Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 50: Book 9 Structure: Potency and Act in Metaphysics

Transcript
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The reason that knowledge talks about the accidental, it seems, but accidental being hardly is, right? To be a geometer is to be something. To be a Christian is to be something, right? But to be a Christian geometer, is that really something? Do those two come together and make something? A Christian geometer, like matter and form? No, they're both forms, right? Right. So accidental being hardly is. So the science of being, as being, are you going to talk about that, really? No. And being as true seems to include things that have being only in the mind, right? And difference between the fundamental being and the thing, right? So he has a brief consideration of those two in Book 6, but he lays them aside as not being the chief concern of the, what? Meditation. The science of being as being, yeah. Meditation. Okay. But then in Books 7, 8, and 9, he wants to take up the two main considerations of being, or distinctions of being. Being according to the figures of predication, in Books 7 and 8, and then being as act and ability in Book 9. But as he points out in the beginning of Book 7, among the figures of predication, or being according to the figures of predication, the main one is substance, right? So Book 7 and 8 are mainly about substance, but in Book 7, which we didn't read, he proceeds more from things in logic that are said about substance and so on. And then in Book 8 here, in terms of natural philosophy, matter and form, okay? Now in Book 9, he's going to talk about the distinction of being and act and ability. Now, Book 9, to begin with, is divided, kind of, a little bit like what we saw in Book 8. He's going to talk about ability in the first part of Book 9. In the second part, he's going to talk about act, right? In the third part, he's going to talk about the order, mainly, of act and ability, the before and after of them, okay? Now, that's a little bit of an oversimplification, but it's good to hear it, because you get kind of a sense of how the book is going to proceed. But, those first two parts, if you look at them more closely, you'll see that in the first part, which is mainly about ability, it's not about every ability, right? But about ability in reference to motion, which is the act, what? Most known to us, huh? Although it's the act which is least actual. It's most known to us, huh? So, in the first part, he's mainly concerned with ability in act, as they are found in motion, and things that are subject to motion. But he doesn't spend much time talking about motion as such, because that's done a lot in the philosophy of nature. But he does talk about ability in reference to motion. And then, in the second part, where the emphasis is upon act, he's going to see act in a much broader understanding than just, what, motion, huh? He's going to see form as being act as well as motion, huh? He's going to see operations like understanding, and willing, and even sensing, but not really motions in the strict sense, huh? So, he's going to see act in a completely universal way. And since ability is known to act, he's going to see senses of ability in the second part, as a consequence of seeing new senses of act, that he had not seen in the first part, right? So, you can say that, in a way, in going from the first part to the second part, he's, in a way, going from a more particular consideration of ability in act to a more general consideration, from a less universal consideration of ability in act, right? As they're found in the things around us, things that move and change, to a completely universal, a most universal consideration of ability in act in the second part, huh? And, I think this is characteristic of wisdom to go from, to some extent, the less universal to the more universal, huh? But it's much more clear here in the ninth book that that's the way wisdom goes, than when you're talking, say, about substance in books seven and eight, huh? Although, to some extent, you can see that in books seven and eight, that he's beginning from the substances that we all know about, material substances, right? And he's kind of rising, right, from material substance to an understanding of substance in general. And even something might be said about those immaterial substances, huh? Okay? Like you're just seeing in one of the last readings we did there, where he went from matter and form, right, to natural things, and then to matter and form in mathematics, and then form without matter, right? Okay? And this is the other aspect of natural philosophy. You're going towards the immaterial. Now, in both of these ways, as we've mentioned, I think, before, wisdom seems to be contrary in its way of proceeding to a natural philosophy. Because as Aristotle explicitly shows in the premium to the books of natural hearing, the so-called physics, we go from the general to particular in natural philosophy, from the more universal to less universal, and we go towards matter, right? So as you go forward in natural philosophy, you're going down into matter, towards matter. And that's important to realize, because this is part of the problem with the modern scientists, right? They're in the latter parts of natural philosophy, right? And so they're going towards matter, so they kind of are accustomed to think of everything in terms of matter. They are materialists, right? By custom, if not by thought. And of course, even the Greek natural philosophers, you can see that, you know, the