Thomas Aquinas II: Being and Essence

hello Rhoda welcome this is the history of medieval philosophy and my name's mark Thoris B in this video we're going to be looking at Thomas Aquinas giant philosopher of the Middle Ages in particular we'll be looking at one of this earlier works on being and essence and as you can tell from the title the discussion of this book will be the question of what essence is and there's some classic distinctions in philosophy that are worth recognizing here that we're going to be talking about and those are could for instance the difference between existence and essence think of the existence as always referring to that something is and think of the essence is referring to what something is so if you're asked a question of what something is the answers you get typically is going to signify the essence of a thing in some way or another we're gonna see that the big distinction and discussion is really the question of being so oftentimes what about essence versus existence but here we see Aquinas or at least the translators really drawn from a distinction of being and the reason that's important is because we're going to see that while most times we might think of existence is referring to material being Aquinas is interested in thinking about being in its most metaphysical sense so let's go ahead and get started you can see there's a lot of things we could talk about in this a lot of the different things we could talk about but Aquinas himself begins I noticing that there's a slight error that when we have a slight error in our reasoning it can always turn into a large problem at the end of the day and in particular he's thinking of the way in which both aerosol and Avicenna think about the what an essence is in its relationship to being well ultimately Aquinas here it's is in many ways treading through the same footsteps as Avicenna as well as Aristotle but he's gonna offer his own sort of argument his own way of conceiving the difference between essence and being they really tries to I think those goes further in terms of systematizing it's the distinction between genus and species and differentia and a whole bunch of different things so let's sort of start off here by looking at some of the four things that are gonna come up in this text or one of the questions here is what is signified by the terms being in essence so when we say something as being or we talk about something as having essence what exactly does that mean a second question is how are being an essence found in all of these different potential cases so for instance I have a Kindle right here I have a coffee cup here but I can also think about things which have being in existence think about the quadratic formula or the Pythagorean theorem think about things which are just intelligences and for Aquinas consider metaphysical types of beings that would exist in in terms of the faith for instance angels what excited being does an angel have and of course the most important question is what kind of being an essence does God have so how are being in essence found in all of these different cases if we can articulate those that we should have a pretty solid grasp on the concepts another question is how do they extend and respect to the logical intentions of general species and differentia so what we know the distinction between genus and species we can also recognize that things are understood as being either a genus or species because of their diferencia or their differences so how and these are sort of a few well logical determinations so what's the relationship between logic in essence in being and finally the question of method is going to come up here and and Aquinas seems to endorse what I think is very consistent with what Descartes would talk about in his own method which is the idea that we should start from the simple and move towards the complex and we should begin with what's prior and then talk about what's posterior so for we have to move then from the signification of being to the signification of essence because being has is has priority over essence so there we look at so Aquinas looks at the way in which we can methodically evaluate the difference between essence and being and that's just sort of from the introduction in the prologue and what we're gonna be taking a look at here is of course not the entire book but really just the excerpts that have pulled from the Hackett volume we're looking at so we're looking at just starting here chapter one and there and the first thing we notice is the Qantas recognizes that there are two senses of being and this is comes from Aristotle's metaphysics so there's two different ways in which we talk about being notice he's starting with being and then we're gonna move to essence I was the first way which we Aristotle or the philosopher as Aquinas refers to him the first way that Aristotle talks about being is talked to talk about being in terms of the ten categories of being so I'm not going to go through with the ten categories of being if you'd like to learn more read Aristotle's work the categories which is about these ten categories of being if you will you can see that there's sort of ten different categories for the ways in which we can analyze whether or not something as a being now one thing that's important here is the these ten categories of being if something is said to be real in the Aristotelian sense the reality of something is given through these ten categories so on the one hand we can talk about being in terms of the real so but we can also recognize that there's if you will a problem of language that's important here because we can also talk about being as whatever it is that signifies the truth of a proposition so if I make a proposition let's say I say it is raining outside right then in order for that proposition to be true that proposition signifies being in some sense in particular the being that there's actually raindrops falling or something so this means that every affirmative proposition ultimately points to being now there's something that that's important here that he wants to distinguish and that's the idea that there's also negative propositions we can also talk about the idea of something not being the case and this is sort of goes to a deep philosophical problem which