Aquinas at 800, Part 15: History of Philosophy

Episode Topic: History of Philosophy 

Explore Thomas Aquinas' rigorous engagement with the Falsafa tradition. From the mechanics of the soul to the dignity of science, discover how his relational rationality bridges medieval wisdom and modern inquiry. Listen in as we synthesize these timeless metaphysical debates for the contemporary professional.

Featured Speakers:

• Stephen Ogden, University of Notre Dame
• Katja Krause, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
• Richard C. Taylor, Marquette University

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/045a76.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Aquinas at 800.

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Transcript

Welcome

Speaker 0:04

Good afternoon and welcome to, uh, planetary session on, uh, history of philosophy. I am, uh, honored, and it is a joy to be joined with, uh, three scholars, one on the Zoom and the other two in, in the room. The first, uh, uh, speaker is, uh, Professor Ogden, is Steven Ogden, and, uh, he's a Tracy, uh, Family Associate Professor of Philosophy of the University of Notre Dame. Uh, his work is on the usefulness of science, focusing on Thomas Aquinas versus-- Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize. I apologize. I skipped it. On the acquisition of intelligibles and, uh, focusing on Aquinas and Averroes or, uh, Nirushd against Avicenna, or I also call it Ibn Sina. Uh, Professor, uh, Ogden is a Tracy Family Associate Professor of Philosophy of the University of Notre Dame, and, um, I will leave it, uh, up to you to guess his noticeable and, uh, uh, desire for broader research. Thank you so much, Professor Ogden.

Speaker 2 1:17

Thank you. All right, thanks. It's, um, it's a pleasure to be here today. Uh, so it's well known that Aquinas and Averroes, or Ibn Rushd, do not always get along, especially on matters concerning the intellect. Avicenna, or Ibn Sina, by contrast, often seems to be Aquinas' favorite classical Muslim philosopher. Aquinas agrees with Avicenna that each human being has his or her own potential or possible intellect, that the immaterial nature of this individual intellect underwrites proofs of the human soul's, uh, immortality, and that nonetheless, the human intellect of soul cannot come into individuated existence without a body. These are just some examples relative to intellect, to say nothing of other principles in metaphysics. Um, like, there's something about essence and existence and something about that. Um, you could ask other people about that. Thomas Aquinas is critical in some places of Avicenna's view that the agent intellect is a single separate substance, for example, in the Summa contra Gentiles. Um, but by the time of the de, de, De Unitate Intellectus, Aquinas displays some sympathy with that doctrine and suggests its affinity with the Catholic doctrine that there is, quote, "One principle of illumination that is indeed a separate substance," albeit God, in Aquinas' case, not the agent intellect. It's no accident that along many of these fronts, Aquinas proudly cites his agreement with Avicenna precisely to highlight his opposition to the corresponding views of the other major Muslim Aristotelian authority, namely Averroes. Um, especially for, for example, that there's a single possible or material intellect, not just agent intellect for all human beings. Um, Aquinas thinks that the latter doctrine entails that we human beings have no properly intellective soul which can survive the death of the body, et cetera. I've emphasized Aquinas' adoption of some of these views from Avicenna in my previous work. Nevertheless, Aquinas does consider Averroes, the commentator, to be a closer and often more faithful reader of Aristotle, and I've also previously argued that Aquinas largely follows Averroes' strategy of reading Aristotle's treatment of the intellect in De Anima III, four to five. According to that all or nothing reading, whatever status one gives to the agent intellect, one must also attribute to the possible intellect. Aquinas is not as transparent regarding his source here, likely in part because he takes the all or nothing reading of De Anima in the opposite direction. Instead of two separate substances, that's Averroes' view, Aquinas argues that the agent and possible intellects are two distinct functions of the human intellect. Still, we can note that Aquinas largely follows Averroes here over Avicenna in this particular interpretation of Aristotle. In this brief talk, I'd like to highlight one further argument about intellect in which Aquinas sides with Averroes over Avicenna, albeit without attribution, again, namely on the acquisition of the intelligibles. In short, Aquinas following Averroes argues that Avicenna's view, that is, that the separate agent intellect emanates intelligible forms to properly prepared human intellects, cannot possibly be correct. Indeed, that position ignores a linchpin of Aristotelian epistemology that actual intelligibles are abstracted from potentially intelligible phantasms in the imaginative faculty. Okay, first let us consider the rough and supposed view of Avicenna which is under critique. There is one separate eternal agent intellect in full actuality with respect to all of the intelligibles. This wholly actual intellect is then responsible for moving our human potential intellects into actuality. How does it, how does it do so? The traditional understanding of Avicenna, certainly the way in which Averroes and Aquinas understood him, is that the agent intellect emanates the intelligible forms directly to human minds when they're suitably prepared by scrutinizing images and by seeking to obtain the universal concept. There certainly are some passages in Avicenna that seem to read this way. For example, from The Salvation, um, Avicenna says the agent intellect gives the soul and imprints on it the intelligible forms from its substance. Similarly, in the famous and famously vague passage from Psychology of the Healing 5.5, this is text one on your handout, the rational soul's perusal of particulars and imagination prepares the soul so that something abstract from the agent intellect emanates upon it. Hence, the images which are potentially intelligible become intelligible in actuality, not they themselves, but rather what is collected from them. I'm gonna skip the rest just for sake of time Furthermore, this epistemic role of the agent intellect is isomorphic to its well-known metaphysical role as the so-called giver of forms. When the, when sublunary, when sublunary matter is properly prepared and disposed, the giver of form slash agent intellect emanates the relevant substantial forms to the matter, thus completing substantial changes. It's worth noting, however, that not all scholars today agree with this emanationist interpretation of Avicenna. There's substantial evidence that Avicenna thinks that at least the first acquisition of intelligible forms occurs by human beings abstracting the form from sensory images in a more Aristotelian fashion. Some have tried to find various ways to reconcile the emanationist and abstractionist evidence. I've done that myself. This isn't the place to discuss these debates, but the disagreement will be relevant for our brief assessments of, uh, of Aquinas' objections at the end. Again, certainly, Averroes and Aquinas read Avicenna as an emanationist. Averroes attacks this view without attributing it to Avicenna, so he must have been having a particularly charitable day. In his long commentary on the De Anima, Book III, Comment 18, so this is text two on your handout. For we cannot say that the relation of the agent intellect in the soul to the generated intelligible is just as the relation of art to the artifact in every way. For art imposes the form on the whole matter without it being the case that there was something of the intention of the form existing in the matter before art made it. It's not so in the case of the intellect, for if it were, then a human being would not need sense or imagination for apprehending the intelligibles. Rather, the intelligibles would enter into the material intellect from the agent intellect without the material intellect needing to behold sensible forms. The objection is clear enough. If Avicenna's view is correct, if the agent intellect were the sole mover imposing the intelligible form directly to the human mind, then human beings would not technically need the senses or imagination in order to understand. Averroes doesn't spell out this argument here, but the long commentary patently teaches, along with Aristotle, that we need imagination and images in order to understand. That is because more specifically, the intelligibles, according to Averroes, are abstracted from those images by the agent intellect, such that there are two movers bringing the separate possible or material intellect into actuality. This-- Also the separate agent intellect and the images, two movers Averroes' argument is quite tied to this specific epistemic model, it seems to me. It only seems to operate as a reductio on the assumption that it violates the preferred Aristotelian model of abstraction. That is the function of the slight correction of the analogy which Averroes, of course, picks up from Aristotle's text at the beginning of De Anima 3.5, where the agent intellect is compared to techne in the realm of nature and the material or possible intellect is compared to matter. Averroes' point is that the agent intellect isn't exactly like a craftsperson imposing the entire form on the matter. Rather, in the intellectual case, there's already something of the relevant form in the matter, presumably both the sensible things of the world and the images thereof in the human faculty of imagination. One might question this argument. Doesn't a block of marble have the form of the statue in it potentially, just as the phantasm has the relevant intelligible potentiality? I think Averroes would reply that this objection places all the focus on potentiality to the neglect of the relevant form. The marble potentially contains any sculptable statue form the artist might like, the Pieta or a dragon or a sphere, etc. But a phantasm of a cat has a limited number of potentially intelligible forms that could be abstracted, and most obviously the substantial essence is contained, uh, and constrained solely to felinity. The analogy thus makes clear that Avicenna is getting the model wrong. Images are needed because they already contain the relevant potential intelligibles that get abstracted by the agent intellect. These two movers, images and the agent intellect, are necessary for the material intellect to receive the intelligible