first men are kind of materialists, so matter is pretty everything. But if you're really immersed in matter, that's everything to you, huh? It seems to be everything, huh? Okay? So, in the ninth book, you see these two aspects of the order of consideration in wisdom, huh? As you go from the first part to the second part, you're going from a more, a less universal consideration of act and ability to a more universal consideration of act and ability. And a more universal consideration of act and ability to help you to understand act even in the immaterial things, not just in the things that change, huh? And that are composed of matter and form. And then, in the third part of the ninth book, you'll consider the order, the before and after, right, of act and ability. And there you'll find out how in almost every way, act is before ability. And once you understand that, then you have the beginning for finding out what the first cause is, huh? And what the first being is. But the first cause, the first being, is going to be pure act, right? It's not going to be matter, right? Okay? But we'll also see in that third part why some people might think that matter is the first thing and that matter is the first being, huh? We'll see the kind of mistake they're making, right? It's the second kind of mistake outside of words, huh? They're making. A very common kind of mistake that's made. Narastal talks about the main kinds of mistakes, the common kinds of mistakes in all the sciences. and that. Thank you. Thank you. books on submissive reputations. And he distinguishes six kinds of mistakes from words, right? And seven kinds of mistakes outside of words. And this fundamental mistake about the beginning of things is one of the second kind. Okay? So we'll see that in the third part. So, I know myself, you know, over the years when I teach the metaphysics and the rest of me, or, and you can't do obviously all the books in one semester course like when you do that in college. But I always, you know, it's like first the ninth book, right? Among the books on being in one, which are books six, seven, eight, nine, especially seven, eight, nine, ten, you can't do all those four books. If I had to do one of them, I'd always do book nine. Because there you can see most clearly how an understanding of being is being, how an understanding of, in particular, of the division of being and to act and ability, right, will enable you to go all the way to the first cause, which is the ultimate goal of natural philosophy and the ultimate goal of the philosopher, right? Okay? But that third part there where he talks about the before and after, he will show that not only in time and in causality and so on is act before ability, but also that it's better than ability, right? And so very naturally, Aristotle comes to the conclusion that the first cause is pure act and that it's the best thing there is, okay? Why those who think of matter as being the beginning of all things and therefore being the first cause, ability is not as good as act. So the first cause is not the best thing, right? But now you have what I call schizophrenia in the life of your mind because the end or goal of our thinking can be shown by a course of argument to be the first cause, because we begin by knowing effects, but we naturally seek to know why these effects are the way they are, so we naturally seek to know their cause. And if the cause has a cause, we seek naturally to know the cause of the cause. And so the end would seem to be the knowledge of the first cause. That's the end of all our thinking. But then by a separate argument, the argument starting from what Aristotle points out in the premium to the study of the soul, right? Where he points out, and in the beginning of the parts of animals where he, in the middle of the place, where he says that knowledge of a better thing is better. Knowledge. Okay? So, since the end is always better than what it's supposed to say, right? Then the end of all our knowledge must be a knowledge of what is better than everything else. It must be a knowledge of the best thing. Well now, is the end of all our knowledge a knowledge of the first cause or a knowledge of the best thing? There's reason to say both, right? Well, if the first cause is also the best thing there is, well then, as Aristotle says in the Roman Ethics, truth, all things harmonize, everything fits together. But if the first cause is not the best thing, well then you've got two, what? Two ends, right? That don't come together, right? So now you've got schizophrenia, right? And this is the modern thing, huh? Let's get schizophrenia. They can't get out of this. Because they think that matter is the first cause, right? And matter is ability rather than act. And ability is for the sake of act. So the act is better than ability. They can't, they're completely trapped, right? They think they can't but how many don't think together again? Right there still, but it's so very natural, right? That God is pure act. Therefore, he's better than everything else. You know, someone says, why should you think about God, right? Well, I'd probably begin to answer that question by saying, I can't think of anything better to think about. Okay? But then you might go and say more precisely, well, how much better is it to think about God than to think about anything else? Well, if it's better to think about God because God is better than other things, then the question of how much better is it to think about God than something else requires you to understand, well, how much better is he than other things? You