is when I say that something is not the case and I point to a provision of being as it were let's say I say that someone has blindness in their eye well blood at the eye is meant to see and so to say that someone has blindness is actually to say something negative right it's not to point to the being of something but rather to the privation of being of something so it's important here to recognize that it's really the affirmative propositions that point to being in the proper sense because we also have negative propositions or privative statements and those to a point of being in the most proper sense so whereas essence at all this well ultimately Aquinas suggests that essence has to belong to this category to this thing that we're talking about here so essence is therefore not simply a product of language but ultimately points to the reality of something in terms of the categories of being okay let's move here and talk a little bit about essence in a little bit more specificity number one essence only applies to the categories of being which are real not to privations as such so that means that when I say that someone has blindness the blindness isn't it isn't an essence as such right only a positive statement can point to the real because blindness is an in a Sur way not real it is a real condition but it's a condition it's a privating condition right it's the it's the idea that someone does not see or that their eyes do not operate a function with light correctly earliest in the way that everyone else's eyes to number two is that the ten categories of being therefore apply to essence so therefore three essence quote signifies something that's common to all nature's through which various beings are organized into various species in various general as humanities the essence of man so notice here is this since the ten categories of being for aerosol apply to all things which are real or that is anything that's real can be broken down into you can break down or conceptualize and understand the reality of something in ten different ways right in terms of its form in terms of its matter in terms of its location its position and so on and so forth right these ten categories but these ten categories all applied in nature so that means that essence is pointed ultimately to something natural now we get this sort of interesting thing here is what we have to say is that what is the difference between a species in a genus notice that for instance what he's going to say is that so for instance let's say that the species is man and the genus is animal right so any animal human ''tis an animal but not every animal is isn't is it species so humanity is the species of the genus of animal right or mammal or something like that and notice they're the species genus difference or differentiate here what it does is it gives me the definition of something and what the definition does is it points to the essence of something but the essence refers to the quiddity that's the sort of medieval term that that gets used but it's the oneness of something now it's important here is that the definition points to the essence the essence is rather something that's natural it refers to the nature of something so we might say that essence is if you will a metaphysical category whereas definition is merely a verbal category or at least that's how I'm going to understand this so it contains that how is it do we recognize the essence of something well one of the important things here forgive me as I take a drink essence is also given by the form of something so you can see that I can look at this object here this picture of an object and say that this object is a sphere now how do I know that it's a sphere well what I do is I recognize it has a certain form a certain structure a certain shape and that that structure tells me I can identify for instance the genus species if I want but that essence is really with the quiddity it's the oneness of a thing this thing here is sphere then this over here is a block if you will and so on and so forth right what Aquinas says is that nature is said to be all that the intellect can grasp in any way for a thing is only intelligible through its definition and essence so it's important here is that when we talk about the nature of something that is to talk about what can be grasped by the intellect about that intelligible thing and here he quotes Aristotle where Aristotle says that every substance is nature this comes from metaphysics five so one of the things that Aquinas is doing quite indicative of the Scholastic period in which he's writing is that he's constantly quoting Aristotle as well as other thinkers right so he wants to so part of what he's doing here is one to help clarify our understanding of Aristotelian philosophy but what he's also doing is he's helping us understand some of the points that Aristotle may not have fully clarified so here's the problem or what is the problem rather is it looks like there's two different tight senses of essence on the one hand we talked about essence is the nature of something it state and it's taken to refer to the essence via the proper operation of the thing so think of the eye seeing for instance but on the other hand the essence refers to the definition of something these don't necessarily have to always be the same so for Aquinas the problem is that era Stahl doesn't actually seem to be consistent in terms of the way he talks about what in essence is so like all good philosophers what Aquinas is doing here is he's helping us understand Aristotle's view but also to understand how it's deficient and how he the brilliant thinker here can actually enable us to understand it in a consistent way so that's gonna be sort of the goal of this book or the beginning problem here is to make sense of how an essence on the one again refers to the nature of something so the eye in its essence is what's elated is what sees but we can also have the eye being a definition so the eye is the organ of the body which enables one to perceive sight so we have a nature versus we have a definition how does essence fit both of these so this sort of brings us to chapter two right and here we see is that the first thing is that when we talk about being being is primarily an unqualifiedly said of substances so what's