Aquinas Adapts Critique

Speaker 2 10:59

enact. Aquinas also criticizes Avicenna's view in several places in his corpus, including the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles, and it seems highly likely that he draws upon the above objection from Averroes' Long Commentary 318. Yet Aquinas gives the argument a new twist, and we'll get to that in a second. Here's one of the passages from the Summa Theologiae, and this is text three on your handout. "But if the soul were by its nature apt to receive intelligible species only through the influence of separate principles and did not take them from the senses, then it would not need the body in order to understand, and its union with the body would be pointless." Again, Averroes is not cited here, but the core of the objection is the same. And there are some traces of the same language, and I've got, you know, some of the relevant Latin in both passages highlighted for you so you can see some of that same language, the non indigere kind of language It's true that the language is not exact, but we know that Aquinas read and compared Avicenna and Averroes very precisely on these points. As he puts it in the Summa Contra Gentiles two seventy-six, one article where Avicenna's view of the agent intellect is singled out for correction, including on the issue of the acquired, uh, intelligibles, um, and this is, uh, text four on your handout. The disposition for understanding which occurs through the cogitative power must be either a disposition of the possible intellect for receiving intelligible forms flowing from the agent intellect, as Avicenna says, or because the phantasms are disposed to be made actually intelligible, as Averroes and Alexander say. But the first seems unfitting, and he goes on to give several other slightly distinct arguments against this view. Though it would be, would be nice for our historical purposes to find Aquinas using the same analogy of art and the artifact in his agreement regarding the precise issue at hand, he in fact later in the same article employs Aristotle's unqualified version of the analogy to raise a different objection to Avicenna's view, and this is, uh, text five on your handout. For the agent intellect is related to the intelligible species received in the possible intellect, just as art is related to artificial forms which are placed in matter through the art, as is clear from the example used by Aristotle in De Anima three, five. Because forms in art are mere likenesses, Aquinas goes on to say, their subjects, that is the artworks or artifacts, cannot operate through them, through those forms in the same way as a real agent. So Aquinas, in this part of the article, criticizes Avicenna's separate agent intellect in just the way that he criticizes Averroes' separate material possible intellect. He-- The conclusion of these arguments is just that its operation can't be ours. So this particular objection isn't our concern, but Aquinas picks up the same analogy from Aristotle without taking up Averroes' qualification in order to make this separate objection. Thus, it seems like Summa contra gentiles two seventy-six clearly reveals that Aquinas critically examines Avicenna's position alongside the long commentary, including, uh, three eighteen. There is, however, an additional variation to Aquinas' argument, which speaks to why he does not highlight Averroes' qualification of the art artifact example. We noted above that Averroes' argument, as evinced in his usage of the art analogy, turns mainly on the assumed Aristotelian model of abstraction. Aquinas, however, in the Summa theologiae, and to some extent the Summa contra gentiles, attempts to turn Averroes' objection into an even stronger and more general reductio, and this is text six on your handout. If one claims in accord with Avicenna that the sensory powers are necessary for the soul because the soul is stimulated by them to turn itself toward the agent intellect from which it receives the intelligible species, then this too is inadequate. For if it were in the soul's nature to have intellective understanding through species that flow from the agent intellect, it would follow that the soul is sometimes able to turn itself toward the agent intellect by an inclination of its own nature, or even that it is sometimes stimulated by one of the other senses to turn itself toward the agent intellect in order to receive the species of sensible things for which the one in question does not have the appropriate sensory power. And in this way, someone born blind would be able to have scientific knowledge of colors, scientia colorum, which is manifestly false Avicenna's position not only denies that we need the senses and bodily phantasms in the general way required by the Aristotelian abstraction model, as we saw highlighted in Averroes. It's also absurd, Aquinas argues, because it implies that we do not need the senses in the very specific sense that a person born blind could know colors. Aquinas insists that Avicenna is not just operating with the wrong epistemological model, but also that his model manifestly misfires with respect to some fine-grained and obvious data connecting specific sensations to specific knowledge. To be sure that a blind person could know colors tends to elicit a fairly immediate and intuitive sense of falsity on many, if not most, epistemological schemes. As Aquinas puts it in Summa contra gentiles two eighty-three, albeit not directly aimed at Avicenna there, he says this point is manifest from experience. This is still, of course, an Aristotelian point. Aquinas repeats in the Summa theologiae one eighty-four, four said contra and also in one eighty-four, three Aristotle's remarks in posterior analytics that if one is deprived of a relevant sensation, there will be a corresponding gap in one's knowledge But many philosophers could hold that much, regardless of whether or not they also concurred with Averroes' and Aquinas' exact abstraction model, wherein the agent intellect dematerializes potential intelligibles to make them actual. So although Aquinas also appeals to the latter abstraction story and both to the letter and the spirit of his interpretation of Aristotle's system, and there are a number of places in both Summa where he does that, this prominent argument from the example of the blind person is meant to deal a more decisive and broad-based blow to Avicenna's emanationist epistemology. Though I've mainly, uh, let's see how I'm doing on time.

Speaker 3 17:54

Uh, here.

Speaker 2 17:55

Don't have too much more. About

Speaker 3 17:56

five, 10 minutes.

Speaker 2 17:57

Okay.

