De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 87: The Soul's Essence and Its Powers

Transcript
================================================================================

Human beings, I don't know what motivates them and why they did this or made that mistake, huh? It's very hard to tell, right? And so, by Toto Masiya, history is named by Toto Masiya. Because that's not the only place where investigations are what? Incomplete. But most of all, they're especially there, right? It's kind of amazing, you know, the way historians are always revising history, you know, it's always a few visionists, you know, and sometimes surprising things and so on. So, there are a place to do facts coming to light, you know. They had a recent U.S. News and World Report there, and they had a whole magazine that was devoted a big section to spies, right? And they're going back, you know, to spies in the times that George Washington used. And some of these spies, you know, were in Cognito and so on, and some of them were just coming to light now. Wow. And from what a count says, I've read many accounts of the capture of Major Andre, the British officer that was communicating with Benedict Arnold, the traitor. Oh, wow. And because I'd always read is, you know, was that Major Andre was caught kind of by bad luck. Oh. And, well, apparently that wasn't just bad luck. Somebody was odd to do something fishy about this connection between Andre and Benedict Arnold, right? And Benedict Arnold, you know, got out just before Washington came, right? And Washington would have hug him, you know. Yeah. So, I mean, you always knew little things coming to light that nobody knew about. So, in these contingent human affairs, most of all, our investigation is incomplete. Yeah. And therefore, by totem a sia, we call this history. Yeah. But even in philosophy, there's a story, there's an investigation, right? But you're probably able to reach a conclusion that you are. But I mention that also here because, as I say, Aristotle is aware of the fact, Thomas is aware of the fact that Aristotle is aware of the fact that he's not considering all the questions he might have about the soul, right? It's the fundamental ones. So, there'll be a lot of things in here and there that are more explicit than in Aristotle. But number three there will be quite a bit in Aristotle there, right? The difference is Thomas speaks it up a little bit in interesting ways. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. So, this is the second part, huh? So, Thomas says in his premium here, then we ought to consider about those things which pertain to the powers or the abilities of the soul. And first in general, in question 77 here, right? Second in special, in particular, starting in the next question, 78. So, about the first, about the powers of the soul in general, eight things are asked, right? Eight things are sought. First, whether the essence of the soul is its, what? Power, huh? And second, whether there is only one power of the soul or many. And third, in what way the powers of the soul are distinguished. And fourth, about the order of them to each other. Distinction always comes before order, right? And the fifth one now, whether the soul is the subject of all its powers. Well, of course, as you can anticipate there, the soul is the subject of some powers, but other powers, as in common with the body. And the sixth question, whether the powers flow from the essence of the soul, like properties, like effects from the nature of the soul. And seven, whether also one power arises from another. And the eighth question, whether all the powers of the soul remain in it after death. That's a question about the powers that it shares with the body, right? Okay? Now, the first article. So, to the first, one proceeds thus. It seems that the essence of the soul, its very nature of what it is, is its power. For Augustine says, this is one of Augustine's ways of speaking. It's kind of obscure sometimes, huh? For Augustine says in the ninth book about the Trinity, that the mind, knowledge, and love are substantially in the soul. Or, to say the same thing, essentially. There's substantia and essentia used to mean what a thing is, huh? In the tenth book about the Trinity, that memory, understanding, and will are one life, huh? One mind, one nature. Now, Thomas is going to understand this in a way that's not opposed to what he's going to be showing in this article. But Augustine, the Trinity tactic, of course, is talking about the image of the Trinity in us, huh? So, he has a certain way of emphasizing this image. That might be a little misleading here, if you don't know the whole context, huh? Moreover, the soul is more noble than the first matter. But the first matter is its own ability. The first matter is its own ability for substance, huh? And the first matter is its ability or power, the same thing. Therefore, much more should the soul be its own power or ability. Moreover, a substantial form is more simple than accidental form. A sign of which is that the substantial form is not, what, made more so or less so, right? It's not intensified or diminished, huh? But it consists in something indivisible. So, if you take, you know, you and me substantially, one man is not more a man than another. And one dog is not more a dog than another. