De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 114: Higher and Lower Reason: Unity of Power and Distinction of Acts

Transcript
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My will, which chose Julia, right? Or my emotions, which is more me. And a lot of students will try to think that they're more their emotions than anything else, right? But then I ask them when I say, you know, if you're on the jury, right, are you going to judge other things being equal more severely, a murder of passion or a premeditated murder? And they always say premeditated murder, right? As if, you know, you're even more responsible for the premeditated murder than the one of passion because you had time to think about it. So you've done it more, right? And what's the interesting thing about human beings, you know, sometimes people say, I don't want to see you anymore, that sort of thing, you know, lovers quarrels and so on. But they say, if you say this in words, you can more easily retract it than if you write a letter and say, I don't want anything more to do with you, right? You know, there's something very permanent about a letter, right? In other words, if you sit down and you write a letter, you have time to, you know, think about this a bit, right? You see? You know? Now, you've more made a decision there, right? So, the question is, which is more me? My reason and my will or my emotions? Well, I always take the example, you know, you're in the bar there and Joe's about going to get in a fight with somebody, you know, and you see all kinds of trouble. Joe can control yourself, right? But who's in control? When his anger is in control, then Joe is not in control of himself, right? When his reason gets into control, you know, then Joe's. So, next time we'll do 9 and 10, huh? The cardinal angels speak from the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, help us to understand what you've written. Amen. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen. So, we're going to do 9 and 10 today, huh? So, this article 9 begins from a distinction that Augustine makes, huh? Between higher and lower reason, huh? To the 9th, what proceeds thus? It seems that superior and inferior, or higher and lower reason, are diverse powers. For Augustine says in the 12th book about the Trinity that the image of the Trinity is in the higher part of reason, not in the lower part, huh? But the parts of the soul are its, what? Powers or abilities. Therefore, the higher and the lower reason are two powers, huh? Well, Thomas is going to solve that simply by the fact that the word part has, what? Many meanings. Many meanings, yeah. And not every part that you might distinguish in the soul are referred to as diverse powers, yeah. So, Augustine is using the word, right? You know, the part there. And Aristology uses the word part for the different powers of the soul, right? Aristology uses the part for the powers of the soul? Yeah, yeah. Okay. But it's part there in the sense of a part of the power of the soul, right? Is its ability or power to do this. Another part of its power is the ability to do that, right? Oh, okay. Okay? But the word part is a very universal word, right? It is. Yeah. And so it can even speak within the same power, right, of parts, not quantitative parts, but in terms of the acts and the objects. Moreover, nothing arises from itself, right? But lower reason arises from higher reason. And it's ruled and directed by it, huh? Therefore, higher reason is another, what? Power from the lower reason, huh? Because you can have, even within the same power, different habits or virtues, right? One of which directs or commands a, what? Another one, right, huh? And even when we talked about discursive, reason being discursive, right? One is directed by the principles or the premises to the, what? Conclusion, right? Okay. Moreover, the philosopher says in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics that the scientific, let's say, part of the soul, for want of a noun there, is that by which the soul knows, what? Necessary things. And he says that that is another beginning and another part of the soul from the part that has opinions, right? And is reasoning in the sense of knowing contingent things, huh? And he proves this because those things which are other in genus or kind, another particle, another part of the soul is ordered, right? Another kind of part in the soul is ordered. But the contingent and the necessary are other in genera, just as the corruptible and the incorruptible. So the contingent is defined as what? Something that's dependent, right? Well, usually defined in terms of it's able to be and not be, right? So the professor is lecturing, right? He's able to be standing and not standing, right? Or able to be standing or sitting and so on, right? Where the necessary is what is not able not to be. Yeah, right? Okay, that's a good thing. So following along with the analogy of the professor, what would be necessary? If he's lecturing, he's talking, or? Yeah, in that sense, yeah. There's a necessary connection between them. Of course, there are many senses of necessary, but when you contrast contingent necessary, right? We could say two is necessarily, what, half of four, right? It's not able not to be half of four, right? Okay. But you are sitting, right? It's contingent, right? You're able to be sitting and you're able to not be sitting, right? But the impossible is what is not able to be, right? The necessary is what is not able not to be, but must be, therefore. Since, however, the necessary would seem to be what is eternal, what is always so, right? And the contingent would seem to be