Does the Objection Work

Speaker 2 17:59

Um, though I've mainly tried to trace Aquinas' use and adaptation of Averroes' objections against Avicenna on the acquisition of intelligibles, I'd like to briefly consider before concluding whether Aquinas' argument does in fact work against Avicenna's view. I don't think it does. Recall that Avicenna is not always interpreted as an emanationist. To whatever extent Avicenna's system actually embraces abstraction, it will be clear that Averroes' and Aqu- and Aquinas' objections have missed their mark. But even if A- Avicenna's epistemology is emanationist, it's not incl- entirely clear how it could be compatible with a blind person coming to know colors. In a recent article, um, Kai, uh, that's his last name, mostly draws this same conclusion, laying out possible ways of interpreting Aquinas' blind person example. That a blind person could not know colors seems most intuitive taken phenomenologically, since how could a blind person, while remaining blind, know what it's like to see colors, even if he somehow were to gain other scientific knowledge of what colors are? Similarly, i- if the knowledge in question is of such a kind that concepts must be linked up and applied to the relevant particulars in the world, specifically through visual experience, it doesn't seem like that kind of knowledge connecting the scientific with the phenomenological could be had by the blind person. On these two most intuitive interpretations of, of how the example could be manifestly false, and given Avicenna's own doctrines concerning sensation, there's no way that Avicenna can be committed to the possibility of blind people knowing colors, since the latter kind of knowledge explicitly involves seeing. Note also the Latin here is scientia, so Freddoso translates it accordingly as scientific knowledge So only the second of the two options I just gave, it seems to me could possibly qualify as a kind of scientia for Aquinas if, if even that could. Now, it might be possible on an, on an emanationist reading for a blind person to gain scientific intellectual grasp of colors, color concepts, say. It's not clear to me within an Aristotelian framework what the essence of color or even more so of a specific color like neon green is, and whether it necessarily involves phenomenological acquaintance with matter, uh, as it, as it were. Maybe some of you could help me out with that. It might simply consist of knowing that colors are the per se objects of vision, that color is an, uh, is an accident necessarily instantiated in extended surface, et cetera. It certainly seems like blind people, again, within this framework, can know the essences of many other material things, both substances and accidents, without having visually experienced the relevant matter of those things. But if this is pos-- but if this is possible, I see no reason why Avicenna would have to deny that the senses are still necessary in order to gain knowledge. Avicenna, at the very least, considers images to be a sine qua non necessary preparatory condition for receiving the intelligible form from the agent intellect. And it might not be outlandish at all to think that the relevant preparation for gaining intellectual knowledge of color, as described above, could be, quote, "stimulated through another sense," as Aquinas explicitly puts it in the ab- in the above quote from, uh, one eighty-four four. It's through hearing and touch, for example, that a blind person could come to know the relevant essential truths about color. So it's just not obvious to me that Aquinas' example sufficiently launches the intended reductio if knowledge of colors is cashed out as scientia, as Aquinas' language itself implies. On the other hand, if we decide that a scientific grasp of the essence of color cannot be had without actually seeing the particulars, then there would be no way for a blind person to know them. But here too, and pace Kai, I think Avicenna would agree, even assuming the emanationist reading. On the most sophisticated emanationist interpretations, for example, Deborah Black's, the essence of the thing, which is potentially intelligible and the imagination prepares and constrains the appropriate form which is emanated from the agent intellect. So in text one on your handout, the emanationist affirms that the received intelligible form is in fact collected from the images, not through abstraction, but in the sense that it must, that it must match the essence or nature contained in the images. Thus, there's a tight connection between, on the one hand, having actually seen the particulars and having appropriate visual images of them, and on the other, the visual images containing the essence of color or neon green or whatever it is, and receiving the corresponding relevant intelligible of the same nature. On this emanationist picture, coupled with a strict requirement of necessarily visual images, Avicenna would just agree with Aquinas that there's no way for a blind person to have scientific knowledge of colors, and once again, Aquinas' objection fails against Avicenna. But lest I end on an embarrassing note for our birthday boy I want to return to the wider historical context. Even if Aquinas' additional, more ambitious objection concerning the blind person doesn't work, he still has his agreement with Averroes. Recall that in Averroes' argumentation, the emphasis seems to fall more on Avicenna's, Avicenna's presumed denial of Aristotelian abstraction. To be sure, if Avicenna is a pure emanationist, then he's gonna deny real abstraction. And perhaps abstraction has, um, other abductive reasoning going for it beyond just the supposed authority of Aristotle, um, and maybe Averroes and Aquinas could build up an argument that way. However, even on Averroes' most basic argument, and even assuming emanationism, I don't think it's quite correct to say that the agent intellect imposes the entirety of the form, just as in the art-artifact analogy. On the emanationist account I explained above, the natures of the images really do perfectly constrain the form that's emanated, in just the way that pot- that a potentially intelli- that potentially intelligible images of certain natures do on the abstraction story also. The human mind is not a block of marble apt to receive just any form whatsoever from the agent intellect. Finally, while Aquinas and Averroes may have unfairly snubbed Avicenna on this particular dance at the party, this particular scene affords us yet another glimpse at Aquinas' learned and overall largely fair dependence on his Muslim predecessors, both Avicenna and Averroes. At the end of the day, Aquinas is not a partisan. Though he often sides with Avicenna against Averroes, he doesn't always. He's not interested in agreeing or disagreeing for the mere sake of agreeing or disagreeing with either of these great philosophers from the classic, from the classical Falsafa tradition. And I'm not aware of anywhere in the corpus where Aquinas disagrees with them just because of who they are or just because they're Muslims. Rather, he is willing, sometimes controversi- controversially, to follow anyone, Avicenna, Averroes, or even Aristotle himself, so far as he can discern that they are on the path of truth, and that makes him indeed a philosopher worth celebrating. Thank you.

Speaker 25:47

Thank you, Professor Ogden.

Q and A

Speaker 25:49

And I would like to spend a few minutes and, uh, and, uh, give you an opportunity to ask any questions from Professor Please

Speaker 4 26:03

Yeah

Speaker 5 26:11

Yeah.

Speaker 4 26:11

Thank you, Matt.

Speaker 6 26:12

Um, thank you, Stephen. Um, this is g- a great way to celebrate Aquinas- Yeah and I'm sure one he would have appreciated himself. Um, so you had, um, you, you offered two options given that Aquinas uses this term scientia and whether, uh, for whether a blind person would be able to know colors in the sense of scire. Um, and so I, I wanted to offer some, some thoughts about that because it seems to me that sometimes when Aquinas uses this term scire, he doesn't use it in the technical term of Aristotelian demonstrative knowledge, and he actually will use it, um, just for anything that's grasped with certitude. Um, so I, so I- that could be what's going on there. And then I think of the two options that you gave, um, about whether you could have this, you could learn about this through hearing, color through hearing or touch or something like that, I think Aquinas maintains a model where you wouldn't be able to get the form of color in any way except through the eyes because the color actually has to act on you in order to have the form in your intellect and intelligible species. So there's a text in the commentary-

Speaker 2 27:16

That's the one where there's a tight connection between the particulars and the fanta- yeah.

Speaker 6 27:18

Right. Yes, and there's a text in the commentary and the sentence is on the color yellow that might be helpful to you there.

Speaker 2 27:24

Yes, that famous passage on yellow- which we, which we all know by heart. Yeah. I'll get, I'll get, I'll get the reference from you later.

Speaker 4 27:42

Thank you

Speaker 7 27:46

Stephen, thank you very much for this. This is really, really enjoyable. I, I have some questions. Uh, I, I'm worried you're gonna be upset about this. I have some questions about text one, 'cause it's this-

Speaker 2 27:55

I, I could never stay mad at you,

Speaker 7 27:59

I think. 'Cause, 'cause text one is, is a difficult one, and so I wanna clarify something in text one 'cause I think it affects maybe how we read text six. So in text one, uh, the agent intellect emanates, emanates a form on the, the- It

Speaker 2 28:17

doesn't say that.