the substance let's just say that a substance the the term that it would be translated if we were to pull from Aristotle's metaphysics the term would say any being so any entity that exists so anything is a substance let's say anything that exists that you encounter or perceive in the world so for instance that includes object like the Kindle it includes your computer it includes the glass of water but it also importantly includes other types of things which exist think of the Pythagorean theorem think about for instance formulas and mathematics those also exist but notice that they seem to be a very different type of substance the most proper sort of substance that we think of is a substance that is known in its sort of worry we encounter it as an entity but we can also talk about being in another set so being is always referred anything that substance or is a substance an entity must have being but secondarily we also recognize that the accidents of things also have being right so for instance this is a so here's a book by Edmund Husserl the crisis of the European Sciences intransitive followed ology light reading that's a joke right so here's a book right now notice that to say that this is a book is to refer to it being a certain type of being it has a certain type of essence that's what it is it's a book but notice that it has other features which are not necessarily essential to it but rather accidental take for instance the cover right or maybe for instance the size of the book these are just accidental features because I can get this same book in fact I have this same book in a different edition and it's a different size it's a different color and so on and so forth so something which has when we talk about the substance obviously we say it has being but we also recognize that the accidents of things also being but in a qualified sense remember what's in it we're trying to figure out it's what in essence is and how it relates and something is essential but so a beam which has substance as its essence but it also has accidental features so for instance I am here and I have brown hair a man it's you can say that's my essence but the fact that I have gray hair is just an accidental feature it's not essential for me to grow it here have brown hair or even hair in all in order to be human so you can see here is that how do we recognize the difference here well what we're gonna see is that the substance is what enables us to recognize the essence of something and the accidents well kind of have being or I hate they kind of do now so there's different type of substances that are quiet distinguishes you have simple substances on the one hand and you have composite substances on the other almost entirely we just encounter composite substances within there our perception of reality right so the book is made up of pages and it sorts of composite substance it's made up of atoms and so on and so forth so what exactly is a simple substance well we're gonna see a simple service is any substance that has no parts it is merely a substance that just has its wholeness and so of course god it's going to be a simple substance okay now both simple and composite substances have essence right but there is a difference what we can say is that the essence of something is more Aquinas says is truer nobler and simple things rather than composite things well why is that well if I take the book it's which is a composite substance I can break it down into pages and those pages also have essence that since what a pages and so on and so forth and then the pages have letters and the letters have essences and so on and so forth so you can see that a simple substance the substance that has no parts is said is an essence that sort of fulfilled if you will or if you will it's a complete sort of substance so that's going to be sort of important feature one thing we can say so let's talk about composite substances particularly since composite substances are the substances we primarily encounter within the world all composite substances have form and matter right so the essence so all composite is that for one matter they have a certain shape a certain structure but they're also made up of something so notice that a composite substance this is a substance that is composed of a matter and be formed so you can see here is that where is the essence then well for composite substances Aquinas says that the essence is not in either alone so it's not in just the form and it's not in just the matter either right why is that because you can't have the form without the matter and you can't have without the forum which means that the essence is requires the necessary condition that both the form and the matter be present in order for the essence to be known so let's read here with the claim is here that I pulled from the text right it's basically idea that the essence cannot be in the matter of dawn because quote a thing is knowable and it's ordered in species and genus through its essence in matter is unknowable by itself so this is sort of an important thing it can't be in the matter alone because ultimately matter itself is unknown unless it's informed but once it has form then it's not just matter by itself but neither is the essence in the form why well this is because the essence is signified through a definition and the definition of natural substances also always contains matter and not just the form so anytime I try to give a definition that definition if it's a definition of something that's in nature must also contain matter which means that the form requires the matter and the matter requires the form so the essence of a composite substance it must be given within both right it refers to the compound of matter and form so this is seems if you're familiar with Aristotle's metaphysics this should seem straightforward to you right now there is something important here to recognize there are two different senses of matter now the first is matter just taking as matter and I am somewhat maybe incorrectly referred to this as Prime matter which is something that Aristotle talks about I should note that Aquinas does not use that term not in this text but matter as matter so something which is just matter which has no form in itself and so here I'm trying to signify that not really