De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 6: Definition, Substance, and the Problem of Defining the Soul

Transcript
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And that is the difference between a definition by cause and a definition by what? Effect, right? You know that distinction? So, Socrates says to Euthyphro, when he defines the pious as what pleases the gods, what the gods approve of, and he says, well, is it pious because they approve of it? Or do they approve of it because it is pious? In a sense, he's asking, is that approval by the gods, is that what makes it to be pious? Or is that a, what, effect, right, of being pious? And Socrates tries to argue there that it's really a result of being pious. He really hasn't told me fully what piety is. It becomes very important to ask that question when we talk about the good, or the beautiful, right? The good is first defined as what is desired by all. But is it good because it's desired? Or is it desired because it is good? The great Augustan man, the very young man he is. He asks, you know, the beautiful is that which pleases when seen, right? Well, is it beautiful because it pleases us when seen? Or does it please us, when we see it, because it is beautiful? And Augustan says, I have no doubt that it pleases our eyes because it is beautiful. So then you haven't fully brought out what the good and the beautiful is. You define it by its effect, right? Now notice, those two definitions, those two distinctions, rather, we said were similar because the property is like an effect, right? It's a result of the nature of the thing, right? And also the species making difference, as they call it. They call it so many differences for short, but the full title is the species making difference. If you find it, you find your style behind the topics. I do quite awesome. Species making difference. That's like the cause, right? What makes it to be what it is. So those two are somewhat equivalent, but a little differently stated, right? Just like Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, right? And Schrodinger's mathematical formulation of wave mechanics, right? We're shown to be equivalent, but they're a little differently stated. And sometimes, as Schrodinger's pointed out, it's more convenient to use one than the other, right? So sometimes it's more relevant to use the distinction between definition by cause and effect, right? And sometimes the other distinction, right? But they're somewhat similar to the two. I think you can see that a bit. But then we had a third, a third way of distinguishing definitions, huh? And there we went not so much to that by which, that's going to end up involving some difference in that by which you define. But we went to what it is that's being defined, right? Now I mention this because it's going to be very relevant to define the soul. And to the question Aristotle raises here, right? If there's not one way of defining all things, right? Then we've got to find a way of defining each, each, each thing, right? That might seem to be a vast task, you know, huh? Yeah. But there is some very fundamental distinctions among things that is very important for investigating what they are and for seeing that they have somewhat different definitions. And Aristotle talks about this most explicitly in the Seventh Book of Wisdom when he's talking about substance and definition, right? And he makes the famous remark there that either substance alone can be defined and accidents cannot be defined or if accidents can also be defined it's a different meaning of the word accident of the word definition. Now, why does he say that, right? Well, the very etymology of the word definition which comes from phoenix, huh? Which comes from the word for limit. The idea of the limits of something is very, what? Pesets, right? The outward limit of my body, say the surface of my body, the whole of me is contained within the limits of my body, right? No part of me is outside the limits of my body, right? No part of the table is outside the limits of the table. And no other chair here or door is within the limits of the table, is it? So the idea of limit, like the limits of the city of Worcester or whatever city it might be, seems to get tight fit, right? The shoe fits where, right? The definition has to fit just this one thing. So it seems contrary to the meaning of definition to bring in something other than what you're defining into the definition. Just as there should be no part of another city inside the city limits of Worcester, right? So inside the definition of a thing, the limits of a thing, right? There should be no other thing, right? But, if you study logic and you know the distinction between substance and accident, you know that substance is a thing that exists by itself, not in another subject. While an accident is something that exists only in another, and is incapable of existing outside of this other, right? Once you realize an accident and the kind of thing it is, it's something in another, of another. Maybe you can't define an accident without bringing in the, what? subject in which it exists. Let me take a simple example of that, huh? If health is an example of an accident, huh? Health doesn't exist by itself, but it exists in some body. Your body, or my body, or the cat's body, or something like that, right? Health is something of the healthy body, right? So maybe if I want to say what health is, I've got to say it's something like the good condition, right? Or the good disposition of the body, right? And maybe moral virtue is the good disposition of the soul, right? Why health is a good disposition of the body. Was I mentioning a thing that I