Excerpt. Klubertanz "Discursive Power" Thomas Aquinas textual sources on vis cogitativa

The following is an excerpt from an important textual study on Thomas Aquinas's doctrine on the vis cogitativa. This doctrine is currently my primary area of study. The following excerpt provides a very long listing of important textual sources for this doctrine. I am making it available online, becuase this book is nearly impossible to find and so I can have access to this index at any internet connection. Unfortunately I do not know how to keep formatting when I import from a word document, so this doesn't look as nice as it should.

The Discursive Power: sources and doctrine of the vis cogitativa according to St. Thomas Aquinas

By George P. Klubertanz
Part II.
Chapter 5
Introduction to Thomistic Texts

In St. Thomas, the “key” texts are very brief, but there is a very large number of
shorter references to the same problem. Almost all the modern authors who have touched on this problem in St. Thomas agree that the main texts are five: Commentary on the Sentences, bk. 3, d. 26, q. 1, a.2; Contra Gentiles, bk. 2, 60, 73,76; Commentary on the De Anima, bk. 2, lect. 13; Summa Theologiae I. 78. 4, 81. 3; Quaestio Disputata de Anima, a. 13. These five texts are very brief; almost astonishingly so in comparison with the discussions of St. Albert. The one
extended discussion, that in the Contra Gentiles, really contains very little positive doctrine, as we shall see; it is almost entirely concerned with the refutation of a particular Averroes’s theory.
[See footnotes for the following references]

Additional direct references to the vis cogitative occur in the Commentary on the Sentences,1 De Veritate,2 Contra Gentiles,3 Commentary on the Ethics,4 Summa Theologiae,5 Quaestio Disputata de Anima,6 and in the doubtful work De Principio Individuationis7.

Ratio particularis is spoken of in Commentary on the Sentences,8 De Veritate,9 Contra Gentiles,10 Commentary on the Ethics,11 Commentary on the De Anima,12 De Principio Individuationis, and Summa Theologiae.13

Vis aestimativa is discussed in Commentary on the Sentences,14 De Veritate,15 Contra Gentiles,16 Commentary on the Ethics,17 Commentary on De Sensu et Sensato,18 and Commentary on De Memoria et Reminiscentia,19 and in Summa Theologiae.20

Instinctus is mentioned with reference to the actions of animals in Commentary on the Sentences,21 Contra Gentiles,22 Commentary on the Metaphysics,23 Commentary on De Memoria et Reminiscentia,24 Summa Theologiae,25 and Quaestio Disputata de Anima.26

It is obvious that some of these references will overlap, since these terms naturally combine and contract among themselves. It should also be stated that this list does not pretend to be exhaustive, except in the sense that all the important passages are considered.

Another point to be noted is that some very important texts do not explicitly refer to any of these terms. For example, the long and very important discussion on prudence in Summa Theologiae II-II, qq. 47 and 49, is shown to concern our problem only by means of St. Thomas’s own reference to the sixth book of Aristotle’s Ethics, and by means of St. Thomas’s own development of the Aristotelian doctrine.

The chapter divisions on this part follow almost naturally from the chronology of the works. A glance at the “key” texts shows a division into three groups: the first comprising of Commentary on the Sentences, the De Veritate, and the Contra Gentiles, which precede most if not all of the commentaries on Aristotle; the second group will take in the passages occurring in commentaries on Aristotelian works; the third including the Summa Theologiae and the Quaestio Disputata de Anima. More accurate dating, for example, of the relative position of the Aristotelian Commentaries with relation to each other, is not always certain, and, as we shall see, has almost nothing to offer us.[...]

Standard translations of the works of St. Thomas, where they exist, will not be made use of. One reason is that a textual study requires a certain literalness of translation that would otherwise be out of place. Another reason is to ensure the same translation for the same terms. A third is to show, by textual analysis, that the term “vis cogitativa” is capable of translation and not merely transliteration.