know, is he ten times better or a hundred times better or a thousand times better or a million times better? Well, no matter what ratio you might take, he'd be much better than that. So, the question becomes eventually not, why should you think about God, but why should you think about anything else? Good question, right? And there's really no reason to think about anything else unless thinking about something else helps you to think about God. Albert the Great, my old teacher, he translated the commentary on Thomas and the First Two Books of the Physics, but sometimes he had in the beginning a little passage from Albert the Great, and he says that you can think about anything else besides God, right, except for the purpose of being able to think about God, you have a perverse attitude towards knowing, unless you'd be forced to by some necessity. If you're a doctor, you may have to think about something, right? For some practical reason, right? But, your pursuit now is for its own sake, huh? You want to think about other things so you can think about God, right? Okay? So, you have to think about, say, the human soul, and think about our understanding and our will, and so on, before you can think about the understanding and will of an angel and God, and you have to think about actability. Let's see, huh? Before you can think about God, huh? So, there are other things we have to think about before we can think about God, or think about God as well as we can after we've thought about these other things, right? But you have to kind of justify that, right? I think you'll see when you study actability how this is very important to that, huh? Understanding God so far as we can understand God kind of too well, you know? But, what he is not than what he is, right? Okay? But we have to understand, you know, what he's not if we can understand him as not being what he's not. So, you have to understand, right? As I say to the students in natural philosophy, we're going to try to understand change, right? I say to them, if you don't understand change, you can't understand changing things. Now, if you don't understand changing things, you can't understand unchanging things because as the word unchanging indicates, you know those by the negation are changing things. And if you don't know changing things or unchanging things, you don't know anything. So, from first to last, if you don't understand change, you don't know nothing. Now, you guys may think you understand change, but you really don't. And so, you know, you don't understand anything without this course, they tell them. I didn't get the exaggeration, but it sounds pretty good. See? Well, there's a lot of truth to that, right? Mm-hmm. So, you see, unless you understand matter and form and how our mind or reason's own object as to what it is is something you can sense or imagine, you don't even know why we use words like the abstract and the concrete saying you talk about God. You can't really... I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. appreciate the way we have to talk about God and the corrections we have to make because of our way of knowing is so inadequate, Deema. Now, God knows composed things in a simple way. We know simple things in a composed way, right? And just like, you know, when you're talking about the point, the point has no parts, right? As you go from, you know, even from the body to the surface to the line to the point, you keep on adding negations, right? Okay, the body has length and width and depth. The surface has length and width, but no depth. The line has length, but no width or depth. And the point is neither length nor width nor depth. So as it gets simpler, you seem to involve more negations, huh? So it's not surprising, even considering the point, that if God is altogether simple, that he's going to be known what? Negatively, right? So although the treatise, the question of simplicity of God, although grammatically speaking, simple is not negative, right? When Thomas shows that God is altogether simple, he will negate all these kinds of composition that you find in the creature, and then finally he'll negate composition altogether, right? God is not put together, right? All the rest of us are more or less, some of us more, some of us put together, right? So, next week we'll begin meeting one here, okay? Take our time. But book nine is useful, you know, not just to arrive at the first cause, it's useful for understanding all kinds of things. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, drink in the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and rouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, pray for us, and help us to understand all that you have written. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Amen. Okay, let's look at the first paragraph here, reading one of book nine. Aristotle is recalling a little bit what he's done, and then continuing it to what this book will be about. He has spoken then, he says, about the first being, to which all the other categories of being are brought back. He's not talking about God there, the first being, but substance, right? In the division of being, according to the figures of predication, the being that is first is, what? Substance, huh? That is about substance. For the other beings, how much, or quantity, and how, or quality, and the others thus said, towards what, where, when, and so on. They are all said according to the thought of substance. They're all defined in reference to substance. So quantity is the measure of substance, or the size of substance. Or quality is