Speaker 7 28:18

Okay, yeah. But so here, here's what I wanna focus on. Um, hence the images which are potentially intelligible become intelligible in actuality. Not they themselves, not the images, but something collected from them.

Speaker 4 28:32

Yeah.

Speaker 7 28:32

Um, so Aquinas's argument in, in text six, um, he seems to be worried about a kind of redundancy or just kind of the fact that the images that you have in the imagination are just kind of unnecessary. Um, and so I, I wanna understand what's going on with this something collected because if Avicenna has in mind... I c- I could see why the images are necessary if they become actually intelligible. But if it's just something, something is produced- Yeah during abstraction, I could see why Aquinas reading Avicenna would say, like, "The images don't seem necessary here." Um, so can you... Yeah, is, is, is there a more direct w- way that Aquinas is attacking Avicenna or?

Speaker 2 29:22

Yeah, no, I think that's really helpful. Um, and I think pointing to that specific line in this five five passage is useful 'cause I do think on a, on a certain emanationist reading, that particular line suggests like, well, it's not really, the images aren't really doing any work for you. It's just, like, something collected from them. And I pointed out the relevant way in which you might think of how something could be collected from the images that's not an abstractionist model, but an eman- emanationist model. And all that really means is that there's a bare agreement between the natures or something. Um, and so really, um, Aquinas might read that and think, "Well, the images, the image really isn't doing any work." But my point was just, like, even if it's doing something merely preparatory, if we have, if we have the notion that knowledge, whatever kind of knowledge it is, requires this strict connection to the particulars and to visual images, then even if you think it's not, like, intrinsically part of the, the act of understanding, if you just think it's a kind of preparatory role, you still wouldn't be able to get knowledge of colors without visual color images to prepare the i- to, to, to prepare the mind for the emanation. That's kind of what I was thinking.

Speaker 5 30:40

That's really helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 4 30:45

We have time for about one more question

Speaker 5 30:50

I think Richard here

Speaker 4 30:54

Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 8 30:55

Go ahead. Okay. Well, Stephen, thank, thank you very much. Uh, and, uh, I, I wanna make a few comments and a, a couple of general ones. First one might be a bit controversial, um, and that is, uh, there's no doctrine of intellectual abstraction in Aristotle.

Speaker 2 31:14

I was very careful not to attribute a doctrine of- Right abstraction to Aristotle in this paper because I knew you would be here.

Speaker 8 31:20

That's right. Uh, but the doctrine of abstraction is in Alexander and passed on to the tradition as if it's Aristotle. So that's-- I think that's, uh, really important to keep in mind. Um, I... a-and I was a little concerned about the beginning of your paper because I know the work you've done and others have done, and with the work you're going to do, something... What you're going to be doing on Avicenna as well. And, uh, I guess my concern, and if this, this is not really with you so much, but with these figures, all three of them have deus ex machina. That is magical ways to make intellectual abstraction that gives us perfect scientific knowledge happen. And this is a pl-- I think it's an Aristotelian platonic dream of such perfect abstraction and knowledge. One other side issue too is the term abstract in Avicenna. One shouldn't think that it's a past participle necessarily. He uses that term as the things that are already in the ancient intellect as immaterial. But it seems to me that, um, uh, Avicenna needs, uh, well, Avicenna has, uh, well, start again. Okay, so we have a recent book by, on Themistius and Aristotle by Alisa Cota, and she shows, shows the importance of Themistius to the later, uh, late ancient and medieval tradition. And you know, I've, I've written on this, but, uh, and I've written another piece now too, on the importance of Themistius to Avicenna.

Speaker 4 32:45

Yeah.

Speaker 8 32:46

And Thimi- and Themistius is very important to Aquinas later on too, uh, although he reads into it, as, as I've said. And so Themistius thinks that we have, we do have our, the two pow- two intellectual powers, of the, the receptive power and the, and the active power. But the active power is extraordinarily weak, and it needs the intervention of a transcendent intellect to bring it to the full understanding of the intelligibles. And for Themistius, those intelligibles are in the, in the so-called Asian intellect, uh, and, uh, that is a Plotinian teaching. That is, that's the Plotinian nous. And that's one of the things that Alisa Cota brings out in her book as well, the dependence of Themistius on Plotinus. So we're in a Neoplatonic framework for Ibn Sina, and so his answer to the deus ex machina difficulty is all the forms are in the transcendent intellect, and our soul, in some sense, is descended or something of that sort. But when we know, then if we want to have absolute knowledge as opposed to the confused knowledge that we have when working just on our own, we need to link up to the transcendent intellect in that sense. Uh, so that's one. Uh, but then along comes Ibn Rushd And Ibn Rushd is trying to figure this out, and he ends up with another transcendent intellect. And then he says, well, if the individ- individual human beings are material entities and they don't have their own individual intellects, then there must be one intellect that they all share in, in some fashion. Uh, and, uh, and that has all sorts of implications, such as the impossibility of the eternity of the, of the human soul. The third is Thomas, and Thomas says God grants us a certain intellectual power. And then, uh, at, uh, and that intellect, so that's the deus ex machina. He just says, "Well, look, let's already say that it's in, in us, and we have this magical ability." The problem is, though, and it's a lovely in, in, in theory, a lov- a lovely structure to set out. But, uh, Nathaniel, as you know quite well, Aquinas even says as early as the commentary in the sentences that we do not have the essential definitions even of a fly. So there's a great deal of tension going on. I wonder maybe if you could comment on some of this.

Speaker 4 35:02

And settle it all.

Speaker 2 35:03

We, we may be out of time. Uh, I mean, on the one hand, I wanna say embrace the magic, Richard. Um, on, on the other hand, I, I would have a longer, a longer response to talk about why it's not actually magic in all, I think in all of these systems, um, because I think they're all trying to stick to some sort of rough, ancient scientific ideas about potentiality and actuality and what it takes to move something from potentiality to actuality, but that would be a longer story.

Speaker 4 35:39

We'll talk about it ourselves. Yeah.

Speaker 35:41

Thank you very much, uh, Professor Ogden. So-

Introducing Dr. Krause

Speaker 35:49

Our, uh, next speaker will be joining us via the Zoom, uh, Dr. Kraus. And, uh, her topic is on the usefulness of science, focusing on Thomas Aquinas versus modern perspective. I happen to have a brief bio of her, so I like to, uh, go through it. Uh, Professor Kraus is Professor of History of Science at the Technical University of Berlin, and, uh, she focuses on pre-modern sciences and soul and body, as, uh, well as her publications covers, uh, pre-modern experience of the natural world, as, um... And, uh, she also has a publication, uh, Aquinas on Seeing God. And, uh, her obtained, uh, she obtained her PhD in the philosophy of King's College, and she's also involved in several universities, including Harvard and Durham. So without further ado, uh, Professor Kraus.

Speaker 9 36:53

Yeah. Thanks so much, um, for this generous introduction. I can't see anyone in the room now, but I hope everybody can hear me.

Speaker 37:02

Yes.