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1
Loci in the Commentary on the Sentences: III d. 23, q. 2, a. 2, q. 1 ad 3; IV d. 7 q. 3, a. 3, q. 2, obj. 1 and ad 1; III d. 26, q. 1, a. 2; IV d. 23, q. 2, a. 2, q. 1 ad 3; d. 49, q. 22, a. 2, sol.; d. 50, q. 1, a.1 ad 3; a. 3 ad 3 in contrar.
2
De Veritate: I. 11, X. 5, XV. 1 ad 9, XV. 1, XVIII. 7 ad 5.
3
Contra Gentiles: II. 60, 73, 76, 80, 81; III. 84.
4
Commentary on the Ethics: VI, lect. 1, 7, 9.
5
Summa Theologiae, I. 85.7, 111.2 ad 2, 115.3, 79.2; I-II. 50.3 ad 3, 51.3, 30.3 ad 3, 74.3 ad 1; II-II. 2.1 ad 2; III. 72 11, arg. 3 and ad 3.
6
Quaestio Disputata de Anima: XX ad 1 in contrar.
7
De Principio Individuationis: a medio.
8
Commentary on the Sentences: II d. 24, q. 2, a. 1 ad 3; IV d. 50, q. 1, a. 1 ad 3; a. 3 ad 3 in contrar.
9
De Veritate: II. 6, X. 5, XIV. 1 ad 9, XV. 1.
10
Contra Gentiles: II. 60.
11
Commentary on the Ethics: VI, lect. 1, 7, 9.
12
Commentary on the De Anima: II, lect. 16.
13
Summa Theologiae: I. 20, 1 ad 1, 19. 2 ad 2; 80. 2 ad 3; I-II. 51. 3, 30. 3 ad 3.
14
Commentary on the Sentences: II. d. 20, q. 2, a. 2 ad 5; II d. 24, q. 2, a. 1 and ad 2; d. 25, q. 1, a. 1 ad 7; III d. 17, q. 1, a. 1, q. 3 ad 2; d. 15, q. 2, a. 2, q. 3 ad 3; d. 35, q. 1, a 2, q. 2 ad 1; IV d. 49, q. 2, a. 2.
15
De Veritate: I. 11, XV. 1, XVIII. 7 and ad 7; XXIV. 2; XXV. 2.
16
Contra Gentiles: II. 47, 48, 60.
17
Commentary on the Ethics: VI, lect. 7, 9.
18
Commentary on De Sensu et Sensato: lect. 1.
19
Commentary on De Memoria et Reminiscentia: lect. 2.
20
Summa Theologiae: I. 81.2 ad 2; I-II. 6.2, 77.1
21
Commentary on the Sentences: II d. 20, q. 2, a. 2 ad 5.
22
Contra Gentiles: II. 47; III. 131.
23
Commentary on Metaphysics: I. Lect. 1.
24
Commentary on De Memoria et Reminiscentia: lect. 1, 8.
25
Summa Theologiae: I. 18. 3, 83.1; I-II. 3. 6, 9. 1 ad 2, 11. 2, 12. 5 and ad 3, 15. 2, 17. 2 ad 3, 40. 3 and ad 1, 46. 4 ad 2, 50. 3 and ad 2. 26
Quaestio Disputata de Anima: XIII.

ST. Ia. 89. 1-2 Outline

I am required to give a sketch of some assigned articles from the Summa Theologica for my class on Aquinas and Human Nature. My assigned articles are from the Prima Pars question 89 articles 1 and 2. In question 89 Aquinas is treating the problematic of the separated human soul's ability to understand without the body. Here is my sort of propositionalized outline of these questions meant to be read with the Summa not as a substitution. Two difficulties with the following. It was produced hastily so I used my own nomenclature and shorthand, and blogspot has a very difficult bulleting format. So I just pasted in my word document which is not tabbed very well in the pasted format.

Summa Theologica. Prima Pars Q. 89 Art. 1

Whether a human soul separated from its body (henceforth: SHS) can understand anything?

• It seems that the human soul separated from the body can know nothing.

Obj. 1: Aristotle asserts in the De Anima (i, 4) that
i. “Understanding is corrupted together with its interior principle.”
ii. In death all human interior principles are corrupted
iii. Ergo, the intellect [which is the faculty for understanding] is corrupted

Obj. 2:
i. The human soul is hindered from understanding when there is an impediment/distraction to the senses or imagination. (cf. 84.7/8)
ii. Death destroys the sense and imagination (cf. 77.8)
iii. Ergo, after death the SHS understands nothing

Obj. 3: If the SHS can understand it must be by means of an intelligible species.
i. However, the SHS does not understand by means of innate species.
a. B/c it is at first like a blank tablet
ii. SHS also cannot know by species abstracted from things
a. B/c separated the soul is w/o the organs of sensation and imagination which are both
necessary for the abstraction of species.
iii. SHS also cannot understand by means of previously abstracted species stored in the soul.
a. If this were the case, a child’s soul would have no means of understanding at all [after the
child has died and the soul is separated]. (This supposes that children have not yet come to the age of understanding and abstraction)
iv. Finally, the SHS does not understand by a Divine influx of species intelligibiles.
a. B/c that would not be natural cognition but gratuitous cognition. And this question is of
natural cognition.

