De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 73: The Soul as Form of the Body: Thomas's Resolution

Transcript
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and the same with a painter you know a painter you know he's much more sensitive to shades of color than you and i are it's kind of funny my brother mark was out visiting a friend there in detroit and this guy had some friends who were artists and so on right and of course they're all to their eyes they're painters see and when they come in you know to a room like this or any room they haven't been in like this you know you know they're all you know like there's a slightly different shade of yellow than i've ever seen before you know and to me that's just yellow you know you know how women tend to be more sensitive too to colors you know and you know this is blue no no it's aqua you know you gotta get all these particular names but they actually understand something by these names right and they can discriminate between these things and to me they're all the same you see you know so my father-in-law used to always say you know you know you know it's all the same all these wines you didn't think i was you know i just paid for the name duane you know well they probably all tasted the same right you know but but but but you see in english you would say that you see it according to the way of the receiver right you know but there's something about the land word that that brings out something about it right you know and uh now i noticed you know when uh when i first tried to read uh homer you know i couldn't get into homer right then and then a couple years later i we got a nice edition of homer homer always helps you know and then i said i read like a book a night and she was i found i wanted to read more than one book i started reading a book you know and all of a sudden i had to what acquired yeah taste for it right all of a sudden i was exposed i turned in the right direction right now you see and uh you got to turn to different as c.s lewis explains a lot in his works you've got to turn to different forms of fiction in a different way right yeah you gotta expect something different right yeah so i mean these words are all kind of revealing them yeah and uh so he says whatever receiving ability whatever potency that can receive that is the act of somebody is going to receive a form in a bodily way that is to say materially right and individually right that's going to be in the continuous because the received is in the receiver according to the mode or way of the receiver right but the form of a thing understood is not received in the understanding in a material way and individually but rather it's received in an immaterial way and universally otherwise the understanding would not be knowing of immaterial universal things but as singular things only as are the senses therefore the understanding is not united to the body as a form now these objections in a way are saying that not understanding that the soul can be the form of a body and still have a power or ability that's not in the body that's a little hard to understand yeah okay but that's in a sense what the objections are or how they are proceeding right but thomas is going to go on to explain that the human soul is a form that's not totally immersed in the body as he'll put it then okay and that's kind of you know interesting use of the word there but i was mentioning it you know he has something floating in the what on the surface of the ocean right part of it is under the water right but part of it's above the water right and uh so this is the way the human soul is right it's a form in body in matter right but not wholly immersed in it huh and so it has some powers like the powers of sensing and the powers of digesting and growing and reproducing and so on right locomotive powers that it has only in the body right and then it has some powers like the ability to understand and the ability to choose right the will and they're not in the body right okay and the act of understanding as well right before it's theory so it has those three abilities insofar as it's not completely immersed in the body okay so the body was sharing the existence of the soul so explain but not uh completely it just says comprehend that existence huh yeah okay therefore so that conclusion right because it's the same one who is sensing and walking right and understanding right you know the old joke there you know what is it uh lbj said about uh ford there and isn't that thing you know i was insulting remarking he can't walk and chew gum at the same time not too bright see but you can can walk and think a little bit right you know as peripatetic philosophy should right as the name implies the hairstyle school is called the peripatetic school right means to walk around right yeah so they must have been able to think and walk at the same time right so um if you can walk and sense and understand at the same time right it's the same one doing all these right then your soul must not be entirely what immersed in matter right huh because you understand not in the body right yet you're not an angel because then you you wouldn't be sensing and what walking yeah moreover the fourth argument these are all someone similes related these ones inability or power and its action belongs to the same for the same is able to act and that acts but the act of the understanding intellectual action is