Speaker 9 37:03

Okay, fantastic. Um, so before I begin, I wish to thank wholeheartedly David Therese, Dale Matheson, John Ca- John O'Callaghan, and Michael Waddell for organizing this conference. It's a tremendous honor and great pleasure for me to be speaking today, uh, to the distinguished audience, and I'm very sorry I couldn't make it over to the US. Philosophers and historians of science once used to be considered scientists too, definitely throughout the whole pre-modern period. Um, but in, for some reasons, that's no longer the case, at least in the English-speaking world, with science and the humanities strictly separated by two concepts. Now, the German concept Wissenschaft still embrace, embraces both, um, cultures, to say it with snow. So wherever, whenever I use science today freely to translate the medieval ciencia, just remember or bear in mind that I mean the, the German Wissenschaft. Okay. What is science and what is it good for? There are perhaps two most elusive-- Uh, these are perhaps the two most elusive questions that one can ask about science in the past, present, and future. Because how can we as historians of science and as scientists possibly put daily practices into words? How can we objectify the doings of our historical actors, including Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great, and perhaps even harder as our own doings, as opposed to object-objectifying things in nature, for instance? And yet there are well-known images of speaking about science and of organizing science institutionally. In our times, and I start with the modern period, these images have not commonly been conceived by philosophers and natural scientists, but by sociologists, economists, and lawyers. Following their disciplinary inspirations, they have nonetheless had a tremendous impact on how present-day science is institutionally organized, how it's carried out on the ground, how it's perceived by society, and how it's used to shape society. Perhaps one of the most deeply ingrained images that we have of speaking of science today is to distinguish between basic science and applied science. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, this distinction has dominated narratives about science in the United States and in Europe, peaking in the nineteen seventies, but remaining dominant in many circles to this day. Just look at the institutional setup of the German non-research-- non-university research institutions. The Max Planck Society, where I currently work, is devoted to basic research. The Helmholtz and Fraunhofer Societies are to applied research. According to this classic distinction, basic science is predominantly oriented on cognitive values such as the discovery of tru-- discovery and truths, and applied science is predominantly characterized by utilitarian values such as invention, technology, application, and dissemination, leading to economic growth and social welfare. Just how basic science and applied science relate to one another has been more intensely debated. To cut a long story short, post-Second World War narratives have entrenched the distinction into a linear model in which basic science leads to applied science, which in turn leads to practical application. Now, the emblematic exposition of that model is Vannevar Bush's report, Science, The Endless Frontier of 1945. Now, Bush was an advisor to President Roosevelt during the Second World War and director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, which coordinated US military, military research from 1941. And in that book, he says the following. I quote, "Basic research is performed without thought of practical ends. It results in general knowledge and an understanding of nature and its laws. This general knowledge provides the means of answering a large number of important practical problems, though it may not give a complete specific answer to any one of them. The function of applied research is to provide such complete answers. The scientist doing basic research may not be at all interested in the practical applications of his work. Yet the further progress of industrial development would eventually stagnate if basic scientific research were long neglected. Basic research leads to new knowledge. It provides scientific capital. It creates the fund from which the practical applications of knowledge must be drawn. Today, it's truer than ever that basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress." Unquote. Now, the linear model of innovation that Bush here set out in 1941 was to become an idealizing post-war rationale of the relationship between science and technology, leading, among many other things in the US, to the founding of the NSF, National Science Foundation. The model built on the idea that innovation could be rationally planned through three or four consecutive steps: basic science begetting applied science, and outside of science begetting application and dissemination. And though never generally accepted in the academy, this model exerted immense influence on communicating the utility of science to society until the turn of the 20th cent-- 21st century and beyond. Now, the most important thing I want to say today about this linear model is this: It implies that the pursuit of cognitive values is subordinate to the pursuit of utility. That's because the overarching purpose of science is seen as being to enable economic succe-success and national wealth, among other societal goals. Thus, according to the linear model and to increasingly complex models that have superseded it since the 1980s, science is in the service of a distinctive socioeconomic contract. Now, what determines European science policy today largely builds on the linear model of the 20th century, but also supersedes it with two other models currently employed by the ERC, the European Research Council. Okay, I have these two more. The first one is the model of frontier research as proposed in the seventh ERC framework in 2007 and still in operation today, and the model of grand challenges as proposed in the eighth ERC framework and continued into the current ninth ERC framework as global challenges. Two quotations suffice to illustrate the semantic changes. Now, frontier science first. Today, the distinction between basic and applied research has become blurred. As a result, the term frontier research was coined for ERC activities since they will be directed to fundamental advances at and beyond the frontier of knowledge. The second Horizon Europe strategic plan will steer research and innovation funding within and beyond Europe to tackle the key global challenges such as climate change, pollution, and loss of biodiversity, the digital transition, and an aging population. From fundamental research to breakthrough innovation and deployment of innovative solutions, the strategic plan directs investments into the green and digital transition, building a more resilient, competitive, democratic, and inclusive Europe," unquote. Now, the main reason of the semantic changes is evident from the second quotation was to align all of science with real-world problems, not defined by disciplinary but societal demands. These demands have streamlined the utility of science in one direction, as Flink and Kaldewei noted already in two thousand and eighteen, proclaiming the existence of general values and goals toward which the whole research enterprise is to be oriented today. The challenge of this narrative, as I see it, is that these values and goals are already somehow known to us. They're known unknowns in the sense that we know that there's a problem out there that exists. We just don't know yet how to solve it, but soon we'll be able to do so. And yet, where do these known unknowns as goals of science leave a much more open and entirely undetermined future for our science, a space of absolute possibility that gives way to venture into what I, uh, call in, in reliance on Rumsfeld, the unknown unknowns? Okay. I suggest that a perspective of complete openness to anything there is, is a perspective that scientists have long cherished for more than two and a half thousand years, and they have done so without much thinking of an image that they should themselves hold of science, like the image of the utility of science, or those of basic science, applied science, frontier science, and grand challenge science. The best scientists that I've come to read and know, um, over the course of my career lived their science first and foremost and occasionally create images of it. But what kind of image might best enable scientists to courageously live their science into the future, to embrace the uncertainty of what is new, to withstand the storms of the crowd, to persevere with their unique insights?