something, what, temporal, right? Because sometimes it is and sometimes it is not, right? It seems that they are the same, what the philosopher calls the scientific part of the soul and the higher part of the reason, which, according to Augustine, intends or what, aims at, right? Looking at eternal things or consulting eternal things, huh? So Augustine is calling that higher part of reason, the part that, what, aims at, you might say, right? Is directed towards, what, the contemplation of the eternal, right? Or that will go to the eternal in order to be directed by the eternal in what it says about the, what, temporal and lower things. And this would seem to be, and what the philosopher calls the reasoning or thinking part, the opining part, and the inferior reason, which Augustine says, aims at, what, disposing temporal things. Therefore, there is a, what, another power of the soul that is called higher reason and lower reason, huh? Mostly he's doing that theory and argument there. He's going back to the text of Aristotle, right? Aristotle makes a distinction between two things, right? And Aristotle seems to say these are different powers of the soul, right? And he's saying, isn't Augustine saying something more or less like that same distinction that Aristotle means, right? So there you have to understand both Augustine and Aristotle to see how just this comparison is, huh? What does Aristotle mean when he talks about these things there? Moreover, Damascene, St. John Damascene says, right? That from imagination comes about, what, opinion, right? Then the mind, judging the opinion, whether it's... be true or false, right? And judges therefore the truth. Whence the mind is called from what? Mediendo, from measuring, right? And when such things have been judged, right, and determined truly, then it's called what? Intellectus understanding. Thus therefore the thinking or opining part, which is the lower reason, is other from the mind or the understanding through which one could understand what Augustine calls the superior understanding, right? Or superior reason, rather. I've just got to be careful of these words because sometimes they're naming power, sometimes act, right? And Thomas will interpret that again as seen there in a certain way, we'll see. But against all this is what Augustine himself says in the 12th book of the Trinity, that higher and lower reason are not distinguished except by their what? what they do, right? Yeah. Therefore they are not too different, what? Powers, right? I know sometimes we distinguish between these things. Like, for example, sometimes I use my senses, what? To direct me in what I'm doing? I use my eyes to drive up here, in case you didn't know that. But sometimes I use my eyes just to, what? See something beautiful, right? Not to do something at all, right? Just to look at the painting or look at the beautiful sunset or the rainbow, wherever it might be, right? Yeah. Okay, so two different eyes that I have. One by which I, you know, do this very plebeian thing of driving my car, right? Yeah. Trying to avoid the opposite cars or so on. And this more elevated one by looking at these beautiful paintings in a museum or something or looking at the beautiful sunset that we have tonight or something. I don't know about tonight, but... Yeah. Okay. Now, I answer, Thomas says, it should be said that higher reason and lower reason according as these are taken by Augustine, right? In no way, he says, are able to be two different powers of the, what? Soul, right? That's what Augustine means. For he says that higher reason is the one that, you might say, pays attention, right? Or applies itself to looking at the eternal, right? And consulting it, right? Conspicientes, eh? According as it, what? Speculates these things in themselves, right? So you look towards divine things just because they're wonderful things to think about, right? And you want to contemplate them, right? Just like in heaven, we'll contemplate the beauty of God, right? Like Augustine says in the beginning of Confessions there, right? Doesn't he say that? Too late have I come to know thee, thou ancient beauty? Okay? And of course, Plato speaks of God as being the beautiful itself there in the symposium, right? But the beautiful is something that you want to see just to, what? Look upon it, right? Okay? But consulendes, right? Because we get the word consul from, right? According as from these eternal things, it gets rules of action, right? Rules of what should be done, huh? Okay? So he's saying, huh? I'm sorry, I lost. Yeah, yeah. Augustine is saying that higher reason looks towards the divine, the eternal things, right? Probably just to look upon them because they're beautiful and want to contemplate them, but also in order to draw from them rules for action down here, right? Okay? But lower reason is said by him to be what, what? Applies itself to, right? Applies itself to temporal things, right? Okay? Its intention is what? Temporal things, huh? Here and now, huh? Now he says, these two things, temporal things and eternal things, are compared to our knowledge in this way that one of them is the, what? Middle, right? The medium, right? The middle terms, so to speak, for knowing the other, right? For according to the way of invention or discovery, huh? Through temporal things, we come to some knowledge of eternal things. According to that of the apostle, and it's the epistle of the Romans, chapter 1, verse 20. Now this is a very famous text, huh? It's used a lot in the Vatican 1, for example, this text, huh? Oh, is that right? Yeah. Because this is a text where St. Paul is saying that even through natural reason we can come to some knowledge of