not a somebody as is clear from the things we said above therefore neither is the understanding power or ability the power ability of somebody now the the forced objection here but the virtue or power cannot be more abstract or simple than the essence from which the virtue and the power is what derived therefore neither is the substance of the understanding the substance that understands a form of the body okay more that which by itself has being right and we argue that the soul was what subsistent right that by itself it has existence is not united would seem to a body as a form why is that because a form is that by which something is it's not what is but that by which something is huh okay and that's easy to see of course first of all in accidental forms huh health is not healthy health is that by which the body is like healthy right huh okay and thus the being of the form would not be of the form itself by itself but as we showed in the previous question there right the understanding principle the understanding principle or beginning has by itself being and is subsistent therefore it's not united to the body as a what form huh as thomas is going to point out the body what shares in existence of the soul right huh but it doesn't what completely absorb the existence of the soul right huh so i remember one time there shakespeare i know some character was complaining oh oh yeah yeah the the in the uh in symbol line i think it is anyway the man thinks that his wife who apparently is very virtuous has been unfaithful right huh and he's deceived you know by a villain right yakimo huh italian villain huh but he thinks that you know his wife we thought was the paragon of virtue is unfaithful and so on so he has a beautiful um soliloquy where he denounces woman huh womankind and it has in there we're all bastards right one of the words in there right you know we're all talking to that the siri i was saying you know uh you know kind of a subtle meaning of that is of course that we are what we seem to be kind of the crazy offspring of the material world and the spiritual you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know right now we have a soul that is what the form of a body right and yet it's not completely immersed in the body right and therefore that has things in common with the angels like the ability to understand and the ability to choose right so he seemed to be kind of the what illegitimate offspring of matter and the spirit right you know it's kind of a funny a funny uh creature you can write down to it huh you know the sixth and last ejection moreover that which is in something by itself or as such always is in it huh but it belongs to a form by itself or as such to be united to matter not by accident huh but to its very nature's very essence huh is the active matter okay otherwise from matter and form they would not come to be one thing substantially but only accidentally maybe like me and my clothes right huh see me and my clothes are really two different things right okay but the clothed man is something one accidentally but not one thing in a strict sense huh the form therefore is not able to be without its own matter huh but the understanding principle sense is incorruptible as has been shown it remains not united to the body when the body is corrupted therefore the understanding beginning is not united to the body as what form this is unusual that thomas has as many as six objections right and there's just about three here three or four and see the ideal thing to do you see when you're doing this thing you would um right after the same country you cut off the text there see that's all the prisoners have for a day or so right how am I going to resolve these objections I'm going to answer these objections huh but against this huh according to the philosopher in the eighth book of the metaphysics difference is taken from the form of a thing huh that's interesting huh because in a definition right you have two parts in the definition and those two parts of the definition are called the genus and the difference and usually there would be more than one difference but but the genus is the difference is something like what matter is to form right okay so if you want to make proportionate say the genus is the differences as matter is to what form right and that's the comparison there right huh if I have a piece of clay let's say take an obvious example the piece of clay is able to be what a sphere or cube and so on but it's determined to one or another by the form that you see so okay if you see this shape it's a sphere if you see that shape it's a cube and so on but the genus is able to be what an animal can be a man or a dog or take a I'll use your example see a quadrilateral can be a square huh or it can be a what oblong huh or it can be a rhombus or it can be a rhomboid or it can be a trapezium huh and so on right but the differences will determine it to be one or the other right okay so quadrilateral means you have four what's contained by four straight lines huh but those four straight lines can be equal or unequal right they can meet at right angles or it can meet at acute and obtuse angles right and so the differences are going to determine the genus huh so the genus is taken from what is material in a thing and the differences from what is what is form huh and therefore you see the confusion there you know if you take an exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and