Sed contra: Aristotle says in de Anima (i.1)

i. “If the soul had no proper operation, it could not be separated from the body.”
ii. But there is a SHS.
iii. Ergo, it has a proper operation, and this is above all, is understanding.
iv. Ergo, the SHS can understand apart from the body.

Reply:

I. Overview of the Problem w/ Platonic considerations

i. There is a problem here b/c when the soul is united to the body in can understand only by means of abstraction from the phantasms.
a. Platonic Psychology Digression: If this were accidental to the soul’s nature, as the
Platonists hold, the problem would vanish. B/c the Platonists held the soul’s natural state is w/o the body.
i. The soul would then understand things simply like the other separated substances.
b. However in this case the union of soul and body would not be for the soul’s good, but for
the body’s good. B/c the soul would understand worse united,
c. This is unreasonable b/c matter exists for the sake of form, not the reverse.
ii. And a SHS is without phantasms.
iii. And death does not change the soul’s nature.
iv. Ergo it cannot understand anything naturally.

II. Thomas's Initial Solution

i. Recall, nothing operates unless it is actual.
a. The mode of operation in a thing follows on its mode of existence (essendi ipsius).
ii. Soul has two modes of being w/ a nature that does not alter between the two modes. And this does not negate the soul’s natural union with the body, making it therefore accidental. (Example of objects natural location). The two modes accordingly are:
a. Soul unified to the body.
b. SHS
iii. The soul when unified to the body has the appropriate mode of operation.
iv. SHS has a mode of understanding, where it turns to simply intelligible objects, like separated substances.
a. But this is contrary to its natural union with the body and its natural mode of
understanding by phantasms, which is why it is naturally united to the body.

III. Challenge to God’s Providence

1. Nature is always ordered to what is best.
2. It is better to understand intelligibles simply than by phantasms.
3. God should have ordered the soul’s nature in accordance with the nobler mode of understanding.

IV. 2nd Solution

1. It is nobler in itself to understand by turning to something higher than lower.
2. But this mode of understanding was not so perfect given what was possible for the soul.

• Divergence: The Order of Intellects
• The further an intellects is from the first principle the more diversified its mode of
understanding.
• God > Higher Intellectual Substances > Inferior Intellectual Substances > Man.
• If lower intellects received species with the same degree of universality, it would be
incommensurate to their own faculties and they wound be confused and at best only have
improper knowledge.

3. Humans are the lowest of the intellectual substances.
4. Perfection of the universe required diverse grades of being.
5. If God has willed human souls to understand like separated substances, they would only understand confusedly.
6. Ergo: So that humans could come to perfect and proper understanding they were untied to bodies by nature.

V. Resolution

Therefore it is for the soul’s natural good that it is united to the body. Nevertheless it is possible for it to exist apart from the body and to understand another way.

Reply: Obj. 1
1. Aristotle asserts this assuming a the prior supposition that understanding is a movement of body and soul together, sensation is the same.
2. Also, he is referring here to the way of understanding by turning to phantasms.

Same Reply for Obj. 2

Reply: Obj. 3
1. The objection does prove: A) no innate species B) nor by abstracted species presently or C) retained.
2. SHS understands by means of participated species arising from the influence of the Divine Light. The SHS shares in this, like other separated substances; though to a lesser degree.

Summa Theologica. Prima Pars. Q. 89. Art. 2

Whether the separated soul understands separate substances?

• It seems the SHS does not understand separate substances.

Obj. 1:
1. Soul is more perfect with the body, b/c every part of a whole is more perfect in union with the whole.
2. Soul in the body does not understand separated substances (88.1)
3. Ergo, it is much less able to w/o the body.

Obj. 2:
1. Whatever is know by its presence or by its species.
2. Only God can enter the soul and be present.
3. Nor by abstraction of species, for angels are simpler than the soul.
4. Therefore the SHS cannot understand separate substances.

Obj. 3:
1. Some philosophers held man’s ultimate happiness is in knowing separated substances.
2. But if the SHS could understand them, its happiness would be obtained simply by separation which is unreasonable.