God, huh? Oh, really. Okay? If you look at the context there, you know this is being applied even to our natural knowledge, huh? Yeah. We philosophers. So he says, the invisible things of God through the things which have been made, which are the temporal things, the material things, being understood, are looked upon, huh? So the first argument for the existence of God is the one that begins from what? Motion, right? Which is tied up with time, right? In natural philosophy, we take up motion and time because motion takes time, right? It's obviously a temporal thing. And we reason from motion to the existence of something eternal, the unmoved mover, huh? But in the road of judgment, right, to eternal things now known, right, we judge about what? Temporal things, huh? Yeah. And according to the reasons of eternal things, we dispose of what? Temporal things, huh? Okay? Mm-hmm. So if one of these is known to the other, right, huh? Okay? Two different ways. One is known to the other, vice versa. And it might seem to belong more to the same power, right, huh? Just like it would seem to be maybe one power that would know, what, the premises of an argument, right? And the, what, conclusion, right? If I know one thing to another, right, huh? Okay. Now he says, however can happen that the middle and that to which through the middle one arrives, or as a means, maybe because it has a means there, right, that they pertain to diverse habits, right? As the first indemonstrable beginnings, principles, pertain to the habit of what? Understanding, what I call natural understanding. Okay? But the conclusions which are deduced from these, they pertain to the habit of what? Science, huh? A reasoned out understanding, right? Okay? So I sometimes translate sciencia, which is a translation of the Greek word episteme. They mentioned last time into what? Reasoned out understanding, right? But the reasoned out understanding goes back to the things naturally understood of. Okay? And therefore, from the principles of geometry, it is possible to conclude something even in another science as in what? Perspective, right, huh? But it is the same power of reason to which belongs the, what, middle or the medium and the last, huh? For it is an act of reason as it were a certain motion, right, huh? Yeah. Arriving from one thing into another, right, huh? Mm-hmm. But it's the same mobile thing that goes through the middle in order to arrive at the, what, end, huh? Okay? Whence it is one and the same power of reason that is higher reason and lower reason, huh? But they are distinguished according to Augustine through their offices, right, through their acts, you might say, right? And also according to diverse habits, right, which makes these acts more perfect. For to higher reason he attributes wisdom, right, which is about eternal things and divine things, and to lower ones science in the sense of, what, a knowledge of temporal things, huh? Mm-hmm. So... In other words, sapiensis and sciensi are used in many senses, but... Yeah. Oh, okay. You see the same thing in our scholars. Aristotle will speak of episteme, and in the sixth book of physics he'll distinguish between episteme and what? Sophia, right? But then at other times he'll call Sophia an episteme, okay? Now, in Latin they'll use the word scientia, but sometimes they will distinguish between scientia and sapientia, okay? Now, I think we should have maybe one word that completely covers that, but it's a bit like if we use the word knowledge, and then we distinguish between knowledge and wisdom, huh? Now, we've spoken about this way of speaking before. Is Aristotle contradicting himself when in the sixth book, Nicomache Ethics, he distinguishes between episteme and Sophia, right? But then in the book on wisdom, the metaphysics, he calls Sophia an episteme. Now, if you're a distinguishing between sapientia and scientia, but other times they'll say sapientia is a scientia of divine things, okay? Now, people don't realize this very common way of what? Naming. Naming, yeah, yeah. And the word episteme there, or the word scientia, or the word knowledge here, is equivocal by what? Reason, right? Okay? Now, I mentioned this way of last time, we talked about it again last time. What kind of equivocal by reason is this, huh? The new thing is the perfection of the first thing? Yeah. Sometimes when a name, right, is said of two things, right? Right. Even with one meaning in mind, right? And significantly in other words of the two, right? Yeah. Sometimes it is kept by one of them as its own name, right? Yeah. See? The common name, right, is kept by one of the two as its own name, right? Okay? In other case, what? The other gets a new name as its own name, right? Okay? That's what you have in all these three here, right? Because Sophia, among all episteme, has a, what? An excellent, it sets itself up above all other episteme, right? It's a knowledge of, what? Not just of causes, but a knowledge of the very first cause. It's a knowledge of God, isn't it there, right? Okay? So because it has an excellence, it gets a new name, right? It's not just a knowledge of causes, but something very noteworthy. It's a knowledge of the very first cause. You see that? It has a peculiar excellence above the common meaning of episteme. Episteme in general means to know why things are the way they are, right? To know the causes of things, right? So any knowledge of the causes of things could be called episteme. Yeah. But wisdom among all knowledges of causes has a peculiar excellence, right? It's about the very first cause of all things. It's about God himself, right? Isn't it? So it gets a new name, right? And the other knowledge