exegris and 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to one rather than the other so against this according to the philosopher in the eighth book of the metaphysics difference is taken from the formal thing but the difference that constitute constitutive of man right is rational that's this definition a rational animal right the monobiologist calls us a what homo sapiens right a wise ape right but ape is something animal and wise is something like rational right so rational sort of man by reason of the what beginning of understanding right so if the form or difference is taken from what form and the difference is rational rational is taken from the understanding principle then the intellect understanding principle must be the what form of man right mm-hmm okay i should take a break on recharge our mode of receiving okay technical reasoning break yeah i answered that it ought to be said that it's necessary to say that the you notice we use the intellectus there he's not using their intellectus there now to mean what the power of understanding and the ability to understand but the understanding soul right now okay i don't know how they translate in your english text there basis yeah but um not actually in my edition down here there's a footnote you know they're intellectus see the intellectual substance right the understanding substance right okay okay you can say the understanding soul right in other words um intellectus is used in latin i see in thomas he's not just in here but use intellectus sometimes to mean what um the ability to understand right sometimes the word intellectus will mean what the virtue um one of the virtues of that ability right natural understanding sometimes it's used as here for the understanding soul itself okay and it's got to be aware of that because the translators sometimes don't know how to translate so how do they translate your your text for intellect right how do they translate no and you have the english text yeah we must assert that the intellect which is the principle of intellectual operation intellect yeah okay maybe the yeah okay but as i say the word intellect in english probably means just the what ability to understand right huh yeah yeah it doesn't it doesn't name the substance that understands it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't it doesn So, in Latin, you see, the word intellectus, most commonly it's used in just these two sentences, power or ability to understand, in other words, reason itself, right? Or, sometimes it's used for the act of understanding itself, and sometimes it's used for a virtue, meaning a habit and disposition, right? A virtue of the ability to understand. Now, in Greek, the Greek word actually is nous sometimes, for the ability to understand, and when he's distinguishing the virtues of reason, right, in the fifth, or sixth book, rather, in the Comagian Ethics, he'll call one of them, what, nous, right? So, that's imitated in Latin, see, the ability to understand, right? And the virtue, what I usually call in English, natural understanding, I call this virtue of natural understanding, as opposed to the epistema, the reason of understanding, right? Okay? But in Latin, here, what intellectus sometimes has a sense of the act of understanding, right? And in English, now, you see, we could use the word understanding to name all three of these. So, when Thomas talks about the first two acts of reason and of logic, understanding what a thing is, right? Or, understanding the true or the false. Well, there, the word understanding is naming the act, right? But if you say man is an animal with, what, understanding, right? You could mean the ability to understand, right? And we could call that natural understanding, if you wanted to in English, understanding, right? Because understanding without having to reason it out, right? So, it's just called by the same name. The act? But here he's actually using it in a fourth sense, right? For the soul, the understanding of the soul. Okay? And see, be careful there, for when you read the word, right? Yeah. He didn't usually use it that way, but here he does, and I see him do that sometimes elsewhere. And sometimes you see it in Latin, too, the word mens, huh? Well, the word mens is sometimes translated by mind, huh? Or it might be almost a synonym for the ability to understand. But sometimes mens is used, you know, and you see in Augustine there, that the image of the Trinity is in the mente, in the mind. But then it includes more than just the ability to understand, it includes the will, right? And so on. Aristotle, for act of understanding, that's episteme, right? The act of understanding? Well, no, that's the, another virtue of reason, episteme. Oh, okay, what would he use for act of understanding? It would be, noe would be one word, right? To be related to noosa. Oh. Yeah, okay. Sometimes he uses the word, it's like the word for discourse there. Hmm. What? I can't remember the word now, but. Okay. Anyway, here the point that's important is that intellect is being used for the understanding soul, right, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Because the power, ability, to understand, is not an act or form of the body, right? The power, the ability to see is an act of the ire, right? Of a body. The ability to digest my food, right? Is an act of a body, right? One part of the body, right? Okay? But the