Sed contra:
1. SHS know other SHS: example of the rich man who saw Lazarus and Abraham.
2. Therefore SHS can see them.

Reply:
1. Our mind acquires knowledge of incorporeal things by knowing itself. (Augustine says the same.)
a. This operation will inform the present investigation. The operation of understanding itself through its own act.
2. SHS, does not turn to phantasms, but directly to simple intelligible objects.
a. Ergo, in this state it understands itself through itself.
3. Every Separated Substance: “understands what is above itself and what is below itself according to the mode of its subsistence.”
a. A thing is understood according as it is in the one who understands; while one thing is in another according to the nature of that in which it is.
4. SHS is inferior to angels, but is the same as other SHS
5. Therefore, the SHS has perfect knowledge of other SHS, but imperfect and defective knowledge of angels and only to the degree its natural knowledge is concerned.
6. The knowledge of Glory is otherwise.

Reply Obj. 1:
1. SHS is less perfect in consideration of its natural union with the body.
2. But the SHS has a greater freedom of intelligence as a SHS

Reply Obj. 2:
1. SHS understands angels by means of divinely impressas similitudes;
2. Yet these fail to give perfect representations of them.
3. B/c the nature of SHS is inferior to angels.

Reply Obj. 3:
1. Man’s happiness is in knowledge of God, not angles.
2. God is only seen by grace.
3. Perfect Knowledge of other separate substances does give great happiness, but not ultimate.
4. SHS however does not have perfect knowledge of them.

Aristotle's Theory of Scientific Demonstration: Lect. 2

This second lecture was dedicated to a brief glossing of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and theory of scientific demonstration. It is Aristotle's own solution to a number of problems addressed by Plato regarding metaphysics, epistemology, logic/demonstration, and cognitive states. As a glossing of the text, we only covered the skeleton of this treatise's rather exhaustive inquiry into the nature of scientific demonstration. The Posterior Analytics can take years to get even a handle on its nuances, let alone assimilate its modes into solidified habitus or cognitive propositional dispositions. And it seems rather clear that this was an endevor of fundamental importance for the medievals who wrote a sundry of commentaries on this task for the purpose of apprehending every nuance. Avicenna is amongst the medievals who say the wisdom of this text, and an awareness of this influence will certainly provide an schema by which one can follow the philosophical moves Avicenna is making while attempting to explicate scientifcally on any particular subject genus.

The unity of the Posterior Analytics lies in that the question of the first chapter is dealt with again with a new solution in the last chapter of the text. The mode of knowing of the higher cognitive states as found in Plato's "Divided Line" has reached a level of maturity and precision in Aristotle.

Major contrasts in Aristotle from Plato is the diversity of sciences. For Plato there is one universal science towards the Good. All knowledge is a process on the way to knowing the Good, and to know the Good is then to have episteme. For Aristotle there are a diversity of sciences, as many as their are subject genus. This allows Aristotle to hold that one can have episteme and know nothing about the Good.

Posterior Analytics: Book I. Ch. 1

Thesis: New knowledge is acquired from/by prior knowledge

Prior Knowledge is of three kinds:

1) Of a Principle: that it is - quia est
2) Of a Proper Attribute: What it is - quid est
3) Of a Subject: Both That it is & What it is - et quia est, et quid est

Posterior Analytics: Book I. Ch. 2

Thesis: To know scientifically is to (A) know the cause of the thing and (B) know that it cannot be other wise than what it is.

There is another way of knowing, but the first topic treated is of knowing through a demonstration. Demonstration is obtained by a scientific syllogism, and the latter is that that in virtue of which, by possessing, we know something.

Demonstrated knowledge must necessarily proceed from appropriate principles that are
1) True
2) Primary
3) Immediate
4) More known than
5) Prior to, and
6) The causes of the conclusion

Note: There can be a syllogism without these requirements for principles, but such a syllogism will not be a demonstration, for it will not produce knowledge.
Digest of the Requirements of a Demonstrative Syllogism’s Principles

1) True: Principles should be true because non-being (falsity) cannot be known
2) Primary: Demonstrated knowledge must be acquired from primary principles which are indemonstrable. Primary also means appropriate to the thing known.
3) Immediate: not mediated for that would require another demonstration. Immediate means there is no other premise before it.
a) Thesis: is any immediate syllogistic principle that cannot be proved and it not
necessary for a learner to have in order to learn something.
i) Hypothesis: is a thesis that states something is the case or not.
ii) Definition: is a thesis that does not, such as “a unit is that which is
indivisible with respect to quantity.”
b) Axiom: is a principle a learner must possess to learn anything
4) More known than (and to a higher degree): not simply understood but knowing that. Also Prior and More Know without qualification, that is, as most universal.
a) To a higher degree: “for that because of which a thing exists always exists to a
higher degree” (Note: this is an aspect of the Principle of Causality)
5) Prior to: Principles must be prior by nature to the conclusion if they are the cause of it.
6) The cause: Because we know a thing only when we know the causes of it.