because you can't actually signify matter and it's pure and it's pure madness right why because I only recognize matter when it's informed and it has shapes so good so here's a picture of the ball right and this is what what Aquinas will call Signet matter Signum matter now Signum matter now you can notice that the root word of Sigma matter is I so Cigna matter is the way in which I recognize the sign of matter in other words what we're talking about is matter when it's individuated under definite dimensions so when matter exists in space as a form its Signet matter which means that I can recognize it as being something so notice here matter as matter versus matter when it becomes the sign of something else in this case the side of a ball versus here's nothingness okay yeah that's right so now we're on chapter three sorry about that so here's the next question what are the essences of the genus and a species by the way noticed that what we're doing with the quite a series we're slowly building up clarification regarding the distinction in matter in form and substance ultimately to help us understand what essences an ultimately understand how essence points to being so keep in mind the general structure here what we're talking in Chapter three is the way in which these logical relations species and genus of how that captures essence right versus beating so the first thing here is to notice that we can talk about individuals so my name is mark Thoris B I am an individual right now I'm a member of a species my species is humanity wherever if you will Homo sapiens right and as a member of that species by species falls under a larger genus right that genus in physiological turn in sort of zoological terms here would be the genus Homo right the Homo genus so Homo sapiens sapiens the Swedish species and homos the genus or you might say if I'm Arcturus be in my species as humanity then my genus is mammals right or animals right mammal animals let's say the millions so you can say that means that I'm on the million I'm a part of humanity but I'm an individual okay so it's important to recognize when we're talking about individual things we're talking about individuals the species is rather the collection of individuals they're off that have or participate or claim the same essence right so I'm an I'm a humanity you're in humanity your sister your brother your mother your father all of these people are members of humanity and humanity has an essence right I mean so do animals and mammals and so on and so forth well we can recognize is that from the individual perspective the species always gives us a determination than the genus so we can say is that the genus is less determinant of a logical relation and the species is more determinate right but they ultimately will be recognized between the two is a constitutive difference and what that constitutive difference is it's a difference of form ultimately so the way think about here how you recognize that another person is a member of humanity that they're a human being will you recognize them as being a member of the human race because of their form because of the shape of their body essentially in the way in which they engage in the world right there's distinctive features humans have dead arms they have legs but they also have reasoning and so on and so forth whereas for instance animals right have a less tutor like and we recognize the difference between humans and animals because they have a difference in form so I'm gonna pause RIT as familiar as you just saw like appears about to die so I didn't plug in so let's pause the video for just a minute and then we're gonna jump right in to this passage here okay so let's take a look at this quote of Aquinas he says hence the basis is a pair for the analogy between genus species and differentia on the one hand and matter form and the composite in nature on the other even though the latter are not the same as the former for genus is not matter but it's taken from matter as signifying the whole nor is the differential form but it's taken from form as signifying the whole so we have sort of an important element here which is the example that ultimately the essence here is differentiated but it is ultimately related to form so for example but it matters must be a part of it as well right matter is given in determinant dimensions for the individual so for the example he gives here as man is a rational animal the genus is not given through a mere combination of animal plus rational but has to be understood as a third concept and intellectus so it's important here is that he doesn't think that when you say when an aerosol says man is a rational animal it's the it's not the case you can just combine rationality and animality and get a human being rather rather than ultimately there's a third concept here a third essence it's not simply a combination of the two right he says for the concept of animal lacks the determination of the species form and it expresses the nature of the thing through its status as matter with respect to the final perfection but the concept of the differentiy irrational consists in the determination of the species form so the concept of the species our definition is actually constituted from these two concepts now here let's talk a little bit about the difference between individuals and species the individual cannot determine the species from it you can't determine the species from the individual alone right you have to look at multiple individuals so the species in the same way cannot determine the genus from its from you can't determine the genus from the species alone so put it this way if all I have are individuals there's no way I could figure out what species that individuals are part of and if all I had were members of the species I couldn't figure out what the genus ultimately was because here what we recognize is that the species for for instance is is actually a third concept not simply a synthetic concept of the genus or something abstracted from the genus think of it as sort of like Russian dolls right you have the individual here you have the species and you have the genus but if you just have the second dog you don't know what the third doll would be but he says whatever is in the individual must be in the species indeterminately