the disposition of substance, huh? So they all are defined in reference back to substance. For all have the thought of substance, as we said in the first discourse, as their definition, all unfolds that of substance. And this is pointed out back in even the fourth book, huh? Okay, and since being, then, is said in one way, is what, or how, or how much. And notice here, Aristotle, instead of saying substance, he says what, huh? Okay. I think I mentioned how there are two places in Aristotle's logical works. In fact, two places, as far as I know, in the whole of his works, where he enumerates all ten of the highest genre. And I mentioned there's one place, of course, in the categories, which is explicitly about that. And the other is in the first book about places there, the so-called topics. And he gives exactly the same ten, right, in both places, in exactly the same order, right, except that in the categories he calls the first one usia, substance, and in the topics he calls the first one what it is, huh? Okay. And that kind of explains how we get the idea of substance as distinct from the other ones. Aristotle will refer to this in the fifth book of wisdom here, and he distinguishes these senses of being, quantity, quality, and so on, he calls this the distinction of being according to the figures of predication, according to the figures of being set of, right? Well, what does that mean exactly, right? What's being set of what? Well, it's by reason of the way in which something is set of individual substances, like Socrates or Socrates' dog, right? And some things are set of Socrates or his dog, by reason of what they are, and that gives you the category of substance, right? Other things are said of Socrates or the dog, by reason of how big they are and so on, that's quantity, and then how they are, healthy or sick or whatever they are, and then you get the different categories, where they are, when they are, and so on. So, they're distinguished by the ways that something can be said of individual substance. So, in the categories, he just calls the first one substance, but in the topics, he calls the first one Tiesti, what it is, and that kind of shows you how you get that particular category. And notice how, in some ways, people, even daily life, they do see a distinction between what a thing is and its size, right? And it's one thing to say, you know, my pet, what is my pet? Is it a dog or a cat or something like that? And then what's the size of it, right? Because some people have these little tiny dogs, and so you've got these big dogs that almost knock you over, huh? And so, that's two different figures of predication, huh? But one is what it is, and the other, how much it is, or size, quantity. And this is one of the fundamental, what? Distinction of beings, or you could say, distinction of things, huh? Okay? That they are different kinds of things. The substance and the quantity and the quality are different kinds of things. So, you have ten different kinds of things, but especially the first four, or substance, quantity, quality, and what? Relation, huh? It's interesting how this comes up in the treatise on the Trinity, huh? Because the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinguished in relation to each other, huh? So, they're distinguished by being towards another, in a different way. But if you take something not towards another, but something in itself absolute, then you're talking about the divine, what? Substance, the divine nature. Okay? And I was seeing a little, you know, apparent contradiction someone might bring and say, are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit one thing, or three things? What would you say? Is it how abuse this thing? Yeah, yeah. But because there's no difference between the Father and the divine nature, and there's no difference between the Son and the divine nature, and the Holy Spirit and the divine nature, we can say the three persons are one thing, namely God. Okay? But if you don't admit that there's a real distinction between the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, or heresy, and as the word real indicates, or by the word res, right? There's a real distinction. You have three things here, right? Well, the sophists might say, well, is it one thing or three things? Because you seem to be contradicting yourself. On one hand, you say it's one thing, on the other hand, you say it's three things, huh? Well, as the great Bwethius says, the only categories that are carried over to God are substance and relation, huh? And so, they're one thing in the absolute sense, the substance is what it is, the divine nature, but they're three things in the sense of what? Towards each other, they're really distinct, huh? Okay? I think I mentioned how, if you look at the Greek there, of the beginning of St. John's Gospel, I think I mentioned this before, what the Greek actually says was, in the beginning was the word, and the word was towards God, pros, to him, phaion. Well, when Aristotle talks about relation, the words he uses in Greek are precisely pros, pros, t. And in Latin there, in the Latin logicians, they'll translate that as ad adequate, right? Okay? But for some reason, in our Latin and English translations of the Gospel of St. John, they'll tend to translate it, maybe not so correctly, as with, right? In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, right? But the Greek actually, already, by using the word pros, to a man who's been educated by Aristotle, he recognized right away, that the distinction is one of being towards another. So, I was