Posterior Analytics: Book I. Ch. 10

Principles in a demonstration are of two kinds.

Some are Proper principles and some are common to many sciences.(common by analogy: since they are used as far as the genus of things under each science extends)

Proper Principles are also those whose existence is posited and whose essential attributes are investigated by a given science.

A science posits that each of these exists and is so-and-so.
The definition of essential attributes is posited. But that each essential attribute exists is proved though the common principles or axioms and from what has been demonstrated.

Every Demonstrative Science is concerned with three things:
1) those which it posits to exist (and these are things under the genus whose essential attributes it investigates.
2) The so-called “common axioms” from which it demonstrates as from first principles,
3) The attributes, the meaning of whose corresponding terms it posits.


Principles are of three kinds:

1) the genus concerning which something is proved
2) the attributes which are proved of the genus
3) the common axioms from which something is proved.

Posterior Analytics: Book II. Ch. 1

The things we know about and the things we inquiry about:

1) a fact
2) the reason for a fact
3) if an object exists
4) what a thing is.

Posterior Analytics: Book II. Ch. 2

When we inquire 1) whether something is or is not a fact or 3) whether an object simply exists or not, we inquire whether it has a middle or not.

Following knowledge of a fact or that a thing exists we sometimes inquiry further. We inquiry the 2) why of the fact or 4) the whatness of it, in this case we ask “what is its middle?”

In all inquiries we therefore inquire either a) whether there is a middle or b) what the middle is; for the cause is a middle and in all cases it is what is sought.

To understand the whatness of a thing is to understand the why of it


Posterior Analytics: Book II. Ch. 19

First must be acquired but not by demonstration (which would entail circularity or infinite regress cf. P.A. I. 3). Aristotle, contra the Platonic thesis, thinks that principles are not grasped by intellectual apprehension of Forms separate from the things themselves. Rather Aristotle thinks that forms can be grasped in the things themselves.

Aristotle (100a4)

• Sense perception
  
• Memory } Out these three cognitive operations arises the arts and sciences
  
• Experience
  

To illustrate the latter cognitive transition Aristotle uses the famous metaphor of the army in a rout that suddenly makes a stand, becoming stronger and more secure as the ranks increase. A locus where this metaphor is enforced is within Aristotle's account of "incidental sensation" (cf. De Anima II. 6 418a7-418a26) Our sense-perception is of the particular but the particular itself is an instantiated form - which is universal as known, and is perceived as a particular instantiation of the universal in incidental sensation (as later commentators bring to light, e.g. Avicenna, Aquinas, etc.)



Dialectic: For Plato is a comparing and motion up a genus-species tree. However, Aristotle's account of dialectic takes on an expanded inductive inference from what we see in the Divided Line. It includes also particulars to generalization, as well as Plato's account of the motion from species to genus. Aristotle expands induction because he does not think we start with the forms but must first acquire them from the particulars which bear them in re. The particularized universal instantiations are "gathered" together prior to grasping a "real universal. The scheme of Aristotle looks something like this:

Individual -> Universals (specific) -> Universals (generic to most generic)

Induction is capped or culiminates in nous- intellectual insight. Nous should be taken here as a unified dyadic act of apprehension (concept-formation) and judgement (proposition-formation) as the Medievals will come to identify them. This account is verified in a number of Aristotelian passages; earlier in the PA I. 2 and 10 he explains propositions as divided into two species 1) definitions and 2) hypothesis. The latter has for its constituents the former. This account of the unity of the first two acts of intellect will receive a must fuller treatment in the later commentators, in particular, I will later be addressing Avicenna's treatment in his Metaphysics of the Healing Bk. I ch. 5-7.

Veracity of the Intellect in Aristotle:
In PA II. 19 we get the completed epistemic account that not only Scientia (episteme) but also intellectus (nous) are unfailingly true. Opinions, justified true beliefs, and inductions as found in sense-perception, memory, and experience are generalized or universal in a sense, in Aristotle and Plato, but they are not necessarily true as they are in nous.