and whatever is in the species must be in the genus in the same sort of integer so let's touch they take an example you have man versus humanity so man is the individual Signet matter right where Humanity refers to the species which is given through the common form of all the individuals take a look what aquinas says here and so it is apparent that the term man and the term humanity each signify the essence of man but they do so in different ways as has been said for the term man signifies it as a whole in that it does not explicitly involve the determination of manner matter but contains that implicitly and indistinctly just as the genus was said to contain the differentia hence the term man is predicated of individuals but the term humanity signifies the essence as a part since it alone contains in its signification what belongs to man as man so that means that what belongs to so I'm a man and what's essentially man about me is namely whatever essence is of humanity right so whatever the essence of humanity is is ultimately what is essential for me to be a human but ultimately as an individual min I have accidental features which don't correspond to that larger species I hope that makes sense I know it's complex here is particularly the way which Aquinas yet it's very sort of a sophisticated conceptual discussion that he's undergoing here it can be quite difficult but the other thing we have to do though is what we now need to do is clarify how the essence relates to the species of the genus in the differential and a little bit more concrete terms right when we talk about the species and the genus and the differentia keep in mind these are logical relations we recognizes the quote it's impossible for the characteristic of a universal namely genus or species to pertain to the essence that signified as a part as by the term of humanity or animality so notice here is that he's linking a common problem which we talked about previously and is the problem of universals now we're not getting into the problem of universals in this book but here it's important to recognize that since the genus and the species in the essence of put it this way but since the essence of the species were first refers to the part of the essence of the genus then that means that there is a lack of sort of universal to mention in other words the species in the genus can't relate to the essence of a thing existing outside of the singular entity itself so you have here is a sort of anti Platonism now keep in mind here that Ruhr Plato's idea was that ultimately you had this ideal form and this ideal form was such that any individual ultimately is just participating in that singular entity but that singular entity is an ideal thing and so here Aquinas sticks with his Aristotelian roots and says no ultimately our knowledge of the essence of things can only begin with the singular entity that is the individual if you will here's two quotes I want to draw your attention to it says likewise it cannot be said that the characteristic of genus or species pertains to essence as a certain thing that's existing outside of single singulars as the platanus maintained for in that way genus and species would not be predicated of this individual it me it could not it cannot be said that Socrates is what is separate from him nor does what is separate conduce to the knowledge of this singular let me go up here and then take a look at this quote here's where he says the characteristic of genus and species pertains to essence as its signified in the manner of a whole right so here we sort of we recognize that there's different parts to each individual there's different parts but ultimately the essence refers it begins with the notion the knowledge of the singular but that knowledge of the singular gives us knowledge of the whole soul ultimate essence has to be about the whole not the universal but the whole rather than the part so how are we going to regard essence well we can recognize here's what we caused it on the one hand we can talk about the absolute regard of in essence and this is to talk about the essence of something according to its own nature so nothing is true a little pertains to it in just such a way for example here we're talking about man as man or talking about the idea that humans are rational or that they have other qualities think about Plato tried to define humanity human beings as a two-legged animal without feathers and reason so for instance there's this sort of essentialist definitions but this is the way which which would talk where we try to regard the essence or the oneness of something in its absolute sense so we're not talking about skin color for instance and here he actually gives the example of skin color and says for instance if we say that Socrates is white that has nothing to do with the absolute regard at the essence of humanity or the absolute oneness of a person but we can look to what we call it the relative regard to things or and to be clear Aquinas doesn't use that term but it seems appropriate but it's really what we take a look at the accidental features so here's what we talk about the essence has being in this or that one so things in this way get predicated as accident so we can say Socrates is white for instance or you can say a fellow is black for instance but there we have a relative regard it's only relatively the case that that you might say that there's an essence to someone being black or white so what you can see Aquinas is doing here is he's giving that he's starting to unfurl the more technical ways in which we talk about the oneness of things and the way that oneness regards to being so quote the status of a species attaches to human nature according to the being it has in the intellect for human nature has being in the intellect abstracted from everything individuating so notice here is that how do I get the notion of the status of species of human nature how do I get the concept of humanity it occurs in the intellect through abstraction I abstracted from the multiplicity of individuals I encounter in the world so the type of being an essence of species genus or differentia has is ultimately of being on the intellect it's a being of the intellect so notice here that the type of being that genus and species have the type of being that