power, ability to understand, is not the act of a body, right? But the understanding soul is a form of a, what? Body, right? Okay. So it's necessary to say that the understanding, huh? See, that may not be the best way to translate it in English, huh? And that's why he's saying, he has a footnote here in the Marriott edition. See the intellectualis substantia, right? The intellectual substance, right? The understanding substance. Or you can say the understanding soul, but that's something that he's talking about here, right? That part. So I answer that it ought to be said that it's necessary to say that the understanding soul, right? Which is the beginning, huh? Starting point of the intellectual operation. Is the form of the human, what? Body, right? Yeah. Okay. For that by which, and this is going to make down to Aristotle's demonstration that you have in the second book about the soul. And if you were here when you did that, Aristotle will first approach the definition of the soul in the second book there by six divisions. Remember that? He had three divisions on the side of the soul and three divisions on the side of the body. Yeah. Because the soul has to be defined as something of another, right? So he arrived it through the division, right? And then after he arrived, the definition of the soul is the first act of an actual body and so on. Then he had a demonstration, right? And that was a sojism, right? And there the sojism was, the soul is that by which we first live, see, hear, so on. Understand, right? And that by which we first do these things is the form of the body. Well, he's repeating in a sense that demonstration here, right? Okay. He says, that by which first something operates is the form, the act of that, to which the operation is attributed. Just as that by which the body first is healthy is what? Health, right? That would be like a form, right? And that by which the soul knows first is science. Whence health is the form of the body and science is a form of the what? Soul, right? Now, why is that so? He's going to give kind of a reason for that, right? And the reason for this is because nothing acts except insofar as it is what? Inact. Yeah. Whence that by which something is an act is that by which it what? It acts, huh? Okay? Now, that's something that's really developed originally in the philosophy of nature. You say, well, I'll try to show it in a kind of simple way here. Here, you eat a chicken. Okay. Now, if I can eat a chicken and sometimes I eat a pig, a luau or something, you know, or a part of a pig anyway, a pork chop or something, right? And sometimes you eat a cow, right? You have steak or something, right? Sometimes you eat a fish, right? I must have something in common with the cow and the pig and the chicken, right? After you eat that? Well, yeah, something in the cow or in the pig or in the chicken or the fish has become meat. Right. It's become human flesh and blood and bones, right? Right. Okay. Now, is that as matter or as form, that would be having in common? Matter. Matter. Matter, yeah. And that's why I have to chew my food, right? Mm-hmm. And then break it down with all kinds of acids I have inside of me, right? Mm-hmm. And then kind of build it into something like human flesh and blood and bone, fat and so on, right? Okay? Um. Okay. Mm-hmm. Now, do you hear me going around here and quacking or something? Mm-hmm. Like the bird does? Or, mm-hmm, like the cow does, huh? Not yet. Pointing like the pig, right? Mm-hmm. See? You don't see me with the operations of the what? I don't see me with the pig. I don't see me with the pig. I don't see me with the pig. The chicken or the thing, right? Yeah. But I do somewhat different operations, right? Yes. So what do I first have the operations of a man as opposed to the operations of a chicken or the operations of a pig or a cow? On the soul, right? Well, you say what I have in common with the pig and the chicken and the cow, right? Right. What do you have in common? Is the matter, right? Right. Right. Okay. But the operations of a man and the operations of a cow and a pig and a chicken are not the same, are they? No. That's right. Okay? And sometimes a human being runs around like a chicken. Is that a cut off? But it's not exactly the same way, right? Right. Not exactly. And vice versa, you know, if a lion were to eat me, right, huh? Yeah. Or the lion have in common with me, right? Right? Would the lion start acting like a human being? Does he hate me? Start reading Aristotle. Right. No, no, no. But, again, there's something in me that's able to be a lion. Right. And if the lion ate me, that in me which is able to be a lion would actually become a lion, right? Yeah. Okay? So that which is able to be a man or able to be a cow or a pig or a chicken is what we call matter, right? But that by which this is actually a man or a cow or a pig is going to be as what? Form, okay? And it's through that also that it has, it does what a pig does or what a chicken does or what a lion does or what a man does, right? Right. So the form is both that by which you are actually what you are, right? Right. The matter is that by which you are only what? What you are in ability, right? Okay. But you're actually what you are through your form. And through the form also that you have this what? The operation or the doing of this kind of thing, right? So that by which you are first able to do something is going to be what? Form