of causes keep the common name, huh? So in one sense, Sophia is an episteme, right? In another sense, Sophia is distinguished against episteme, right? Now we mentioned last time, the example, they're an animal, right, huh? Sure. Now sometimes we say man is an animal, intending no insult, okay? But, as I say to students, if your girlfriend says, you know, you're an animal, that's insulting, right? But if the philosopher or the Bible says you're an animal, that's not necessarily an insult, is it? See? I told you how my mother, you know, didn't like to call man an animal. And I said, well, I don't mean he's just an animal, see? You see? She's thinking of, huh? See? She's thinking of animal as distinguished from man, right? Okay? Not animal as common to man and the irrational animals, huh? But man has something very noteworthy, right? That sets him apart from all the other animals, right? That he has reason and will and so on, huh? And a immortal soul, et cetera, et cetera, right? You see the distinction there? Yeah. So notice, huh? You could both affirm and deny that man is an animal, couldn't you? See? Because an animal is being kept for the brute, the irrational animal, right? Then man is not an animal, right? Okay? But if you take animal in the broad sense, a living body having sensation, well, rare if a living body with senses, right? Just as the cat is living body with senses, right? Okay? Do you see that? Now that's a very common thing, right? Again and again and again, right? You know, they're always talking about treating somebody like a person, not like a thing, right? Okay? But is a person a thing? Yes. Yeah. In some sense, a person is a thing. A person is not nothing, is it? Are they? Yeah. You see? Yes. But because a person is a very special kind of thing, right? Yeah. Sometimes the other things keep the name king, or thing, rather, and a person, it's the name. Mm-hmm. You see the idea? Yeah, and perhaps ever so briefly, the other kind of inclusion, my reason was like a cat to a cat or a kitten. The other one is where only one of the two has fully what is meant by the common word, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? So you say cat instead of cat and kitten, right? Right. Well, cat is the adult cat, right? It has the perfection of... Yeah, it has the fullness of it. Fullness. And the kitten, right, is an immature, not fully developed cat, right? Right. So the kitten gets the new name, right? Mm-hmm. That was the reason why we said, you know, if you want to take a philosophical example of that, it's very common. When you divide intellectus or understanding into understanding, meaning now the power, right, and reason, right? Okay? Well, understanding means what? The ability to understand. But man has his ability to understand in a very weak way, right? Right. In a very imperfect way, huh? And they see a Latin there from Isaac there. The intellectus abum gratus, right? The overshadowed understanding, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? Sure. So we have a hard time understanding things, right? And so, notice that Shakespeare defines reason there. His ability for a large discourse, looking, right, before and after. Looking means what? Trying to see. Trying to understand, right, huh? Okay? So as Augustine says, there are more things in sacred scripture he doesn't understand than he does understand, right? And so there are a few things we understand really well, right? And it takes us time and discourse in order to understand them, right? So we have a kind of imperfect and defective ability to understand them. So we get the new name, right? You see? Mm-hmm. You see? Because we lack. We have imperfectly what's meant by the common here, right? Here you need the ability to understand it. Well, the man really had the ability to understand? See? Well, in a very weak way he has an ability, right? In a defective way, but he has to have sensation and memory experience and they don't tell him too much, right? And he has to reason and think out. Well, I think that's a good thing. things and so on, you know, the angel understands everything right away. Right. It doesn't have to study, it doesn't have to reason. You see what I mean? Yeah. So this is the other kind of way, huh? So, what's like a shorthand version to refer to these two kinds of... I don't know if they have a name, you see, but in one sense, you know, reason is divided here against understanding, in other cases not. But these are two ways in which a name becomes equivocal by reason. And most people, you know, they emphasize ones where there's a greater difference, right, between the meanings than these. But these are still common enough, so people have to understand them. In the categories, Aristotle used the word disposition of habituals, right? And sometimes you'll say that habit is a disposition, sometimes you will, what, divide habit against disposition. We see, a habit here is a firm disposition, right? One not easily lost. So, virtue is a habit, it's a firm disposition, right? But disposition, then, is what? A weak disposition, right? Yeah. Okay. It's a little bit like, you know, I think in English when we use the word mood. I'm in a good mood today, or I'm in a bad mood today. A weak disposition, huh? Yeah. In other words, that can pass very quickly, right? And sometimes, you know, you run into somebody who's in kind of a bad mood, and he cracked a joke or something, and he starts to, right, change, right? Or you see these advertisements for the, in the bars, you know, for the happy hour, right? They caught attitude readjustment, you know, you see, you step out of the bar, have a drink or two, and laugh with your friends, and