gets articulated through logical relation is ultimately an intellectual type of being he writes thus it's clear how essence or nature stands regarding the character of species this character doesn't come from those features which pertain to it in its absolute consideration nor from the accidents such as whiteness or blackness which accrue to it according to the beam it has outside the soul right that's what we're calling the relative regard but it comes from the accidents which are crew to it according to the being it has in the intellect it is also in this way that the character character of genus or differentia pertains to it so you can see here that in there's an important role of the intellect that the client has to make sense of the distinction between essence and being so let's move here now to chapter 5 and here's what we're gonna take a look at the question how is the essence within a substance so for instance we can talk about separate substances like maybe someone has a treasure box with a whole bunch of stuff in it all these are separate beings so how does what separates the essence of all of these different things together another question is the soul so if we have a soul which of course Aquinas clearly thinks we do then what if the essence of the soul exactly and how is it within the substance and then here we could talk about intelligences and so think about mathematics or algebra or think about God is the first cause what kind of essence does God have exactly what exactly does essence mean in all these cases so first off we have to talk about will matter in form which of these things have matter and form and which of them are only forms so there's an argument that Aquinas provides which we can tell he calls really the argument from the power of knowing and that is we have intelligences the soul and the first mover and these all do not have matter so for instance Pythagorean theorem I'm gonna use that as my example here the Pythagorean theorem does not have matter is we know about it through matter but it but to know the Pythagorean theorem is not to know some sort of material thing at all all right so it's an intelligence if you're talking about the soul or the first-mover god neither of these things have matter in and of themselves either but so the question is how do we know these and so really the argument is well we can look to see how we know these and from there we can deduce or abstract the way in which we can abstract which of these have matter which have four minute what kind of essence pertains accordingly now there's an important reminder here is that there are different types of matter for Aquinas we can at least distinguish the Katori all types of the matter from the noncorporeal now we're gonna see here what is a noncom poriyal matter of what exactly we talking about there really we're gonna see that this is what a choir is gonna call being in the most in descriptive way possible so let's come over to compile one of the things it says is that it's within cap oriole matter that we get confused in begin it's because of kapau real matter that we have impediments of the know ability of things so for instance in order to understand the Pythagorean theorem I just have to be able to think and have a sort of intelligence right but notice that if I try to understand for instance the difference between zebras and horses right there what confuses me and the difficulty isn't it understanding the essence in terms of the oneness of it it's not an intellectual problem it's rather than I have a Kippur EO problem figuring out how the matter like I have to figure out how I have knowledge of these different types of matters for instance the genetics and things like this so there's sources of confusion there become in terms of the matter and the cap Oriole side of things so it's important to keep in mind what we can say is that the cookie in the Katori Olson's I give the example of a water glass form is known only through the matter so you only know the essence of the cup because it is instantiated within class so you need to have the shape of the cup you need the material stuff the matter in order to recognize the form now we talk about the noncorporeal form gets abstracted from the matter so I give the example this is a scene from Romeo and Juliet I think you're about Romeo and Juliet Romeo Juliet is a play but you don't see the play in matter right you can't just I mean you can look at a book with the title Romeo and Juliet but you're not gonna get what the play is by looking at an object not even by looking at this or that object within in actual demonstration of the play what you all do they have to do is you have to abstract from the material you're presented you have to abstract from that what the form of the play is or in other words the plot you have to know the story and recognize the structure of that story but you can only do that by after you abstracted from some type of matter but notice that the look good this way that the essence of Romeo and Juliet is not a recognition of the form as such but it's rather a recognition of the form that's in the matter but it's rather an abstraction of the form from the matter so this is an important distinction for Aquinas he writes quote so in no way is their composition from matter and form in the intellect of soul or an intelligence which matter taken as it is in Kippur EO substances but there's a composition of being informed so we can say here is that for colonial things we can talk about form and matter but we're talking about incorporeal things like Romeo and Juliet in this case or we talk about the Pythagorean theorem we talk about the soul we have form but we have being but being here is not exactly the same as matter it's a different type of being and that's gonna raise some really interesting questions for us right for instance what kind of being it is a quite as talking about here and here are the sort of classic question of what I know a mathematical formula what type of reality am I actually engaging with it's not a material reality but certainly it's a reality insofar as it something which exists right so beans of here's an important thing that I remember for Aquinas it's also as important for Descartes in modern philosophy and it's thank you that beings of cause have