haven't been across in the sophist there of Plato? Where he's comparing the virtues of the soul with the virtues of the body. Did I mention that? I don't think so. It's kind of interesting, because he compares moral virtue to the health of the body. And he compares knowledge to the beauty of the body. That kind of struck me, you know. There's a movie out now that they thought was at the Oscar for, but it's called A Beautiful Mind, right? You know, it's either kind of like if you have a newspaper or something, you'll probably run around to see this. Okay? So, Russell Crowe almost got his second Oscar for this, right? Okay? He's up for the Oscar. Now, I presume, when they call this man as having a beautiful mind, right? He got the Nobel Prize, right? It's based on a real-life person. His other problems, I mean, a little bit of... Well, we've got some problems. But his mind is described as a beautiful mind, right? Okay? But if you're right, you can speak of Aristotle's mind or Thomas Aquinas' mind as a beautiful mind, right? More so than you would call it a healthy mind. But if somebody has moral vice, you know, and he's abusing little children, take a common example nowadays, you can say, he's sick, right? You know? Yeah, he's sick. Some of these people, right? When you see that they're, you know, perverse in some way, you know, just sick. You know? Sip in the head, right? See? Now, I think I'd be careful about that because I think there's a way in which any virtue of the soul could be called the health of the soul, even the moral virtues. I mean, the intellectual virtues, right? But I think it's interesting that Plato kind of sees the moral virtues as being more like health, right? Or health being more like the moral virtues and beauty more like the other, right? and amateur. Certainly that's a kind of side thing, but you speak of the virtue of the body, right? Like health and virtue... ...of the soul, and you really define these in the body and soul. In other words, it's because of the, you have two kinds of things here, substance and accident, and actually there's more than two kinds here, you've got substance, quantity, quality, and so on. But just see this basic distinction here, two kinds of things. Well, if definition is speech making me know what a thing is, and you have two kinds of things, and maybe you have two kinds of definitions, you can't define these in exactly the same way. Now, the essential difference here, to make it even more general in a way, you can say the accident is something of another, while the substance is something by itself, you might say. It's not something of another. So, if we knew the nature of a substance, maybe we don't know the nature of a substance very well, because as the great Heraclitus says, nature loves to hide, right? But, if we knew the nature of a substance, we wouldn't have to bring anything into that definition, other than what that substance is. But, even if we know the nature, what it is, of a, what, accident, right? We'd have to bring in something other than that accident. Because that's the kind of thing it is. It's something of a, what? Another, right? Okay? Now, that was important when we were defining, let's say, time. Remember the definition of time? Time is a number of the before and after in motion, right? It's something of motion, right? When Aristotle investigated time, he began from the fact that there's some connection between time and motion. And we don't perceive time without perceiving some motion. So, either time is a motion, or time is something of motion. And then he reasoned, and gave a reason, why time is not motion, and therefore he concluded time must be something of motion. Now, what it is of motion, right? And then he started to bring out that it's something of the before and after in motion, right? When I speak of any amount of time, like three days, or three hours, or three minutes, I'm really, what? Giving you a number, right? But a number of the before and after in motion, right? You see? So, I mention this because is the soul going to be defined by itself, do you think? Or is the soul going to be defined as something, what? Of another, right? Now, if the soul is an accident of the body, well, then it's going to be defined as something of another, right? But, suppose the soul is something the genus of substance. And that's going to point out a little bit after he goes into the question about the genus of the soul, right? Let's go and look a little bit, I'm going to get ahead of myself and come back to where I was, but just to try to tie up, right? The question there. I could write around line 20 there, right? Which I'll come back to that text in a moment, but, okay? For the principles of others are other, as of number and of surfaces, so the number begins with the one, right? And surface and it's generally the continuous with the point, right? The one and the point are not the same thing, are they? So he says, perhaps it is first necessary to decide into which of the genre it falls, what it is, right? And what it is is also used in the definition of genus, right? Genus is a name said with one meaning, right? Of many things other in kind signifying what it is, right? I mean, whether into this something and substance, right? Now this something is the phrase that our studies as todeti in Greek, hak aliquid in Latin, for an individual substance like you or me, right? Is it this something and a substance? Or is it a quality, right? Or is it a quantity or is it a relation of some of the other ten categories, right? Now notice, we're not going to be going through all the opinions of his predecessors, but some think of the soul as a, what? Substance, right? And a substance