Aquinas on Science Value

Speaker 9 47:03

Now, to supply one possible answer to this question, I wish to go back in history much further than I've done so in the first part of my talk, which might have come as a surprise to people, and I want to talk about Thomas Aquinas and one of his most important templates for thinking about science, namely Aristotle. During antiquity and the medieval period, we should note first of all, the dominant images of science were certainly not drawn up by sociologists, economists, and lawyers, but by philosophers or philosopher scientists, if we want to call them, and during the medieval period by theologians. Usually, they were in close conversation with one another, if they existed in separation at all. What these men and many others of their stature shared was an image of science as intrinsically valuable. Today, we would say as cognitively valuable as we have heard about it in, uh, concerning basic science before. Science for them was the true achievement of human reason, the highest expression that reason could give to itself and the world. Let's turn to Thomas Aquinas' ex- expression of this intrinsically valuable image of science. To do so in the best possible way, I, I wish to start with Aristotle's Metaphysics, which was available to Aquinas in two distinct translations from the Greek. The English translation of the Murbeck version on the right-hand side, um, reads as follows. Oh, I don't have it here. Never mind. I, I will go directly into Aquinas's commentary, um, and I have a little more time. Now, what's most important, uh, about what Aquinas does in his commentary, which he wrote roughly from 1271 onwards, was to draw out more clearly two factors that I find noteworthy to mention today. And those are in, uh, green and in blue. And I will read the passage. In any of the sciences arts, we find that men with scientific knowledge are more admired and are held in higher esteem than all other men because their knowledge is held to be nobler And more worthy of the name of wisdom. Now, the discovery of any art at all is admired because he perce-perceives, judges, and discerns a cause beyond the perceptions of other men, and not because of the usefulness of his discoveries. We admire him rather as being wise and as distinguishing a thing from others, as being wise indeed in the subtle way in which he investigates the causes of his discoveries and distingu-- uh, as distinguishing one thing from others insofar as he investigates the ways in which one thing differs from another. So those are clearly the methods of division, um, and, and search for causes and argumentation or deduction That the speculative science or theoretical sciences were not discovered for the sake of utilities made clear by the fact, um, or by the sign, um, that after all sciences of this kind had already been developed, i.e. acquired or discovered, which can serve as introductions to the other sciences or provide the necessities of life or give pleasure. As those arts whose object is to the light man, the speculative sciences were discovered not for this kind of end, but for their own sake. The fact that they were not discovered for the sake of utility becomes evident from the place in which they were discovered, for they originated in those places where men first applied themselves to such things. And another version of the metaphysics, that's why I put both versions up, reads, "And first in those places where men had leisure," that's the Morbecha version, "i.e. they had time for study because they were released from other occupations as a result of the abundance of things necessary for life. Hence, the mathematical arts, which were speculative in the highest degree, were first discovered in Egypt by the priests who were given time for study and whose expenses were defrayed by the community, as we also read in Genesis." So the for its own sake point, um, and the very harsh division of the sciences for utility or arts for utility versus those for their own sake, um, those are the points, um, that I want to address, as well as, um, the theoretical sciences being geared toward, uh, distinctive investigations. Now, in a slightly earlier version of this, in his Sententia Libri Eticorum, which Aquinas wrote in 1270, we find him make a similar claim on the highest honorability of theoretical knowledge as opposed to the lesser one of the practical sciences. There we read then at, quote, "It's unreasonable Aristotle rejects the error of certain philosophers who, considering usefulness rather than the dignity of science, assign primacy of the sciences to political science by which the multitude is governed or to prudence by which a man governs himself, as was pointed out at the beginning of the metaphysics," which, which we've just read. "The speculative sciences are not sought as useful for some farther end, but simply as honorable in themselves." Now, the honorability of the sciences here, um, of the, of the theoretical sciences here is what Aquinas stresses, um, much, much more than Aristotle does in his own text or the Latin translation of that As a third text, I want us to look at Aquinas's De Virtutibus. There he links the question of the usefulness of theoretical knowledge to the virtue and habit of the theoretical intellect, thinking about the psychological impact and realization that knowledge has on its knower. Here he makes use of his sharpened Aristotelian distinction that theoretical science is not for the sake of utility, arguing in his reply that the acts of the theoretical intellect are more similar to the beatific vision than the acts of the practical intellect. The first text on the left-hand side is the, the counterargument at the beginning of the quaestio, and the second text on the right-hand side is, uh, Aquinas's reply. And they read, "Every virtue is ordered to something, namely happiness, which is the end of virtue, but the speculative or the theoretical intellect is not ordered to anything. Theoretical sciences are not sought for the sake of futility, but for themselves, as is said in Metaphysics 1." And then the conclusion that the, the, the counterargument draws, uh, therefore there cannot be virtue in the theoretical intellect, but Aquinas answers to this, "It should be said that the theoretical intellect is not ordered to something outside itself, but to its own act as to an end. Ultimate, that is contemplative happiness consists in its activity, hence the acts of the theoretical intellect are closer to ultimate happiness." Now, per modum similitudinis, by way of similarity than the habits of the practical intellect, though the habits of the practical intellect are perhaps closer by way of preparation or merit. Now, just to summarize this, Thomas insisted on a strong separation between honorabilitas and dignitas of science and the utility of science. So he separates the honorability or the dignity of a science from the utility, um, which Aristotle doesn't do so clearly. And the second point is that the theoretical intellect's operation in this life is only similar to the operation that, uh, the soul will enjoy in ultimate happiness. Now, Aquinas's image of science or the utility of science was not the only one, uh, at the time.

Albert the Great Alternative

Speaker 9 55:10

Contemporaneous to him and his interpretation of theoretical science as the most honorable, as opposed to utility and as similar to the modality of the intellectual operation in the beatific vision, the greatest happiness for humans in the afterlife and the full presence of God, his Dominican confrere, Albert the Great, creatively devised an image of science that did not devalue its utility for its producers, whom he also considered its carriers. Um, now Albert's life mission was to place science or scientia in the context of human perfection here and now out of one's own power so that happiness could flow from this natural development through scientia. In his treatise, uh, or Tractatus Antecedentibus ad Logicam, a treatise that he wrote to precede the whole logical corpus that he started commenting on in the mid-'50s, I think Um, Albert writes, there it is, "For if the good of humans and their happiness lies in the most perfect activity of the best part of the human soul, an activity which lies in the contemplative intellect, this intellect would be unable to contemplate unless it had become acquainted with the principles and it would know to find what it searches for in contemplating, and unless it knew to judge the things that it's already found when it contemplates them. It's evident that this science, without which the activity of happiness remains unrealized, and by which the happy man does not engage in the activity of unhindered happiness, is above all beneficial for happiness. For this science liberates from fantasies which seem to be, but are not. It condemns errors and exposes falsities, and it supplies delight for proper contemplation in all." And here, the key passages, pate quod prae omnibus utilis est ad felicitatem haec scientia and that, of course, logic. So Albert went a step beyond Aquinas, I don't think in an adversarial manner, but by telling what he found to be true for his own work and life. His introduction to the logical corpus contains perhaps the clearest expression of this truth, integrating the utility of the scientific logic into the picture of human development, perfection, and happiness. Now, um, in this, he clearly deviated from Thomas Aquinas to the extent, um, that while Thomas insisted on a strong separation between honorabilitas and dignitas of science and utility on the other hand, Albert sought more of an integration. Likewise, while Thomas insisted that the theoretical intellect's operation is similar to its operation in ultimate happiness, Albert suggested instead that the theoretical intellect's developmental stage, and I haven't shown you the passages on that, of the intellectus adeptus is the perfection of the human being to the extent that is-- he is human, and that happiness flows from this perfection. This latter remark I cannot prove here and argue for in detail now, so take my word on it. Um, especially if you want to read up on this, you should read Albert's, um, De Natura et Origine Animae But what I wish to end on for today, returning to the beginning of my presentation, are two questions: What is science, and what is it good for? And here I wish to conclude that both Thomas and Albert have much to offer us for our contemporary images of science. For despite their apparent deviations from one another, they show us that science stands in the service of the life task of the human being as a creature, able and willing to study as much of ciencia as possible and thereby contributing to the welfare of their own being. Yet while, while Albert took this to the extreme by centering his image of science on the perfection of the human subject in the here and now, and heavy reliance on his Arabic, Arabic peripatetic sources, Thomas provided us with a more object-centered vision, a vision ultimately turned to God himself. This, in my view, was more a matter of emphasis on either the subject or the object, but not compared to the situation of our images of science today, a matter of fundamental difficulties to explain the usefulness of science from its own intrinsic value. And as I wish to add these for Aquinas as much as for Albert, included initially their very own experiences, which they turned into ordered systems of knowing, building on their inborn desires to know, um, and the experience just precedes in the metaphysics. The discussion on experience in the metaphysics just precedes the utility, uh, discussion. My hope is therefore that by turning to Albert and Aquinas, we will never seek out to lay the utility of science today in taking away those experiences of the very existential relations that we have to nature, other humans, and God from ourselves. Such a utility would dehumanize us. My hope is that we instead will strive to expand the utility of science to advan-advancing what I like to call relational rationality, the very civilizational basis of our contemporary scientific progress. In choosing a wider understanding of the utility of science, one that might perhaps be informed by Thomas and Albert, I'm sure we will have the strength, courage, and resilience to cultivate ourselves to the extent that the unknown unknowns of our own limitations will be as much part of our lives as the unknown unknowns of the scientific quests into which we venture. Thank you very much for your attention.