reading, I was mentioning earlier, the container orio of Thomas, on the Gospel of St. John, but as far as I remember, neither in the container orio, when he's quoting Augustine, and Chrysostom, and some of the Greek fathers, I guess, and, or in his own commentary, does he seem to be aware of the exact Greek word there? And, to me, as Aristotelian, it's very striking, you know, the use of the word pros there. But I can't be the first man to have noticed this. I'm not so presumptuous as to say that. But, but the Greek is, is very clear, but it doesn't seem to be reflected in our translations, although Augustine, you know, and brief this and Thomas that they've told. The distinction of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is towards one another, right? But, anyway. But it's kind of interesting, the way you can understand the ten categories and the big different kinds of things, right? It's something to know when you come to ask questions about are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit one thing or three things, right? Well, a thing had only one meaning. Then you'd be in a contradiction saying there's one thing and, what, three things, huh? When you said that the only categories that carry over, speaking by God, are substance and relation, is he starting from, dogmatically from the belief in the Trinity and arriving at the relational part of that, or is that from just... Who, Bwede, sir? Yeah. Well, Bwede, of course, has got Augustine before him, right? So it's Augustine who saw this maybe most fully. And so Bwede is following Augustine, and Thomas is following Bwede and Augustine, huh? So Augustine sees it very clearly. But Augustine has an unusual mind, you know, because he doesn't have the benefit, I don't think, of knowing much of our style, right? Or having access to it, but he has the greatest mind, it seems, among the Church Fathers, huh? It's interesting, you know, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, you know, if you look at the references, how many quotes there are from Augustine, even more so than from Thomas, and there's quite a few of Thomas, too. But Augustine and Thomas kind of stand out, huh? Augustine and Thomas are the theology, a little bit like Plato and Aristotle are the philosophy, you know, like the chief theologians, you know. So, now the two main distinctions of being are, according to the figures of predication, predication, and then this other way, he says, by ability and act, huh? And by doing, huh? Because act will have, first of all, the sense of motion, and then some kind of doing, right? And eventually we'll see act as said even a form, but it's going to be equivocal by reason. So he says we will now determine about a built-in act, and that's the subject here of Book 9. So the consideration of being as being, and wisdom, is mainly a consideration of substance in Book 7 and 8, and then a consideration of the built-in act here in Book 9. And he says, and first about the built-in which is said most properly, although not the most useful towards what we want now. So he's going to be talking about, in the first part of the first four readings, he's going to be talking about act, mainly in the sense of motion, which we know from natural philosophy, and then ability, right, in reference to motion and change, huh? And he says, well, this is a little too particular for our sapiential considerations here, but this is where we first meet ability and act. Like Shakespeare says, huh? Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stir. So the act which is most known to us is actually the least actual act, motion itself. And then the abilities that are first known are in reference to motion. But then he gets to the second part of the book, in the fifth and sixth readings, then he's going to see act in a much more universal way. And as a result, he's going to see ability in other ways besides ones he sees in the beginning. And then he says, in a sense, like I was saying last time, there's kind of arising from the more particular less universal consideration of ability to act in the first four readings to a completely universal one in the fifth and sixth ones, where act and ability can be found even in what? In material things, right? And, of course, in the case of God, you just have act, right? Pure act, huh? But even in the angels or the separate substances, there's some kind of ability and act. So ability and act are to beings, something like matter and form are to the things that move, huh? But matter and form are more particular than ability and act, huh? There are other kinds of acts besides these and so on. So first I was hinting at what he's going to do here in the first two parts of the book. For ability and act are in more, the set of more, than those that only are according to motion. But having spoken about this, we shall, in our determinations of act, which is in the fifth and sixth reading, as I say, meaning in the fifth one, show the other kinds of ability, huh? Okay? And to some extent, and this is done with substance, and it's done with the study of the one in wisdom, you start off with something more particular. So you start off with the one that's the beginning of number, you know, kind of material one, and then you go up to the one that's convertible with being. And it's very hard to move in that direction. When Aristotle distinguishes the opinions of the Greek philosophers before him, what they said about the causes of natural things, they kind of identified the causes of natural things with the causes of being. And when he gets to the fourth book of