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. In that sense, it would be like a circle, right? One circle is not more a circle than another, is it? Moreover, the sensing power is that by which we sense. And the understanding power, that by which we understand. But as Aristotle says in the second book about the soul, and this is in the demonstration, if you recall, the definition of the soul, that the soul is that by which we first sense and understand, huh? So, isn't it the same as its powers, then? Moreover, everything that is not of the essence of a thing is an accident, huh? If, therefore, the power of the soul is something that besides its nature, its essence, it follows that it be an accident. And now another strange quote from Augustine, huh? Which is against Augustine, the ninth book of the Trinity, where he says that the four said, are not in the soul as in a subject, as color or figure in the body, or any other quality or quantity. For whatever is such does not excel or exceed the subject in which it is. But the mind is also able to, what? Love other things and to know other things. Again, Augustine's way of speaking there is a little difficult, right? Moreover, as Oblethius says, a simple form cannot be a subject. But the soul is a simple subject, since it is not composed from matter and form, as he has said above. Therefore, the power of the soul, there cannot be a power of the soul in the soul, as in a, what? Subject, huh? Moreover, an accident is not the, what? Principle of a substantial difference. Sensual difference. But sensible and rational are substantial differences and are taken from sense and reason, which are powers of the soul. Therefore, the powers of the soul are not accidents. And thus it seems that the power of the soul is its essence. So we sometimes define man as an animal that has, what, reason, right? Well, man is what he is through his soul. So his soul must be his reason, right? That's what the objection is saying, huh? Okay, so it's unusual to have that many objections, right? Yeah. But against this is what Dionysius says in the 11th chapter on the celestial hierarchy, that the celestial spirits, meaning the angels, are divided into what? Essence, vertutum, which means power there, right? In operation, huh? So the nature of the angel and his power and the activity that he has are not the same thing. Well, much more, therefore, would it be true in the soul that these three are not the same thing, that other is the essence, other the power, and operation two. But consider the first two here, of course, in this one. Now, Thomas says, I answer. It should be said that it is impossible, impossibile est, to say that the essence of the soul is its power, although some say this. And this can be shown in two ways as far as the present intention is concerned, huh? Now, notice the first argument here. First, because ability and act divide being, huh? Now, when we study wisdom, we'll find out that there are two main divisions of being, huh? And being and things. And one is the division according to the figures of predication. And that's the division of being into substance, quantity, quality, relation, and so on. And the other is the division of being into act and ability. Okay? And these two divisions can kind of crisscross, right? Because in every genus, like substance or quantity or quality, you can talk about ability and act, huh? I'm actually 5'10", at least I used to be, if I'm not shrinking in my old age, huh? But before I was actually 5'10", I was able to be 5'10", right? I'm also a logician. But I was able to be a logician before I was actually a logician, huh? I'm also a father, right? But I was able to be a father before I was actually a father. So you have ability and act in every, what? Genus, huh? And they correspond to each other, huh? So the ability for one activity corresponds to that activity. The ability to see to the ability to hear, right? To see, rather. The ability to hear to hearing, huh? The ability to be 5'10", to that. Okay? So he says, to go back to the whole sentence here. Since ability and act, potency and act, ability and act, divide being, and each genus of being, it is necessary that act and ability be referred to the same genus. And therefore, if the act is not in the genus of substance, then the potency or ability for that act, which is said to that act, cannot be in the genus of, what? Substance, huh? But the operation of the soul is not in the genus of substance. So my understanding is not what I am, is it? No. My loving is not what I am. My walking is not what I am, right? And my seeing or my hearing or my smelling, huh? Okay? But only in God is the substance of a thing, and what it does, the same thing, huh? So in God, there's no difference between God and his understanding or his love. So St. John could say, God is love, right? You could say, God is understanding. But you couldn't say that I am understanding or I am love, even though I might understand something and love something, right? So only in God, huh, God alone, is the operation, his substance, huh? That's one of the things we show, huh? We take up the operation of God, huh? Incidentally, when we know God from creatures, huh, the substance of the creature and its operation are not the same thing. And so when you come to talk about the substance of the operation of God, we have two thoughts, because we start from the creature, huh? When you get to God, they correspond to one thing, huh? So you have two thoughts about the one thing. Okay? That's why you compare it sometimes, you know, to a circle, huh? See? If what's one in God is what? Many in the, what? Preachers, right? And so the end point of this line here, this conference, and this line here, and this line here, the end points are really different, aren't they? But the point at the other end is one and the same for all of these, huh? But if you're coming to know that point in the center from the circumference, you might say, well, it's the end of this line, right? It's also the end of this line. So