to have the character of the cause within them remember Aquinas is also interested in understanding the essence of the first cause or the first mover which is God so the being that causes has more being let's say than the being that it's the consequent of the effect or the beam would of effect and it's a one directional relationship right so for instance think of the difference between the sculptor and the sculpture right the sculptor has a certain character of the cause within them that the effect is not right the sculpture can't make sculptures but the sculptor can now this is sort of interesting because it raises for Aquinas the question of wool is this relationship the same as the relationship between form and matter and he seems to suggest it is right where the form is as it were prior and the matter or the instantiated matter is posterior right so there's a question that gets raised there now what we have to also remember is the difference between the essences of composite substances versus the essences of simple substances now composite substance Aquinas says embraces both form and matter he can actually be signified either as a whole or as a part in different ways whereas a simple of substance can only embrace form why because a simple substance can only be signified as a whole you have to understand the entire thing to understand it now this the simple sevens therefore does not require matter for its genus you can actually require and therefore it is a type of intelligence so we see here is that an intelligence is really a type of simple substance for Aquinas now it's not the most simple substance because ultimately we're gonna see that for Aquinas simple services are still composed of actuality and potentiality so they have a sort of metaphysical composition if you will let's go back to yours let's say where there is no matter but we form there are as many species as there are individuals that's the example here I'm gonna give his angels but we'll ignore here the question about whether or not angels really exist to just take it with the class that they do the problem is angels don't have material bodies but there's spiritual beings but if there are spiritual beings they don't have matter they don't have matter then the question then becomes well how could you differentiate members of the species because it's through matter that I recognize the difference between the individuals of the same species so when I go to a football game and I see a whole bunch of different human beings playing the game or watching in the stands I recognize all these individuals but I recognize them as being members of the same species but none of them are the species right the difference is because they're individually through their material bodies the problem with angels is that angels don't have that matter which means that whatever type of being they have there's no means of differentiation if there's no means of differentiation for the individuals then that means that every individual is a species so for instance that meant for a quest then you talked about angels if you talk about a type of angel let's say it cherubim which is a type of angel you mention in the Bible if you have a cherubim angels and the cherubim there can only be one of them right because there's no means of individuation so every individual is its own species and so they're all completely different which means every individual angel must have its own individual essence now we're just giving this example in terms of angels but this is the case for any type of intelligence anything that can be recognized through the mind now does this mean that they're fully simple whether obviously they're not God because they're created which means that they are not fully actual because at one point that didn't exist so that means that using Aristotle's language of actuality and potentiality every one of these simple substances has am is a mixture of both potentiality and actuality now if we we keep in mind that imports of knowledge well we realize is that these things are known without knowing the type of being that they are so forget about angels because that's a harder one to swallow but think about the Pythagorean theorem here which is it's sort of the type of intelligence right well think about just what number is or triangular triangular this or something all right here what these things could be known without actually knowing the type of being that they actually have so being here is not the same thing as the essence because I can know the essence but I don't have to know what it's made of in order to know the essence so that means the angels for instance or higher spiritual beings or in other forms of mental intelligences etc things which are not known through matter and form that once many of these things have essence but they but that doesn't mean that we fully understand what their being is which means that the distinction between essence and being is an important distinction now ultimately what we see here is that God is the first being because God has no potential allottee God is pure actuality and then all of the Katori openings as well as the incorporeal beings or the composite substances or the simple substances with your intelligences all of them ultimately point to God so God is the sort of functional thing and what we see here is that Aquinas gives us a very early argument for the existence of God we'll be talking about this in the next video when we look at the notion of how quite us understands the nature of God but here in this early work not the Summa we see an argument for the first cause what does Aquinas write he says quote but all that pertains to something is either caused for the principles of its own nature as is the capacity to laugh and man or it comes from some extrinsic principle as the light in the air from the influence of the Sun right so that means that whenever something is caused either is caused by its own nature or like for instance the ability to laugh that comes from a human being or it comes from something outside of itself like the Sun whose light light is caused from the Sun so the bee itself cannot be caused by the form or the quiddity or at the essence other thing speaking of the efficient cause because then a thing would be the cause of itself and