distinct from the body that is said to be alive, right? And Plato, as you may know, thinks of it as an immaterial substance, right? Somehow imprisoned in the body for a period of time, right? Perhaps it's a punishment, right? Who knows? Others think of it in a more gross way, you know, of some, some, what? Material substance, right? So, some said that it was water. Some said the soul was air, right? Poets speak as if the substance was on the air. I mentioned how when the guy was dying in battle there, right? His soul started to leave his body and the great wind came up and pushed it back in and he survived. And others thought the soul was the element of fire, right? Because fire seems to grow and be active, right? And the market just thought it was these little atoms, you know, pushing your body around and so on. So some thought it was a substance, right? Distinct from the so-called living body, right? And moving that body, right? Either in your material substance or some other material substance that was kind of moving all the time like the atoms were according to him. Or some thought of it as a quality, like that's the category of quality. And I mentioned how in the symposium, Simius brings in the opinion that the soul is the harmony of the body, right? That's kind of like an accident, right? It's a good disposition of the body, but... So he mentions quality before quantity because that's probably a more probable opinion. But you also run into the Pythagorean opinion that the soul is a self-moving, what? Number. That would be quantity, right? See? See, that's the first question. Is the soul in the genus of substance? Like Plato thought to those who thought that it was water or air or fire or something like that. That's a subdivision, you know, material, material. Or is it a quality like those who thought it was the harmony of the body, right? Or the arrangement of the body, right? Okay, the ratio, right? Pedicly spoke of what? Flesh and blood and bones being made out of the same elements but in different, what? Rations, right? And maybe the living body differs because there's a different ratio of these things, right? Okay? Or quantity. That's maybe less probable, but some of those thought of these souls being a number and things of that sort. But then he raises the second question, right? And where is among beings in potency or rather in some actuality? Now, you may recall that when we studied change, we saw that the thing that changes is composed of something like matter and something like form, right? Of ability to act, huh? Well, if man is a substance and the cat is a substance, but men and cats come into existence and go out of existence, right? Then substance itself must be composed of something as matter and something as form, something as ability and something as act, right? That's a good question now. If you put the soul in substance, right? Is it in substance like man or dog or tree is in substance? Or is it in substance like the matter of a substance, right? Or the form of a substance, huh? You see? In which case it would not be a complete, what? Substance, huh? Okay? You see that? And when our style is going to investigate what the soul is by way of division there in the second book then, he would get that division. Not only the substance, quantity, quality, right? Which one is it in? But he'll subdivide substance into the, you know, the, uh, something that The substance is put directly into the substance, right? And something that is a principle of substance, because it's the matter and the form of a substance. But form now, in a sense, is substantial form. Okay? Now, how is that related back to the original question about definition? Well, if the soul is not a complete substance, but it's a form, which it might be, right? Form and matter, in a way, what? Are relative to each other, right? Maybe you can't know what the soul is without knowing that it is the form of this kind of a, what? Body, right? Okay? So, although the soul would not be an accident, in this case, it would be the genus of substance, right? Nevertheless, there would be resemblance between the way you'd have to define the soul in that case, and the way you define the accident. But you have to define it as something of another. Now, some people define the point as what? The end of a line, right? No, a line is not a point, and a point is not a line. That's a different thing, right? But maybe the point doesn't exist by itself. See? Maybe it only exists in the limited line, right? Maybe it's something of the limited line. What is it of the limited line? It's the end of it. It's like the surface of the table, right? In the strict sense, has length and width, but no depth, right? And could you really cut off the surface of the table then? No. It had to be a body to exist independent, right? And yet, since this body doesn't go on forever, it does have a surface, doesn't it? If you give that surface any depth, you haven't come to the end yet, have you? But the death does come to an end in this upper direction as well as other directions. So maybe the surface is the limit of a what? Body, but it can't be by itself, right? It can't have a surface maybe in the real world that has length and width, but no depth. See? It's just a thing by itself. It's kind of interesting if you had such a thing, right? But if all that exists is bodies and what's in bodies, right? And this is not a body, then it must be something of a body, right? And therefore you have to define it as what it is of a body. Well, it's not the disposition of a body, but it's the limit of a body. See? Maybe the soul has to be defined in a different way, you know, than you may have defined up to this