you have two thoughts about it, right? It's the end of that line, and it's the end of that line. But then you realize it's one and the same point at the end of both, right? And so you start from the substance of God and the apparition of God, huh? You come back. You have two thoughts, but you have to negate the distinction that you have in preachers, huh? And so eventually you'll say the substance of God, what he is, and his understanding and his loving are the same thing, huh? The same way in us, huh? The understanding and the, what, loving are different acts, huh? But in God you don't have any composition. You don't have any multiplicity of acts, huh? But we have two thoughts about the one God, huh? So he says the operation of the soul is not in the genus of substance, but in God alone, whose operation is his substance. Whence the power of God, which is understood as the principle of his operation, would be the very same thing as the divine, what, essence, huh? Because his operation is his essence, which is not able to be true neither in the soul nor in any other creature, not even in the angel, as has been shown above when we spoke about the, what, angel, huh? As we can recall it already. Do you see that idea then, huh? He's saying that ability and act are relative to each other, huh? And if one is in the genus of substance, then the other could be the genus of substance, right? But if one is in another genus, huh, then the other has to be in another genus, huh? And so since the operation of man, the operation of the soul, is not in the genus of substance, right? Then the ability, which is proportioned to that, is not going to be in the genus of substance. That's going to be in the category of quality, huh? The second species, huh? Second, he says, this also appears to be impossible in the soul, huh? For the soul, by its very nature, is an act, huh? That was in the very definition of the soul. It's the first act of an actual body composed of tools. If, therefore, the nature of the soul, the essence of the soul, was the immediate principle of operation, the soul would, what? The soul, always what has a soul in act, would have the operations of life, huh? Just as always what has a soul in act is a lie. For, insofar as it is a form, it is not an act or a further act, but it is the, what, last end of generation. Whence that it be in potency to another act? This does not belong to it. according to its very essence, because it's a what? It's a form, it's an act by its very nature. So as soul, as form, as act, it's not ordered to what? A further act, huh? Because act is such as we did, no, not to what? A further act, but if anything, to ability, right? Okay, so the soul, in so far as it's an act, is not going to be an ability to something. That's kind of what an act is. And therefore the soul itself, according as it is subject in some way to power, is said to be a first act, huh? Ordered to a second act. But we find that what has a soul is not always in the act of the operations of life. When it's also in the definition of the soul, it is said that it is the act of a body having life in potency, meaning the operations of life in potency, huh? Which potency is not, what, excluding the soul from being in the body. It remains, therefore, that the essence of the soul is not its power. Again, he summarized the argument there. For nothing is in potency, according to act, insofar as it is an act, huh? So it's not the soul insofar as it is the soul that is an ability. Because then an act, insofar as it's an act, would be a what? An ability. And that seems like a what? Contradiction, huh? This is one of those subtle questions that Aristotle doesn't investigate, right? Hmm. In the soul, huh? So any question about those two arguments? When it talks about that which has a soul not always having an act, operations of life, that's sort of the sense of, like, you know, someone sleeping. Like those trees out there, yeah, they're not going to have the operations of life for a while, right? Oh, okay, yeah. But those trees are not dead, right? They still have the... Okay, yeah. That's what makes them to be a tree, right? Yeah. Okay. And, of course, when you and I are asleep, we're almost like we're dead, huh? Yeah. Sleep, thou ape of death. Mm-hmm. Shakespeare's always comparing sleep to death, huh? Yeah. So, two arguments then, right, huh? One is that ability and act should be in the same genus. So if the act called operation is not in the genus of, what, substance, only in God is the operation substance, well, then the ability for that act is going to be not in the genus of substance. Those are relative to each other, huh? And the other reason is that the soul being an act, as such, is not an ability. Act as such is not an ability. And so the ability has got to be something other than the soul itself. It's something added, huh? Something that's an accident, huh? And, therefore, an accident is a second species of quality, huh? Now, as you apply to Augustine's, they're going to be kind of difficult here, but let's look at what Thomas says here anyway. What did Augustine mean when he said that knowledge and love are substantially in the soul, or essentially? Do you mean that the very substance of the soul, the very essence or nature of the soul, was its knowledge and love, huh? Well, Thomas says, no, that's not what Augustine would mean. To the first it should be said that Augustine speaks about the mind according as it knows itself and, what, loves itself, huh? Now, of course, he's trying to, what, develop the understanding of the image of the Trinity in us, huh? And, of course, when we speak of God the Son as the word of God, huh? We mean God, what, understands