Speaker 1:01:19

Thank you. In the interest-- Thank you very much, Dr. Krauss. In the interest of time, uh, we'd like to proceed to the next speaker, but I would like to take one question for Dr. Krauss. And

Speaker 4 1:01:37

Thank

Image of Science Explained

Speaker 10 1:01:39

you. Katja, Terry Clavin here. Thank you very much for your presentation. Hey, hey, Terry. Yeah, it's good to see you, even if you can't see us. Uh, just, uh, a quick question. You used the word image for science, and, um, can you explain that a little more? I think it's very valuable, in part because it-- I mean, we, we, we live in a world which kinda thinks science is complete and the thing, and to, to s- to call it an image is, um, reminding us that there is an account which is maybe unfinished-

Speaker 4 1:02:12

Yeah

Speaker 10 1:02:12

or, um, um, more to be discovered. So can you explain why you used the word image there and, and give us a little more insight into that? Because I think it's very valuable. If, if you wanna translate Wissenschaft for us, also, what can we use in English to incorporate exactly the point you want to make?

Speaker 9 1:02:34

Okay, so, um, let me start with the first question and think about the second while I start on the first question. Um, so image of knowledge is, is not a term I coined myself, but I'm borrowing from Yehuda Elkana, who's, um, historian and sociologist and philosopher of science. Um, or actually was. He passed away in 2012. He was very influential in the European, um, tradition of the history of science, um, helping to found this institute as well as the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, very active also, uh, at the American Academy in Berlin, um, for anybody in the room who wants to come to Berlin for a whole year or so. Anyway, so, um, he has this paper that he calls a programmatic attempt at an anthropology of knowledge, in which he talks about images of science, and there he says, um, when he speaks of science, there are three, um, things he wants to distinguish. The first one is the body of knowledge, which is really what science is about, um, where scientific questions are being negotiated, hypotheses tested, um, where the knowledge in science is made. The second one is the images of knowledge. Those are the, the ways of thinking about knowledge or science that inform what actually goes and what doesn't go into the body of knowledge. So I give you one example. The example is sources of knowledge, uh, as an image of knowledge. What are the sources? Um, are the sources reason, experience, and with regards to experience, experimentation or observation? Um, are revelation-- Is revelation a source of our knowledge, um, as used to be, of course, the case in, uh, the science of theology, um, in the pre-modern period? So that's just one example. And then he says, and then there's this, there's society, um, itself, right, where politicians, for ins- for instance, negotiate these questions. But he, he insists on, um, putting these images of knowledge in between the body of knowledge and the so- social values, um, value systems, um, politicians negotiating precisely because, um, those images, uh, have this crucial link between what non-scientists negotiate about science and how then science is, for instance, being funded and what kind of, um, bodies of knowledge can actually count as science and whatnot. Um, so that on the first question The second question. Remind me of the second question

Speaker 10 1:05:20

please. Wissenschaft. Wissenschaft.

Speaker 9 1:05:24

Was

Speaker 10 1:05:24

bedeutet Wissenschaft auf

Speaker 9 1:05:25

English?

Speaker 10 1:05:25

Yeah,

Speaker 9 1:05:25

so, so if I, if I give you, if I give you a literal translation, it would be, um, it would of course be wissenschaffen, right? To, to create knowledge literally, um, or to, to give new knowledge in, in a sense. Um, but of course, that doesn't get us anywhere, right? So a literal translation. Um, I would say that, um, with this, we're much more in a, in a comprehensive picture of, um, just like scientia actually, the medieval notion of scientia actually wanted to entail, which is ordering, um, defining and reasoning. Um, so those three are the components. And the reason why I said this at the beginning is of course that when we think of, uh, Albert the Great, for instance, or, um, all these scientific systems that the medievals had, uh, to order different disciplines, for instance, um, they didn't just do it within arguments, but the ordering itself, the activity of ordering, was a central activity that preceded defining and argumentation. Um, and sometimes we lose sight of this when we only turn to the arguments themselves and analyze the arguments. Um, so that's a blind spot that we, uh, nowadays have in some ways. Um, and I really want us to go back also to those more profound, um, activities that the medievals considered part of scientia.

Speaker 1:07:02

Thank you, Professor Kraus. Uh, I just would like to proceed to the next speaker.

Speaker 9 1:07:08

Sure.

Speaker 1:07:09

Um, thanks again, Dr. Kraus.

Speaker 4 1:07:12

Thank you.

Speaker 1:07:14

Uh, in the, in the interest of time, I'm, uh... I know that I'm rushing through this, but please forgive me, Dr. Tyler. Uh, our next speaker is, uh, Dr. Ty- Professor Tyler, and, uh, his speech would be on Aquinas and, and Avicenna and on the metaphysics of God and creatures. Thank you, sir.

Speaker 4 1:07:37

Okay. Katya, if you're still there, I sent you a copy of the paper

Speaker 8 1:07:46

All right. Well, uh, this paper has had many lives. I s- I put my head down, I got to work on this paper, and, uh, then I stuck my head up, and it was nine thousand words. And there were no notes yet, and I wasn't finished. So it got chopped, uh, in various ways. Uh, what is the paper about? Well, a colleague at Leuven suggested that I ask Google to do that, and so this is what Google says the paper's about. Which, uh, I... But the first time I did it, it had the third item in the paper, which expanded it, divine naming. Uh, so I edited this just a little bit, but pret- that's pretty much on track what this is about. Okay, and I give you the whole paper, uh, as we go through, because I don't have a handout and I... and there's some complex issues I wanna be sure that I, I present to you. And now I'd like to s- to scroll, and I can't Well, that's interesting. Uh, can I... Oh, is this, is that the score- is that-- Yeah, well, how do I do it? I'm sorry, I'm a Mac user.

Speaker 5 1:08:52

Oh.

Speaker 8 1:08:52

Does that make a difference?