point, right? Okay? It can't be defined as an accident, right? It's something of genius or substance. And it says, even Socrates gave some good arguments against the soul being the harmony of the body. He said, why would the soul resist the body? And the body urges it, we do sometimes, right? The urge to eat or drink and so on. Okay? Urge to go to sleep sometimes, right? Resist it. I'm driving my car, and I'm all back. Weird. I resist that urge to go to sleep, right? Why does the soul resist the body if it's just the harmony of the body, right? He said, kind of interesting argument, right? But A. Fort Siori, if the soul has some activity that's not in the body, right? How could it be the disposition of the body, right? So many things will lead us away from the idea that the soul is something actually in the body, and the soul being something substantial, right? But there are problems. You make the soul a complete substance, differing from the living body, like a man differs from a dog, or a tree from a stone, right? And you can't really understand the unity that you have as a human being. When you're hungry or in pain, and you're trying to think where you can get food or how you can get rid of this pain, that the one who's, what, thinking about how to get food or get rid of the pain is the one who's suffering. Hunger is suffering pain, right? You know? It's not just being charitable to the body, right? You're in pain, and I'm trying to see how I can relieve your pain, right? And it's, you know, Christians will try to relieve your pain, if you can, but when I'm in pain, there's an urgency into my thinking how I can relieve myself, right? When I'm dying of hunger, right? You know? It's part of my inward experience that we talked about, right? That the one who's thinking about how to relieve this pain is the one who's feeling that pain. Say, it's not my pet cat that's feeling it, and I'm trying to, you know, take care of my cat and make my cat feel better, right? You see? Do you see that? It's not like a mother being concerned about her child being in pain, right? You're suffering maybe more than the child in some way, right? But it's the same one who's suffering. You see? So I mentioned that, huh? So you tie up in a sense without going into all the problems about defining something. Is the soul going to be defined as something by itself, right? Or as something of another? Well, the others seem to be defining the soul either as an accident and therefore as something of another, right? Others are trying to define the soul as some substance distinct from the body, right? Maybe the truth is somewhere in between those, right? that the soul is something in substance rather than an accident, right? But it has to be defined in a way something like the way an accident is defined as something of another. Because it's not a complete substance by itself. But it's naturally a part of the complete substance, huh? And there's a connection between the form and the matter, just any form and any matter. So do you see that then? Now, I'm making a larger excursion here to use the phrase I picked up from Heath there in his notes and our friend Euclid there. Come back here to the line there 17 or 18 there, huh? 18, I guess. 19. He speaks of this question around line 20 there as presenting many difficulties and what? Errors, right? Now, the Greek, that's a pretty good translation of it, huh? Because er, even etymologically, corresponds to the Greek word, huh? And the Greek here. Ety, further. Polos, mini, right? Aporias, huh? That's the word for doubt, right? Eke, it has many doubts, right? There are many things that are puzzled in mind about this, right? Kai, planas. Okay? Now, planas there, put the Greek order, see it over here? It's like an N in Greek. So you're saying there are many errors about what the soul is, right? Okay. And, etymologically, as I said already, the word er, the Latin word, and the Greek word are the same etymologically in the origin, huh? They both come from the Greek or Latin word for what? To wander, yeah. So when you speak of a knight errant in fiction, right? You've probably seen this as some of this hyphen like that, huh? Some medieval stories there. You have a knight errant, huh? What is a knight errant doing? He's wandering around the countryside and there's a dragon there, there's a maiden being pursued by the dragon and he rescues the maiden for the dragon, right? Yeah. So what knight errant means is literally what? Yeah, yeah. Now sometimes the poets will pun on the different senses there of knight errant, right? He'd be a sinful man who's not made a good life here wandering around the countryside, right? See? But the original meaning of knight errant is a wandering knight. Yeah? Okay. Now in Greek This is a P there, the pi. It's where you get the word what? Planet, huh? And if you look in the Greek dictionary when they explain the various words that have this, sometimes they'll call them the planetary asteris, the wandering stars, right? And sometimes they just call them the wanderers, period. That's the word planets. Now, I don't know if you've studied astronomy, but sometimes they speak of the fixed stars. You see that expression, huh? So you look out at the sky there, and it's kind of revolving around us, or appears to be revolving around us, right? And the stars stay in exactly the same position in reference to each other, though. The whole spirit seems to be revolving, right? And so you see in astronomy books even today, they'll speak of them as the fixed stars, and then you have these other stars, or look like stars, that wander around the sky, right? And aren't in the same place relevant to the other ones. And so those are called