natural hearing, and he talks about place, he quotes the famous, what, opinion of his predecessors, that whatever is must be somewhere. And if it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist. So it seems to be a property of being, as being, to the early Greeks, to be in some place, to be contained in some place. But that's really proper to what natural bodies are. So you're thinking of being in a concrete or particular way as the same as a material being, right? And it's kind of natural. If you want to ask a man in the street, he'd probably agree that whatever is must be somewhere, in some place. If it isn't some place, it doesn't exist, right? Okay? And, you know, Thomas sometimes will be quoting Avicenna and so on, the first thing our mind understands is being, the first thing our mind considers is being. But sometimes Thomas is not as explicit about that, what that really means, as in other places. Because sometimes he'll spell it out. He'll say that being considered immaterial things, but our mind first knows. And you can see it very clearly in that opinion, the Greeks there about place, right? That they're identifying what is with bodies and what are in bodies, right? And so they have a hard time rising from that to a more universal consideration of what? Of being. It's not until you have some reason to think that there are immaterial things that your mind could ever start to separate being from being in place, right? Okay? If all that existed was bodies and what is in bodies, then to be in place, the property of being is being. But it isn't then. So it's hard to rise to more universal consideration of being. When they spoke about being in place in that, as a property of being as such, the earlier Greeks, were they referring to place in a very particular way or a general way? Because even if I have something moving, like from this end of the table to that end of the table, in a way I can say it's in place in that it's in the room, but there's a way in which it's not even in place while it's in motion. Yeah, you can say it's not in a definite place, yeah. But that doesn't change our basic thinking, right? That they're thinking that these things are in place in some way, or anything like that. And they can't rise above that. It's hard for our mind to separate things that in our experience never separate, yeah. And so since through our senses and imagination we never know being without bodies and extensions and so on, it's very hard for our mind to separate being from body and extension and so on. Ketitin has kind of a scholastic phrase for the first being we know. He says, ends, meaning being, quantuitum, in quiditati sensibili, huh? But being in a... In a concrete way, right? In a sense of what it is, huh? But that's, Thomas doesn't say it quite so scholastically, but he'll say being considered in sensible things. That's the being we first know. And then we have to kind of rise to a more universal consideration of being. And it's very hard for our mind to do, right? That kind of separation. But as they say, you see it most clearly in Book 9, and it goes to the first part, and considers a built-in act there, and then rises to a built-in act as it's universal way in the second part. Then there'll be a third part where he talks about the order of ability and act. And there you'll see that in almost every way, act is before ability. And that's the beginning for realizing that the beginning of all things would be pure act, or that God is pure act. But Verstalli here, his first paragraph, is just distinguishing what he's going to begin with here in the first part, and what he's going to go to something more universal in the second part. Now, the second paragraph, he's alluding back to the fifth Book of Wisdom, where he distinguished the words used, especially in wisdom and in the axioms, but to some extent everywhere. And ability is one of those words they talked about a little bit back in the fifth Book. It has been determined by us elsewhere, back in the fifth Book of Wisdom, that ability and to be able are said in many ways. Now, I'm translating the Greek word dunamis, right, by philatia. Some people want to translate it by the Latin-derived word potentia, right? Potentia, okay? Dunamis only comes into English, and you use words like dynamo, dynamite, okay? Okay, sometimes potentia in Latin, or dunamis in Greek, is translated into English by the word power, okay? But as we'll see in a short day here, although the first sense, really, of ability or power, dunamis, is an active sense of the ability to act upon other things, the ability to move other things. Nevertheless, the word ability is also moved over to the ability to undergo, the ability to be active upon, the ability to be moved by another. And the English word power doesn't seem to be moved from the active to the passive sense. But the word ability, and to some extent, even more clearly, the word able is, in fact, in English, huh? So, the word ability in English is more used for all the senses of dunamis in Greek, or potentia in Latin, what in Latin they call potentia activa, potentia passiva, potentia, why the English word power is not, what, moved there to the passive sense. So, that's why you translate it by the word ability, huh? A lot of times we talk about the abilities of the soul, we translate it as the powers of the soul, and a lot of the translations will have that. But the word power seems to be stuck on the, what? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's like the problem we have with the translation of, um, of pascine there in Greek, right? For instance, if pascine, or pasio, would be, what? To suffer, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. If you translate it by to suffer in English, it captures the first meaning of it. Well, suffer in English almost is stuck on the original sense, which is to, um, um, be active upon in a way that's harmful to you, it's, you know, painful and so on, right? So, you speak of the passion of our Lord or something in this, sorry. Suffering. Why, the Greek word, the Latin word, has been, what? moved to, um, senses where you receive something that is not necessarily painful or contrary to you, and even to receiving something that perfects you. Mm-hmm. Um, so I think I mentioned before how I tend to translate a pascine by to undergo, right? Because undergo doesn't seem to be stuck as much to the sense of, uh, being acted upon in a painful or destructive way. Even though probably originally, under, to undergo, has a little bit of that sense of the bad, right? We say that, um, he's undergone a lot. It's pretty, it kind of implies it's not good what he's undergone, right? Now it's been bad for him, right? Mm-hmm. Um, but you can move the English word more, right? Mm-hmm. So that's why I translate by the word ability here. But now I was going to say there are some senses of ability or power, if I want to use that word, which are not our concern here because they're almost, what, purely equivocal compared to the senses we have here. The ones we have here are going to be equivocal by reason, but not purely equivocal. And he's saying there's some other meanings. And he's thinking of the fact that we sometimes, um, speak and say geometry, huh? Uh, three to the second power, or three to the third power. But all the senses of power or ability we're going to talk about here are ones where it's the beginning of some kind of motion or operation, or something like this. Sorry. And, uh, sometimes we use the word able to in logic when we say that the predicate, um, is not incompatible with the subject, right? So you say man is able to be white, huh? Okay. But man is not able to be a dog, let's say, right? That's a different sense of able that's not really connected to senses here, huh? So, it has been determined by us elsewhere that ability and to be able are said in many ways. Let us leave aside whichever of these are called abilities equivocally, and by equivocally he means purely almost equivocally. There's any likeness there, it's kind of a metaphorical likeness. For some are said by certain likeness, as in geometry, we call something possible or impossible for being or not being in some way. But then I almost have to get the sense of an image, use the English word power, right? But we do speak of, you know, two to the second power, three to the third power, you know? But that's, we'll set that meaning aside, huh? And also, that that you find in logic, where the predicate is said to be compatible or possibly out with the subject. But then there's a number of meanings he's going to take out now, and there's many meanings, but they all refer back to the ability to act upon and the ability to move another. Whichever are set towards the same form are all beginnings. They're beginning with some kind of motion, but not necessarily when they act to sense. And are set towards one that is first, which is the beginning of change in another as other. Notice he calls that the first meaning, right? Another is the ability to undergo a beginning in the one undergoing or being changed, huh? When acted upon another as other. Let's stop on that for a moment there, right? Suppose you put Perkwist in the ring there with Cassius Clay or some other boxer, you know? And before they stop the fight, which won't be long, I'd say Perkwist shouldn't be in there at all, right? He didn't have any ability, right? He didn't get any blows in, he's just getting thrashed and whacked around, right? Okay? So you'll see. You'll see. You'll see. You'll see. You'll see. You'll see. Ability only in Cassius Clay, not in me, right? Don't you say that? But, Berkowitz is beatable, Berkowitz is breakable, Berkowitz is bustable, right? We do say that, don't we? Especially after we saw it on the podcast. Yeah, and notice they're using the word able there, aren't you? Breakable, bustable, so on and on. So, what sense of ability corresponds to that use of the word able there? You say Berkowitz is beatable. Absolutely. Yeah, he's able to be acted upon by Cassius Clay in this way, right? Okay? But my being beatable, as a reference back to his ability to beat me, to hit me, right? Okay? When the pianist, and the great pianist's down to pay the piano, you know, like, what's his name here? Benedict XVI, right? Did you see that in the Catholic Will Report there? I just saw the issue that came to the house a few days ago. But they're talking about his going up to North Italy there, vacationing. In the summer, they're the same place where Jean-Paul II used to go, huh? But they had to bring in a piano, right? Oh, man. Because both Benedict XVI and his brother are pianists, right? I guess his brother's even more, you know, professional, you know? But, but, but, so it said that the, the, the chalet where it was, was filled with Mozart, believe me. Oh, man. So I said, oh, boy. You know, I got Paul VI there for Shakespeare, you know, and I got to take the first. Or Mozart, you know? They say, they say he plays Mozart every day, but this is, there's a little confirmation of that, right? You hear Mozart over the place. But notice, now you see that the pianist, they're playing the piano, and you talk about