then your, what, your mood has changed, right? You see what I mean? You know, a little child, they can do all these moods during the day, right? So, habit then adds something noteworthy to disposition, right? Yeah. Namely a certain firmness, right? The fact that this and that is something, what? Laws, huh? You know? So, this example here of disposition, and disposition and habit is divided into, is the other kind of name, equivocal by reason, huh? Now, I call this kind of equivocal. I distinguish it from the other kinds of names that are equivocal by reason. I say, in these cases here, the name becomes equivocal by reason, right? By being kept of one of the two things which it is said. All right. See? Well, the other thing which it is said gets a new name, right? And there's two ways here that I exemplify that that takes place, right? Okay. Two different ways, huh? Now, in Latin, say, in Greek, you'll see them dividing nomen into nomen and vera, okay? And in Greek, you'll see something like that. It's the same thing. You'll see, in Greek, onoma divided into onoma and vera, right here, right here, should be wrong. We call it vera, okay? Now, if you read the comic Aristotle's perihermeneus, right, in the Greek, right, or in the Latin, you'll see this confusion, right, huh, that can arise, huh? Because sometimes Aristotle will distinguish rhema against onoma, or in the Latin, vera against onoma, nomen, other times they'll say vera is a what? Nomen, an onoma, huh, right? Okay. Now, which example is this of, you know? Which one of these two is that? Let's see, because the verb would be something in action. Would that be an imperfection or a perfection? Well, it doesn't necessarily mean it's more perfect, but the common meaning of nomen here, right, is a vocal sound, signifying by human agreement, right? No part of it signifies by itself, okay? Now, the difference between the nomen and the verbal, right, is that the verbal signifies with time, oh, with time, oh, interesting, yeah. And the noun signifies without time, yeah, okay, huh, okay? So it's kind of, you know, a mistake to define, uh, noun is the name of a person, place, or thing, okay, and verb is the action, you mean? Yeah, that's what we learned, yeah. But take the word action itself, right? Yeah. The word action, what is that, a noun or a verb? It's a noun, right? You see? Yeah. It's the name of action, isn't it? It's not the name of a... Yeah. You see? But the difference between the word action, let's say, the word acts, right, or acted, right? Yeah. Is that, when you say, act, or will act, or acted, right, you signify with the present or the past or the future, right? When you say action, is that past, present, or future? It's timeless. Yeah, yeah, see? So it signifies, the noun signifies without time. Without time. The verb signifies what? With time. So the verb adds something, right, to the common notion of name, huh? See? The verb is the vocal sound that signifies by human agreement, no part of it signifies by itself, but signifying with time, right, huh? The noun doesn't have that addition, eh? Oh. So it gets the new, what? Name, right? Okay. Now, see, in Amos, we tend to translate these, we can say noun and verb, and then use for onoma, maybe name, right? Okay? And then we can avoid that, maybe, you know? But although we have a tendency to use name to mean noun, too, don't we, huh? We tend to think of a, you know, name usually as a noun rather than a verb, don't we? Yeah, true. So like, you know, you get an interesting, you know, argument class, you know, but how about when you divide man into man-woman? Which isn't right? Man-woman. You see? We know what St. Thomas says. I know. But they say, this is the other way around. Maybe a woman has something special to her, you know, see? So I don't tell them what I think. I just, I hard to tell them things, right? You see? Because I think the word woman, you know, came from the word man. When you look it up, you know, I used to joke that, whoa, to man. Yeah, yeah. But apparently a woman, it doesn't have an ethnology, right? What does it? Apparently it goes back to the idea of fluttery. The fact that a woman wore a what? A veil, right? Huh? Okay? Wow. It still happens in some countries, right? But a woman tends to, you know. So then one has something to be addition to a man, right? Oh, huh. Something over your face. A veil. Yeah, yeah. You see what I mean? A veil of a veil. Yeah. A veil of a veil of a veil, right? A veil of a veil of a veil. Right? But whatever the, you know, whichever way you understand it properly, the point is, the word man here is equivocal. So in one sense, a woman is a man, right? Uh-huh. Yeah. In another sense, a woman is not a man. Right. And sometimes I used to, you know, pick on a girl like I do often, and I'd say, now, is man an animal? Is man the only animal for reason? And she'll say yes, right? And then I'd say, now, are you a man or a woman? Uh-oh. So she's not a man. That was a cat reason, right? Uh-huh. And I'd say, now, show me that you can reason. You know? Uh-huh, yeah. Well, in one sense, a woman's not a man, right? In another sense, she is a man, right? So you say man is the only animal that can reason. Right. And she says, she's not a man. Is there the word man in the same sense? No. No, see? But it's equivocal, right? Yeah. Okay. Uh-huh. So in the present context here, huh? Shantia is kept for a knowledge of the lower things, right? And wisdom is a new name given to the Shantia, which is about the highest things, huh? About the eternal things, the divine things. Do you see that? Yeah. But you have an already near a style of that thing, right? See? Thank you. Thank you.