We have here different intellectual habitus:

• Scientia - as discursive and mediative
• Intellectus - as insight and immediate

N.b. - A question is often raised in this context and I wish to provide the brief response given by my professor to this question. Due to the high epistemic status Aristotle grants this intellectual insight (nous) many question the frequency of the occasion of nous. How often do humans have insight into the essence of things? There is no unequivocal and strait forward answer to this question. One must keep in my the complexity of things man knows and the gradient of intelligibilities in things that must be actualized through human cognition and its correlative habitus. Since nous is a habitus, those who are more active in their pursuit of insight will have a greater frequency in the apprehension of natures. However, and perhaps more important, is not the frequency of apprehension but the clarity and understanding of the natures grasped, which is certainly cultivated by a habitus. In this way one can admit with Aristotle in the Ethics that there is insight (nous) occurring at the most abstract and most preliminary cognitive interfaces with real things. The most preliminary insights are no less true, just perhaps less clear and lacking in penetration to the depths of the reality they apprehend.

The Platonic Background to Avicenna: Lecture 1

It was taken for granted by the Medieval Scholastics and neo-Scholastics alike that Aristotle developed this idea of episteme or scientia as the paradigm of knowledge, and then employed it by its proper mode of discursive reasoning, namely, scientific demonstration, in all his sciences, practical and theoretical. It was for this reason that the majority of medieval Aristotelians found it more than appropriate to comprehend and apply this infinitely subtle but foundational work on the highest order of knowledge. For this reason do we find such a large body of fastidious medieval "commentaries" on the Posterior Analytics.

However, recent scholarship has attempted to develop a counter thesis to this traditional understanding of the Posterior Analytics by showing that it was not the case that many medievalists were developing foundationalist epistemologies rooted in Aristotle's theory of scientific demonstration. Or if they were, they rarely held to it in their own theoretical treatments and explications. This thesis finds various representations for 20th century commentators of Aquinas, most notably, in Eleanore Stump's Aquinas and John Jenkins Faith and Reason in Thomas Aquinas.

Against this view, among others, is the late Dominican Father James Weisheipl (Aristotelian Methodology), Scott MacDonald (who has an excellent essay in the Cambridge Companion to Aquinas), and my professor R.E. Houser.

But in order to understand the roots of Aristotle's own theory of scientific demonstration and its influence upon Avicenna and the Scholastic Aristotelians like Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus one must first look back into Plato. Most especially the Meno (80d - 86d) and the Republic books 6-7, in particular the "Divided Line." Only in light of these problems can one truly understand and appreciate Aristotle's own solution to these Platonic problems. Solutions he is at pains to produce in his Posterior Analytics.

Because of time constraints in the semester we were only able to spend one lecture on Plato. For this reason the following reflections will be rather brief, as well as the following posts on Aristotle. The primary focus was "The Divided Line." Of the images of this that I could find online, the following was the best.( http://www.psichi.org/images/site_pages/1_2_analogy.jpg)

The "Divided Line" comes at the very end of The Republic book 6, 509d-511e. Various aspects of it are mentioned in passim at 476c, 517c, 524d, and 534a. It also offers interesting correlations in to the famous "Allegory of the Cave" in book 7. As the diagram on the left shows there are two columns dividing objects and their correlative cognitive/mental states. Unfortunately this diagram is missing one very essential element. There are supposed to be two more lines! Below "Forms" and above "Mathematical Objects" there should be a line. And likewise below "Visible Things" and above "Images".

What is especially interesting is the manner in which Plato describes how we come to have these various kinds of "mental states" or degrees of knowledge. "[I]n [the lower] part of [the intelligible half of the divided line] a soul, using as images the things that were previously imitated, is compelled to investigate on the basis of hypotheses and makes its way not to a beginning [or principle] but to an end [or conclusion]; while in the other [higher] part it makes its way to a beginning [principle] that is free from hypotheses; starting out from hypothesis and without the images used in the other part, by means of forms themselves it makes its inquiry through them." (trans. Bloom, 510b) A similar discussion is held by Socrates at 511b where the former part is referred to as "dialectic." What is also of note is Plato's use of induction and then deduction in these accounts on the degrees of knowledge ordered like "steppingstones and springboards" towards that highest of ends, knowledge of the Good. The highest part in the latter account no longer reasons by images but by the "forms themselves" grasped in light of dialectic. This account will be re-formulated and ordered within Aristotle's Posterior Analytics with his own nuances and greater clarity than is given to us in Plato's own presentation.