rather than matter, right? Okay. And this is why Aristotle in the second book of the natural hearing there, second book of the physics, he shows that nature is both matter and form, okay? But he reasons that nature is more form than matter because nature is that by which something is natural. And by matter, it's this or that natural thing only in ability. By through form, it's actually one natural thing rather than another one. Yeah. So that by which you are actually a natural thing is more nature than that by which you are only a natural thing in ability. Right. The same thing is true about art, right? See? Mm-hmm. We take the Pietas there in Rome, right? Yeah. Is it a work of art because it's marble or because of its form? Its form. Yeah. Yeah. The form is more what it is by art than the matter, isn't it? Yeah. The same in nature, right? Form is more nature than what? Matter. Because by the form, you're actually a pig or a chicken or something else. By matter, you're all of these only in ability. So that by which you're actually a natural thing is form. And it's through your form also then that you have the doing or the operation, the action, the activity of a man or a pig or a lion or whatever the animal might be. You see that? Mm-hmm. Yeah. We're going back to the genus and differences. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Matters. Yeah. Yeah. See, you ask, what does an animal do, right? Well, you've got to descend, in a sense, to what? What does the pig do or what does the chicken do or what does the lion do or what does the man do, right? And that's going to be tied with its difference and therefore with its, what, form, right? What's formal in the thing? Okay? Now, even more generally, if you go back, you know, to wisdom, you talk about ability. In the passive sense, now we're talking here, in form, something we seize because it's able, right? We seize something, huh? But you give something that you actually, what, have, right? So we say in general that something acts insofar as it is, what, inact, huh? It's able to give something or to do something because of what it actually is. So what is actually hot warms what is able to be hot, right? Okay? Can you see that? I'm a little confused about the phrase inact. So I'm not sure what you're referring to. Well, let's take example here, huh? You rolled the dough there to make the Christmas cookies, right? Okay? Now, are these, is that dough in the shape of Christmas trees? Not yet. No. But it's able to receive that shape, right? Okay. But now I have a little piece of metal here that's in the shape of a, what, Christmas tree, that little handle here, right? Dump, dump, dump, dump, dump, dump, dump. So this is giving, what, shape that it actually has to the dough, which doesn't actually have that shape, but it's able to receive it, right? Okay. So the thing that actually has something gives to the one who's able to have it, huh? So we say that in general, huh? Something is acted upon, it undergoes, it receives, insofar as it's able to have something, right? It's in potency to having something. But if we seize it from something that already actually has that. So is the cookie cutter Christmas tree in act in that? It has the actual shape that the clay has only in what? Ability, right? Uh-huh. So I can use the thing to give that shape to these things, huh? Uh-huh. Okay? So this is the general principle he's saying here, right? And the reason for this, he says, is because nothing acts except according as it is in act. Yeah. Whence that by which something is in act is that by which it acts, huh? So it's manifest that, however, that that first by which the body lives is the soul. And since life is manifested by diverse operations and diverse grades of living things, right, that by which we first do each of these operations of life is the soul. Now, you call it the definition, the demonstration of Rastava. Well, the soul is that first by which we are nourished, right, fed, sense, and move according to place, right, and likewise by which we first understand. And then that's the minor premise, right? And this beginning or principle by which we first understand is called the what? Intellectus, cv.a. Intellectiv. Now I know how your English comes out there. But there he explains the sense of Jesus in the word intellectus there. So if you have the Latin, you have the Latin there, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Hoc ergo principium, huh? This principle, this source, quo primo intelligibus, by which we first understand, whether we call it the intellectus, right, cv.a. anima intellectiva. See? That's the way I was translating it, huh? His footnote there, translating it like just before there, cv.a. Substancia, maybe even better, like I was doing it, cv.a. anima intellectiva, right? What Shakespeare calls my understanding soul, okay? You've got the feeding soul and the sensing soul and then the understanding soul, right? Is the form of the body, right? Okay? And this is the demonstration of Aristotle in the second book about the soul, right? And let's put in the form of the syllogism, right? Let's just see. It's in the first figure of the syllogism, right? You say the soul is that by which we first live, sense, move, and understand. That's the minor premise, huh? And this is almost like the meaning of the word soul, right, then? You may recall before when we talked about the soul that when you first began,