Lecture 13 Notes

A.   Form and Matter

• Plant is composed of cellulose, chlorophyll, etc.  These are its material components, its matter.
  
• Material components are arranged in a distinctive structure, organization, pattern, the form.
  

1. It may seem that a distinctive structure is obvious to observation. But it is important to understand that the form is not identical to visual form.
   
2. Rather, form is the structure that accounts for a substance having certain properties and qualities.  The structure accounts for its doing what things of that kind do, for example, to propogate by seed vs. by spores as well as photosynthesize, and so on.  When we recognize a thing as having a quality, we grasp its form, to some extent.
   

• Form can be considered in abstraction from matter.  For example, the form of a cactus. In doing so, we consider what is common to many cacti.   It these things that are "universal", found in all cacti.  When we encounter form in particular chunk of matter, form is bounded and finite.  But in abstraction, it is "infinite".
  

• Therefore material substances are matter and form.  Matter is the material stuff of individual substance and form is the structure or organization of matter that:

1. ...enables substance to perform certain functions.
   
2. ...is grasped by the intellect in recognizing a thing.
   
3. ...we can reason about in abstraction from matter.
   
4. ...is common to many, the universal.
   

B.    Essence and Proper Accident

• We’ve seen that forms explain why substances have properties.  Now we draw a distinction between two kinds of properties:
  

1. Properties that things have that make them kind of thing they are: e.g. distinctive structure in virtue of which cactus is mescal.  These properties are definitive of the substance in question.  A set of such definitive properties is the essence of substance, e.g. the structure of cactus, rationality in human beings.  When we recognize a thing as member of a kind, we grasp its essence.  To grasp its essence is also to grasp its purpose or end.
   
2. Other properties that things have in virtue of kind they are do not make them the kind they are.  These might include thorns in cactus, risibility in human beings.  Aquinas calls these proper accidents.
   

C.    So Far, When We Recognize a Cactus as a Cactus, We:

1. Grasp the form of cactus conferring properties that make it a cactus.
   
2. Grasp the essence of the cactus.
   
3. Grasp its end or purpose.  

• Note a distinction between potentiality and actuality: that before you grasp the essence, your intellect is capable of grasping it, but has not actually done so:
  

1. Intellect is in potency or potentiality when, before you grasp the essence of the cactus, your intellect is capable of grasping it but has not actually done so.
   
2. Once you grasp the essence, your intellect no longer in potency, it is in act, in a state of actuality.  The essence of cactus is actually in intellect
   

D.    In sum, when recognize cactus as such:

1. Grasp form conferring essential properties.
   
2. Grasp the essence of the cactus.
   
3. Grasp the end of the cactus.
   
4. Because form common to many cactus, we grasp the universal.
   
5. Grasping the essence of the cactus is the operation of the intellect
   
6. Because intellect had been in potency and is now in act, grasping essence is a completion or perfection.
   
7. Because this act brings intellect to a sort of perfection, because it completes the intellect, it is a final act.
   
8. This is not full perfection of the intellect because intellect is interrupted, it remains in potency.
   

A.   This argument goes from analysis of human power to claim about happiness.  More generally:

• Aristotle and Aquinas agree that happiness is the good exercise of distinctively human capacities.
  
• They agree on what good human capacities are.
  
• They agree that by analyzing those capacities and what perfects them, we can learn what a happy or good life is.
  

B.    Important Distinction:

• Aristotle lived in a pre-Christian world and did not believe in eternal life with an infinite God.  Aquinas lives in Christian world; he does believe in this possibility.
  
• As a result, they have different ideas about the circumstances in which distinctively human capacities can be exercised.
  
• Moreover, they have different ideas about circumstances in which complete happiness is available:

1. Aristotle thought complete happiness was available in this life, in the integrated and episodic pursuit of ends, including intellectual ones.
   
2. Aquinas thinks complete happiness is the vision of God, available only in the next life.  Even so, he agrees, roughly, with Aristotle about what happiness in this life is.  But he thinks that happiness in the present life is incomplete.  Complete happiness is a "continual, everlasting operation".