Finally, the most important overall position held by Plato is his understanding of a universal science. This will be contrasted strongly to Aristotle's division of the sciences into a multitude of subject-genus determined by their specific object. For Plato there is one science towards the Good. All the orders of cognition are intellectual steps taking the soul closer and closer to the knowledge of the Good. It is only one episteme after one has seen the Good. The Good is the highest object for Plato, the order of intelligence may be knowing deductively, "form by form" without the use of hypothesis, but it still much reach the highest form, which is the cause of all the forms. The Good is "even beyond Being" for Plato, and it is for this reason that knowledge of the Good, illuminates all. Like its parallel, the Sun, in the "Allegory of the Cave" to see the Good-in-itself, is to have episteme of all that it is the source of, which is everything. All other cognitive orders are simply stages towards the Good.

A great deal more could be said, but the foregoing is a sufficient indication of the problems to be taken up by Aristotle. I'll end this post with a quote from the Republic book 7 that is distantly related to the topic at hand, but provincial to the popular obsessions of my peers. The Presidential election of 2008, a matter that I know less about than Parmenides short little metaphysical poem.

Socrates responds to an objection about the injustice done to the Guardians by having them return from intellectual sublimity to order the lives of the masses.
"My friend, you have again forgotten," I said, "that it's not the concern of the law that any one class fare exceptionally well, but it contrives to bring about in the city as a whole, harmonizing the citizens by persuasion and compulsion, making them share with one another the benefit that each is able to bring to the commonwealth. And it produces such men in the city not in order to let them turn whichever way each wants, but in order that it may use them in binding the city together." (52oa)

Such sacrifice to the common good, is essential to the flourishing of mankind, and Christ calls us to no less.

Introduction

I have recently started my masters degree in philosophy at the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas. "Blogging" offers, as many have discovered, an avenue to reflect on one's thoughts, while providing an accessible way to communicate those thoughts to their peers. This particular forum will be a place for me to recapitulate and reflect on my course lectures and texts. In addition to the general themes of each of the courses I will be working on papers for each course which will require more specific research. I hope to also contribute to this blog my notes on at least one of research papers.

This semester I am taking three courses.

1) "Avicenna's the Metaphysics of the Healing and its influence on Thomas Aquinas"

Avicenna was one of the most important Islamic philosophers to commentate on the works of Aristotle. Earlier on in Thomas's studies the whole of Aristotle still had not become readily available nor in good translations. Aquinas's metaphysics curriculum at Naples would have consisted mostly in Avicenna's "The Metaphysics of the Healing" which is certainly an Aristotelian metaphysics, but is not strictly speaking the thought of Aristotle. Rather it is a philosophical development to the Aristotelian tradition. A development that would have an influence on later Aristotelian commentators like Averroes, Albert the Great, and most especially, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Of course Aquinas would pursue direct studies of the majority of Aristotle's actual treatises later in his life. A direct study that brought about his own perspicuous commentaries of the Philosopher.

This course has as its primary end to gloss the whole of Avicenna's "Metaphysics of the Healing." This in turn will be correlated to particular nuances in Aquinas's own metaphysics that are rather particular to himself, which show no explicit source in Aristotle but seem quite clearly to be found within Avicenna.

As of now I have not yet settle on a paper topic. As of now I am considering either a modest investigation into Avicenna's doctrine of being or Avicenna's solution to the problem of Universals, since I take these two problems to be the key issues of metaphysics. Perhaps as the course develops I shall find something else of interest.


2) "Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles Books I & II" (Aquinas's philosophy of God)
The Summa Theologica is very succinct and does not develop the many philosophical principles it employs because it takes for granted one has a deep background in philosophy. The Summa Contra Gentiles develops a number of these principles and arguments considerably more and does not appeal to the authority of Sacred texts until book IV. So the first book and part of the second are essentially an summation of Aquinas's Natural Theology or Philosophy of God.