himself, right? In understanding himself there proceeds a thought, and this is the word, huh? And then in knowing himself he, what, loves himself, right? And then there proceeds the Holy Spirit by way of love, huh? So, Augustine speaks about the mind according as it knows itself and loves itself, right? Thus, therefore, knowledge and love, insofar as they refer to the soul itself, now, not as a subject, but as a, what, object, right? They refer to the soul itself as known and loved, huh? Then they can be said to be, what, substantially or essentially in the soul. Why? Because the very substance or essence of the soul is, what, known and loved, right? So, Augustine's way of speaking there could be misunderstood, right? He's saying that what you're knowing and loving in this case is the substance of the soul, huh? And, therefore, it could be misleading to say that, therefore, the knowing and the loving is in the substance of the soul, right? Okay? Okay? But that's what you're knowing and loving is the substance of the soul. And, likewise, one should understand what he says elsewhere, that there is one life, one mind, one essence. Okay? That's one way he has of understanding it. Now, this is difficult to, what, see, right? In occasion, you get these ways of speaking that are hard even in Scripture, you know? Like when it says about Christ, you know, that he's the firstborn of creatures, right? You say, well, he's not a creature, though. You see? And the way of speaking there is difficult, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay. Now, there's another way of understanding this, and this involves an understanding of a kind of whole that Aristotle doesn't talk about explicitly in the Fifth Book of Wisdom, but I think he understands. And what is sometimes called the potential whole or the protestative whole, huh? And sort of in between two holes that we do talk about, huh? What we call the composed whole and what we call the universal whole. Thomas is going to explain it in this way. Perhaps Aristotle doesn't talk about it there explicitly, huh? He doesn't want to confuse you more than necessary, huh? More than necessary. Yeah. Or, as some say, this way of speaking of Augustine is verified by the way in which a protestative whole is said of its parts, huh? Which is a middle between the universal whole and the integral whole. And what I call the composed whole, Thomas calls the, what, integral whole, huh? Okay? Now, remember how we said last time, when I distinguish those, usually in class I'll say the composed whole is put together from its parts, huh? But it's not said of its parts, huh? So the chair you're sitting on might be put together from four legs and a seat and a back, but you can't say that a seat is a chair, or a back is a chair, right? It's only all these put together that make up a chair, okay? But now, the universal whole is the reverse, huh? It can be said of each of its parts, but it's not put together from them. So animal can be said of dog and cat and horse and so on. And you can say a dog by itself is an animal and a cat by itself is an animal and a horse is, huh? So he says the universal whole is present to each part according to its whole essence and power as animal to man and to horse and to cat and dog and so on. And therefore, properly, it is said of, what? Each of the parts, huh? So we can say properly that a dog is an animal, right? A cat is an animal. But the integral whole is not in each part, is it? The whole chair is not in the seat. Right. Neither according to its whole, what? Nature, right? The whole nature of the chair is not in each, nor according to all of its, what? Power, right? Perfection. And therefore, in no way is it said of each part, huh? And if you were to say it in some way, it would be said, what? Improperly, right? It might be said about all of them together. It would be said that the, what? The roof and the wall and the foundation of the house, huh? Okay? But not each one of them individually, right? What is the whole? So that's like those figures of speech and autonomy. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, you just kind of are properly speaking. Okay. Now, he says, why do we see that the potential whole is in between those two? Well, it's present to each of its parts according to its whole nature, but not according to its whole power. And therefore, in a way, it is said of each part, but not so properly as the universal whole. And in this way, Augustine says that memory, intelligence, and the will are the one, what, essence of the soul. So the soul is present in each one of its powers, right? But not according to all its powers. So this is a little different explanation of these, what, kind of difficult way that Augustine has. You know, there's a way of speaking that the other great doctor does, Hilary, you know, Hilary of Poitiers? He has a famous book on the Trinity, and Thomas quotes it. And one place where Hilary says, the father is mayor than the son by his, what, dignity as father, right? But the son is not less for this reason, huh? Well, it's a little bit strange, it seems to me, because if you say he's more, then the correlative of that is less, right? You see? But the father has the dignity of being, what, the father, right? Which the son doesn't have. So he's more in that sense, but the son is not less because the father has that dignity. I think that's a little strange, that way of speaking, huh? You know? And you have to kind of understand that, that way of speaking. But Thomas does just say he's false, but it seems to be a little strange, a little difficult to use words in that way, huh? Okay? So notice, like we were saying before, the