his ability to play the piano, right? And you wouldn't even think of, of attributing ability to the piano itself, would you? Not at first, right? Not at first. No. But you could say that piano is, what? Playable, right? Okay. It can be acted, it's able to be acted upon by a pianist in this way. But the fundamental and first meaning of ability is his ability to play the piano, right? But in the second meaning of ability, you can say that the piano is playable by the great pianist, huh? The keys don't stick, you know? They don't, you know? They behave the way they should, right? So that's the second one, okay? Nice and it's called the primary meaning, the ability to act upon another, right? In English, huh? Or the ability to move another, right? Okay. And the second ability is the ability to be, to undergo, or the ability to be acted upon, the ability to be moved or changed by another. So you can see in these first two meanings of ability, how you're speaking ability in reference to motion or change, huh? Their names are very concrete when we say the ability to act upon them to undergo them. I saw that with my little nephew there when he was first at the house. My brother Richard and his wife came back and he was going to teach at the College of St. Thomas. And they were looking for an apartment, a very reasonable apartment, given their finances. And so any time they saw an interesting apartment advertised in the newspaper, they would leave the little boy with me, you know, and rush off to see that apartment before it got taken. And so I would amuse him, you know, building these little towers and things, you know, in the sunroom. We used to like to, you know, knock over these towers that I built, right? And kind of laugh and knock them over. But if he was distracted with something else and we turned back and I had the tower taller than him, he would hold his little finger and say, oh, oh, ah, admiration, you see. But if it was lower than him, he'd knock it over with contempt, you might say. Well, you see, if it's taller than him, it might, what, act upon him, right? See, he has some respect for it, huh? But if it's shorter than him, and he's, you know, going to act upon it, right? So it's kind of that spatial idea. You pick a fight with the guy in the bar and he gets off his stool and raises himself up to his full height and you realize that he's towering above you, right? You better back off, huh? Well, he still can. But you all know how, I mean, if you're a pound of nails into a ceiling, how tired it is on the arm, right? Or the hand, right? But if you're, you know, above an acting pot, you do it much better, right? But eventually, we drop the spatial idea there with acting upon, undergoing it. You have to be spatially above something to act upon it, huh? But it's easy to do so, right? Okay? What does Anthony say about Caesar? The day he overcame the Nervia, that's the expression there, to overcome. It's taken from the spatial idea of being above, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? You know what an underdog is, right? So, those are the first two senses he gives, and ability. That's the most basic distinction, huh? The active ability and the, what? Passive ability, huh? Notice it's a passive ability we're going to deny of God, right? We say God's omnipotent. It's the active sense, huh? Okay? Again, the meaning of ability would change a bit there, huh? Because God's ability is not just an ability to act upon something, it's the ability to, what? Create something, huh? So, you don't have to have something to act upon. The whole thing is being produced by God. Now, he gives a third meaning here of ability. And this now is kind of a negation of what's gone before. And another, he says, is the firm disposition not to undergo change towards the worse, and corruption by being acted upon by another as other. Now, notice the image again with the word able there. We say something is durable, right? It's able to endure, right? So, the weather, whatever it is, is not going to corrupt this thing or destroy it, right? Mm-hmm. So, this is another meaning now. But, it refers back again because it's resistance, huh? Ability to exist being acted upon, huh? Okay? So, it's not as important as the first two meanings. But, like the second meaning, it refers back in some way to the first. So, he says, the thought of the first ability, the ability to move another, is in all these definitions, right? When you say that I am beatable, what does that mean? Something can beat the heck out of me, right? When I say that the paper here is burnable, right? It's able to be, what? Acted upon by the fire in this way, right? Mm-hmm. So, it refers back to the ability of the fire, right? Okay? The paper is burnable by fire, right? So, you're going back kind of to that active sense of ability as the first, what, meaning. Now, at the end of the paragraph, he adds two other meanings, which obviously are defined by the previous ones. Again, these abilities are said to be of only acting upon or undergoing or of doing so well, right? So, that also, these definitions exist in some way, the definition of ability. So, if I have the ability, what, to play the piano well and the definition of that ability to play the piano well is including the ability to play the piano, right? Mm-hmm. There used to be a Mrs. Burkowitz that sang, you know, solo in church, huh? And people would call up our house sometimes with the wrong telephone and they'd ask my mother, you know, are you the Mrs. Burkowitz that sings? Mrs. Burkowitz. Mrs. Burkowitz. Mrs. Burkowitz. Mrs. Burkowitz.