would bring itself into being which is impossible so it's important to recognize here that a being cannot cause its own form of what 'no so a beam can cause things but they can't cause themself to be human or they can't cause themself to be a member of species essentially that they are so for instance i can cause myself to laugh but i cannot cause myself to become a human being and be born that is impossible and this is the case for all beings except for one why he says it's necessary that every such thing whose being is other than its own nature should have its being from another right so that means that any being that doesn't cause itself it's it's for or essence doesn't come from itself it must come extrinsically from something else and since quote and since everything which is through something else is reduced to a first cause which is through itself it is necessary that there be something which is the cause of being for all things and that it is being alone otherwise there would be an infinity in causes since everything which is not being alone and has a cause for its being as has been said thus it's apparent that an intelligence is form and being and that it has its being from a first being which is being alone and this is the first cause which is God so basically you have this argument that if things are caused from another then ultimately those others must come from other forms and those forms must come from some ultimate form because you can't go on forever because if you go on from Earth and something is uncaused ultimately that doesn't make sense so there has to be this first cause and this is ultimate argument for God's existence so here's the next question how are these intelligences exactly in a state of potentiality right so for instance the quadratic formula right how is this in a state of actuality I'm sorry in a state of potentiality if it seems to always be the same and the answer is because it is too from God Aquinas says it's necessary that the flormar the essence which is an intelligence be in potentiality with respect to the being which it receives from God and that being is received as an act so it's in this way that the act and the potency are found in intelligences yet no form and matter except equivocally okay so the answer here is the way in which something which is an intelligence is in a state of potency because it doesn't seem to change it's simply because it is gaining it's being hood if you will or its Intel it yeah it's being good or its form from God from that first cause so how do we distinguish these different intelligences like what's the difference between these how is it that I recognize the difference between the quadratic equation and a Pythagorean theorem and the soul and angels and God and all of these things how do I recognize them well what I do is I Altima to distinguish them in terms of the grade of potency which they receive from God so the gradation of it so different things have different degrees of potentiality or possibility that possibility those gradations is what we can use and have to differentiate the different things which are intelligent substances now the lowest of all these intelligent substances for Aquinas is the soul no I mean you could go further down right but ultimately the soul is a type of intelligence but notice that the soul is always mixed up with the body particularly for the human being right he says this ends in the human soul which occupies the lowest rung among all these intellectual substances now why is the sole intellectual substance we'll keep in mind here that it's through the soul that I gain knowledge of intellectual substances but that means that my soul must be mus and subsets be an intellectual substance you have to be one to know one take a look at Plato's argument in the Phaedo regarding the immortality of the soul here right it's really the same sort of argument we see in Plato so the soul is ultimate intellectual service but it's on the lowest rung right be quiet well because ultimately mixed up with the body right whence the possible intellect is disposed to noble forms in the way that pry matter which occupies the lowest rung insensible being is too sensible forms as the commentator says and that's it Avicenna in book three of de anima so the philosopher compares it to a blank slate on which nothing is written and because it has more potentiality than other substances that are capable of knowledge it performs in such proximity to material beings that a material thing is drawn to participate in its being so from the soul and the by the results of one being in one composition or one composite however much that being is belonging to the soul is not dependent on the body and after this form which is the soul other forms are found having more potentiality and closer to matter so much so that they do not have being without matter and so on and so forth right so we can see here is really an articulation from a quietest term of what is known as the great chain of being right except the difference here is we talked about the great chain of being when we looked at gustin's work right work you have got the top and then angels and the men in man and then ultimately for the classic neo flaws women but I don't think that's right but you have women and many animals and so on and so forth right you've this great chain of being from from essence but what Aquinas is dead in this text is he's now giving us a way of understanding this great chain of being in terms of it being the mechanics of essence being actuality and potency so we really have a sort of complex notion of the way in which Aquinas recognizes the otology of the world okay thank you guys very much for watching next time we're gonna be taking a look at Aquinas treatise on God thank you guys very much for watching I look forward to seeing you in the next video where we actually dive into the Summa Theologica so thank you very much thank you very much for watching I'll see you guys

Channel: Mark Thorsby

Views: 4,894

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: philosophy, aquinas, thomas aquinas, medieval philosophy, being, essence, quiddity, whatness, aristotle, matter, form, species, genus

Id: rAZtWY7ktF8

Length: 53min 8sec (3188 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 11 2018