soul is found in what? Each part of the body, right? In that sense, the essence of the soul is found there, but not all of its power is found in each part, huh? So the ability to walk is not found in my eye, and the ability to see is not found in my leg, right? So the soul, in its essence, is present, but not in all of its, what, power, right? In the case of the universal and predication, like animal, animal, the whole essence of what an animal is, a living body of sensation, is found in dog. It's also found in cat. And according to its whole power of what? Being able to sense is found in dog and cat and so on. Okay? So this potential whole can in a way be said of its parts, right? So it's difficult, huh? Difficult, that distinction, huh? See, sometimes they'll speak of the soul as being a potential whole. You divide it into the human soul and the animal soul and the feeding soul, huh? The plant soul, huh? Because the human soul has the full power, you might say, of the soul, right? And the animal has some, but not as much as man does, huh? It doesn't have understanding and will. And the plant has even, what? Less, huh? Okay? And some people, when they divide up friendship, they'll say that, huh? That the perfect friendship has the full power of friendship, huh? The friendship of pleasure has something, but not everything, huh? And the useful friendship has even, what? Even less, huh? That's kind of a hard notion, huh? You can see why Aristotle doesn't bring it up in the fifth book of wisdom, huh? But he does seem to speak, you know, at times of what we call potential whole. But Thomas, in a number of places there, will make that kind of whole distinct, huh? Now, the second objection, just look at it for a second again. The soul is more noble than first matter, but first matter is its power, and therefore much more of the soul, huh? Now, but notice, huh? The second ought to be said that the act to which first matter is in power is substantial form, and therefore the potency of matter is not other than its essence, huh? Notice what he's saying, huh? The power of first matter, which is first matter, is in the genus of substance, huh? The first matter is what? Substance and ability. And through the substantial form, it's an actual substance. So, as we said in the body of the article, act and ability are in the same genus, huh? And so, when you say first matter is its ability, right? You're talking about ability that's in the same genus as matter. But if you said that the soul was its own, what? Ability, right? To understand, or its own ability to will. Well, then you'd be saying that, what? They're in the same genus, huh? And therefore, understanding and willing would be in the same genus as the soul itself, in substance, but they're not. That's why the soul can't be its own ability. But matter, the first matter could be its own ability, because its ability is in the same genus. It's substance inability. And the act in which it is an actual substance is also the genus of substance. So, you're talking about matter and form and the genus of substance there. When you talk about operation, and whatever the ability is for operation, though, they're not in the same genus as the soul. The soul is in the genus of substance. And the operation is not in the genus of substance. Only in God are being the same. So, the ability can't be in the genus of what? Substance, huh? The ability for operation, that is to say, right? Go back to the idea that ability and act are relative to each other, right? And they divide each genus, but the ability and act in that genus are what are being put together, huh? Not the ability in one genus and the act in another genus. A third objection. The substantial form is more simple than the accidental form, a sign of which is that the substantial form is not intensified or diminished, huh? It doesn't, neither more nor less, huh? But it consists in something indivisible. In that sense, we're all, what? Created equal, right? One of us is not more a man than another. You're taking man in a substantial sense, right? You're taking man in a sense of being courageous, right? Well, that's something you can have more or less of, right? So, one man is more a man than another. In that sense of being courageous, right? But that's not man in the genus of substance, is it? In the genus of substance, one man is not more a man than another. Even if one man is, what? Taller or shorter than another man. He's not more a man, huh? Than the, what? Other, right? But accidental form is its own power, right? Therefore, much more substantial form, which is the soul. That's like the second argument, right? Except now you're dealing with a, what? Accidental form, like this, what? Quality called power, right? And that's relative to what? A quality of disposition, which is the act of understanding, or the act of the will, huh? So, he says, to the third it should be said, that action is of the composed thing, just as being. For it belongs to the thing to exist, that exists to act. But through the, but the composed, huh? Through its substantial form, has existence substantially. But through the power which follows upon, the substantial form operates. Whence, thus has itself, the accidental form, the active accidental form, to the, what? Substantial form of the agent, as in the old physics, right? As heat is to the, what? Substantial form of fire. So has the power of the soul to the, what? Soul. Could be the same as light to fire? Heat. Heat to the fire, yeah. Could be the same as light? Perhaps, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But heat is maybe a better, simpler example. Okay. Okay. I don't know if he didn't say the explicity here,