinction between the thing and its nature, and the existence of the thing and its nature. And, in that sense, God could not be a substance, right? Now, if by substance you meant simply something that exists by itself, then you could say God is a substance, and sometimes, we speak of the substance of God, right? And sometimes Aristotle would call God a substance in that way, right? But not the substance which is the first of the ten categories, the first of the ten highest jader, right? And, in any genus, you've got to have a distinction between the nature of the thing, which is common to all the things, and the existence of each one of them, which will be distinct. So, the existence of the thing and its nature will not be the same, right? And, therefore, something like God, for whom existence and the nature are the same, cannot be in that kind of genus, right? Because, in any genus, there's a distinction between the nature and the existence, okay? I think it's a little, I should have said that here, but the same idea he's expressing here, right? Okay? Significat essentium cui competit sic esse, in this per se esse, right? Okay? It signifies a nature to which it belongs to exist in this way, right? When you say cui conveniat, you're indicating that the existence is not the, what, nature, right? Okay? Because they say accident would be the other, a thing whose nature is such that it belongs to it to be in another, okay?