the wandering stars, and that's what you get in Greek, huh? They're called the, what? Planetary stars, right? The wandering stars, unless we get our word planet. See what you're learning right now? Yeah. Now, I think that that etymology or origin of the word error is a key to something about how error takes place. What it seems to indicate is that error is the result of a, what? Yeah. It's the result of a disordered movement of reason. Okay? If you apply this to the mind now, right? Wander, right? It seems to name a disordered of reason. And we wander into, what? Error, right? We wander into illusions, as Shakespeare says, in the comedy of errors. The play called Comedy of Errors, right? So when your thoughts and your thinking are out of order, then your mind easily falls into some, what? Error, right? Okay? And as I tell the students all the time, you know, when the machine is not functioning well, they put up a sign sometimes, they hang a sign that's saying, out of order, right? Often do you see that, right? So when your mind or reason, you're thinking your thoughts are out of order, then your mind is not functioning well, right? And therefore, it's apt to, what? Fall into error, right? Okay? So, the fact that the Greeks and the Latins are as far as independent of each other, right? But in both languages, you have a sign that error is a result of a disordered movement of reason for the very word itself, huh? You see that? Now, when Thomas is talking about logic, and I don't know if we, did I give you, we did logic, Thomas' premium logic? Yeah. Okay? And Thomas says that logic helps our reason to proceed, and he uses three words, huh? He helps our reason to proceed in its acts, he says, huh? Orderly, easily, and without error, huh? Okay? I think the order there of these three is significant, right? If you recall that premium, Aristotle's comparing art, to some extent, the art of logic, with the arts that are more known to us, huh? And so, when you invite the carpentry into your house to make something, right? Or the plumber, or whatever it is, right? If he's really a master carpenter, a master plumber, he goes about in a very early way, you see? The same way to cook a shack, in a very early way, which is that what they do in the kitchen. And if it seems so easy, what they do, like when I fixed the plumbing, like when I fixed the carpentry, right? See? And they don't make the errors that you make when you try to do this without possessing the, what, art, huh? So my brother-in-law is a carpenter sometimes. He's a job now, but he's always carpentry, you know, but I just don't know carpentry, and he's like, Quinn, why don't you do it that way? Well, I don't know what I mean. He said, he said, done this, you know? See? Okay. But notice the connection there between proceeding orderly and what? Without air, same knowledge of what? Opposites, right? Orderly and without air, disordered movement. Is there a connection? Okay. Now, I need a little volume here. I picked up years ago, it was up in the Spencer Abbey there, you know, they have a little bookshop they have up there, and they have a bigger one now, I guess, in the old days. But I was wandering around there one time, and this is called A Harmony of the Gospels, right? And what's nice about it is that it gives all four Gospels, huh? Now, someone gave me one time a harmony of what we call the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, right? Because they seem to be close in some ways. But this one here takes all four Gospels, huh? So, what it gives you is the parallel passages, huh? And in some cases, you have a, it's divided actually into 112 things, you know? 112 is ascension, right? And number one is the eternal word, huh? Again, John's Gospel. Because that's found only in John, right? Sometimes it's found in two Sundays on the count of three, right? So it goes through all of them, right? And it came to the end. So I'd say it's very handy if you want to say, you know, if you want to compare what the different Gospel writers might say about the same thing. Now, this is the one about here. And of course, it's number 84 in here. It's the one about the resurrection of the dead, huh? And it's in Matthew and in Mark and in what? Luke, but not in what? John, right? Okay? Now, it's interesting to compare the three versions of it, huh? Because sometimes there's something in one that is not in the others, right? You kind of note that. I think I was mentioning how when I was studying the texts on the commandment of love, right? You should love the Lord your God. It usually translates with your whole heart, with your whole mind, with your whole soul, and your whole strength, and your whole mind, right? Okay? And in English, we use the same preposition for all three or four of those things. When I look at the Greek text, some of them, you know, like that, have the same word in Greek for all three or four of those things, your heart. But in Luke, there's a difference. In Luke, it said, you should love the Lord your God from your whole heart, and in your whole soul, and in your whole strength, and in your whole mind. So, it used the word from with heart, and in with soul, and strength, and in mind. I think there's something significant about that, huh? Because the love of God, and the love of your neighbor for that matter, that's an act of your will. But it's an act of your will that commands or should command the acts of all the powers of the soul. So, there's a difference between the way you should love God with your heart and with your mind. It's from your heart, right, into your whole soul, into your whole strength, your whole mind. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on.