St. Thomas Aquinas died on March 7th, 1274 at the Cistercian Abbey of Fossanova. The dating of Fr. Weisheipl places the early parts of the Summa Contra Gentiles around 1258/9-1261. Its completion is more debatable. So Aquinas is in his mid-thirties while composing the Summa Contra Gentiles, it is about fifteen years before his death, and it is approximately five years before he began to write his Summa Theologica. It is also before he had completed or even began any of his Commentaries on the works of Aristotle. There are a number of works that he had completed at this point, most notably, his writings on the Sentences of Peter Lombard completed in Paris (1252-56) as a prerequisite for receiving his Masters in theology. Also of note is his commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate and the first of his Disputed Questions, of note is De Veritate (On Truth). Also the two short treatises on natural philosophy and metaphysics, accordingly titled, On the Principles of Nature and On Being and Essence. Both works are reminiscent of two notable sections in Avicenna's own corpus.

So these are the major sources of Aquinas to draw on when approaching the text of the Summa Contra Gentiles. Any "developmental hypothesis" would have to be able to trace elements in the former works to "developments" in the later works like the Summa Contra Gentiles. At this point in time I believe my on course paper will be directed towards the topics found in Book I chapters 29-36, often referred to as "God Talk." "God Talk" is essentially an investigation into the metaphysical order and relationship between created beings and uncreated Being; especially in justifying epistemologically how it is that we are able to assert things/attributes/properties/etc. truthfully about God. In other words, how can we "talk about God," and then assert that our "talk about God" actually constitutes a demonstrative science, that has God as its subject.

Without a philosophical justification that resolves both the metaphysical and epistemological objections, natural theology or philosophy of God is unable to even get off the ground. The two indispensable "tools" at the disposal of the metaphysician are via negativa (way of negation) or apophatic theology and analogy. Hence, "God Talk" is primarily a daunting inquiry into the nature of the analogy of being. This topic necessarily entails providing a satisfying account of Thomas's own doctrine of analogy (a subject I've wanted to splash through for some time). So a paper on this subject will nicely serve two purposes.


3) "Aquinas on Human Nature from Summa Theologica I.75-90"

This class is going to be mostly concerned with Aquinas's philosophy of mind and epistemology, with a few minor focuses on the ontology of the human soul as the substantial principle of the body. This is probably going to be the primary area of my studies, at least for the next year or so. The class is being taught by Dr. John Deely, who is one of the few Thomists I know of who is very interested in semiotics and its synthesis with Thomism, especially in lieu of John of St. Thomas. This approach has some insightful things to say about agent intellect, abstraction, relation, and intentionality. Some of these challenges, on a prima facie examination, I believe must be rejected in light of traditional Thomistic theses. Thomistic theses that I hold, not because they are Thomistic, but because I happen to think they are true. Which is why I think Thomism to be true. Nevertheless these challenges have already really forced me to develop my own insightful objections and rebuttals. And it is refreshing always to realize one is not simply regurgitating nominal axioms, but has grasped the real thing, and is able make real application.

My paper in this class is more restrained. It's thesis must revolve around the question of whether human beings are better defined as a "semiotic animal," and whether this would be more suitable for the new postmodern understanding of mankind. This definition is to supplant the modern's res cogitive and the ancient and medieval's rational animal.

Since my greatest aptitude is in the areas of philosophy of mind and epistemology I have focus more on this courses paper at the current date. I already have working sub-theses to the major thesis: No, "semiotic animal" is not at all a suitable differentia for human beings, because it undermines the specified difference between a rational soul and an intellectual substance, namely reason (which is discursive) and intellection (which is unitative). While I have not yet completed my research into the primary texts asserting the "semiotic animal" thesis, my suspicion is that its reformulation of the human soul (which is capable of unnaturally subsisting and operating without the body) entails an accidental and not substantial difference between the human soul and the angelic substance. This is clearer if one understands that the "semiotic thesis" also (I believe) takes angels to be semiotic substances, and since the human soul is able to exist without the body, it would then be on this account a semiotic substance. Even if there is still a substantial specific difference here, it is certainly a muddling of the line of demarcation.

I have a number of other sub-theses, most importantly is a rebuttal to the semiotic thesis's objection to abstraction and agent intellect. This will involve a thorough account of Aquinas's understanding of the inner senses and their ordering and preparation of the phantasm for the agent intellect. The unfortunately neglected inner sense faculty called the "cogitative power" shall illuminate and avail a number of solutions to the semiotic thesis's objections.

Here then is the outline of my next semester and the possible topics I shall be considering on this blog.

I only hope that by my studies I can to some degree imitate the office of the wise man, which Aquinas, in quoting Aristotle, asserts that "it belongs to the wise man to know order." (SCG I.1.i.)

To that end may, "my mouth meditate truth, and my lips hate impiety" - Proverbs 8:7