Speaker 5 1:08:54

Uh, not really. I, I get it though. I'm a Mac user too. There we go.

Speaker 8 1:08:57

Oh, I just tap on-

Speaker 5 1:08:58

Yep

Speaker 8 1:08:58

tap on this or this?

Speaker 5 1:08:59

Yep, either will work.

Speaker 8 1:09:00

Okay. Okay. All right. All right. Well, we're going to... All right. So, uh, it's changed around. This is not gonna be the final title either. Um, but, uh, we'll see what happens here. It's long been not unusual for scholars and college instructors to speak of the thought of Thomas Aquinas in matters of metaphysics as Aristotelian to core, and to focus on his mature works and teachings for a verification of this notion. Other scholars such as Cornelio Fabro, Fran O'Rourke, Rudy Tavaldi. Rudy, I think, may be here. Uh, at any rate, um, he's certainly here at the conference. Uh, to mention just a few, have countered that the appro-- countered that approach by signaling the importance of Neoplatonic aspects of the thought of Aquinas. Both perspectives, while valuable, for the most part, show little recognition of the foundational importance of the translated writings of the Muslim Peripatetic Ibn Sina, Avicenna, for the consideration, uh, for the development of the metaphysical thought of Aquinas. Something in that dir- uh, something in the direction of this consideration was set out by the renowned Toronto Thomist Anton Pegis in an article published over sixty years ago, in which he argued that Tom- Thomas' idea of creation is primarily philosophical and that it is-- its philosophical meaning was first set out by Ibn Sina, or Avicenna, in his Ilahiyat or Metaphysics. In his analysis, Pegis drew largely on the Summa Contra Gentiles. Uh-oh, sorry Come on, let's go, let's go. Uh, from about 1259 to 60, 61, starting then, uh, and later, uh, texts, but did not venture into the complexities of the earlier commentary and the sentences or the short treatise on being in essence written from Thomas' earliest period, precisely where the strong roots of Avicennian thought in Thomas' writings are most evident. Uh, yet, uh, could it be that the reliance on Avicennian insights was a trait of the young Thomas, and that as he matured, he moved away from Avicenna and closer to Aristotle? R.E. Houser, who has worked closely with Thomas' early writings, has recently presented just this notion, only to refute it in detail through a meticulous study of the methodology, methodological reasoning of the proemium of the commentary and the metaphysics from about 1271. It's late in Aquinas' career. His conclusion is simply this, quote, "Far from turning away from his earlier Avicennian understanding of metaphysics, this prologue shows that Thomas' own metaphysics at the height of his career was still thoroughly Avicennian, the main lesson one can learn from his proemium." In the present short contribution, I'll consider two intertwined metaphysical issues of central importance in the thought of Thomas as discussed in his early works mentioned just above. These, uh, those issues are, one, the distinction of essence and existence, and two, creation. For each, I'll present the teaching of Thomas, then explicate its sources in Avicenna, and finally explain how Thomas reconsidered or modified or even rejected Avicenna's account through his own critical evaluations and insights.

Essence and Existence

Speaker 8 1:12:16

First essence and existence. At the commentary in the sentences, you've got, I'm not gonna read out all the numbers here, you see them there. In the commentary in the sentences, in the context of divine names, Thomas straightforwardly follows Avicenna in asserting that thing, res, is imposed from the quiddity of a determinant nature, and being, esse, is imposed from the nature's own act. He continues, quote, "Since, however, it is the case that in any created being its essence differs from its being, that thing is properly denominated by its quiddity and not by the act of being, as human being by humanity." Close quote. Later, Aquinas again follows Avicenna in asserting that the primacy of the conception of the notion of being in the consideration of a thing. Quote, "The first thing that falls in conceptione, I mean, in conception, in imaginazione, of the intellect is being." In the commentary in the sentences then, he asserts that while God is pure act, every creature has some mutability, though God is free of change. This means, he continues, that there is a twofold sense of possibility in creatures, one insofar as it is a creature and another according to its own natural constitution. As creature, it has being, esse, from another, since it is not per se necessary being. It depends on God for its whole being in one kind of possibility and on its own nature as mutable for the other. The first, for the first, possibility is whatever has the whole of its being dependent on that by which it is a thing. This is the aspect in which it depends on God. The second is its own nature as perishable substance. Further, as he later explains in his commentary in the sentences, that being is not of the very concept, that, that being is not of the very concept of a thing, since the quiddity of a thing can be understood without understanding whether it exists. These things have being from something else. Hence, ultimately, it's necessary to reach a nature that is being itself, ipsum suum esse, which is one. Quote, "Since the nature of entity is of one ratio with all things by analogy." Again, I, my emphasis. Quotes, close quote. Here, quote, "The unity of the effect requires the unity in its per se cause, and this is the way of Avicenna." Close quote. So Thomas is revealing, as he often does in his commentary in the sentences and the Dante, he reveals his sources. Later on, he'll just not bother to because everybody knows. Further, in the commentary in the sentences, uh, another distinction here, he writes that, uh, everything in a genus has quiddity different from its being, since one can think humanity without it existing. Now, since God is neither present in nor said of a subject in accordance with the Aristotelian definition, one would think he should be denominated as a substance. Yet that is not the case. Thomas writes, quote, "In God, however, his being is his quiddity, for otherwise it would occur to the quid-- uh, being would occur to the quiddity, the quiddity, and in this way it would have been acquired by him from another, and he would not have existence through his essence. Esse per essentiam suam. For this reason, for this reason, God cannot be, uh, can, cannot be in some genus." Close quote. In this way, Thomas recognizes that God is not properly called substance, but can be only in an expanded sense. Properly speaking, substance cannot be said of God and creatures in a univocal way, but only analogically. Although quiddity is distinct from being, which is the act of existing, and what has quiddity is not in the subject, this does not apply in the case of God when we denominate him as substance. All that is found in this small sampling of texts in Thomas' commentary in the sentences is derived from his study of Avicenna. For Avicenna, three notions occur to or are impressed upon the soul in primary fashion: being, uh, existent, The analysis of the necessary and possible reveals that what is necessary in itself has no cause, while what is possible requires for its actuality that it be necessitated by something outside its own nature. Uh, uh, reducing the account of the necessary being, wajib al-wujud, is the term he uses, he draws conclusions from its per se nature. It is free of all potentiality and all possibility, and further, it is unique. As such, it is pure act. Later in Book VIII, Avicenna begins his argument for a first efficient cause by drawing on his discussion from Book I on the necessary existent, and explicitly references, references it in writing, "We have previously explained that the necessary existent is numerically one. Everything with the exception of the one who is in his essence one and exi-- and the existent, who is in his essence an existent, acquires existence from another." Close quote. So he's picking up on the earlier part and then proceeding with his argument in VIII. Other things are said to share, uh, uh, share, uh, in its, uh, making of things to exist by a, by a way of providing form to things, while the creator alone provides the actuality of being in reality, or better, the necessity of being to all things after or below it. Doing this through the mediation of intellect and through lower things such as soul and nature. By reasoning, which we've seen, Avicenna-- for Avicenna, the primary characteristic of the unique necessary being is its necessity. Further, properly speaking, necessary being, which he calls the first, is such that it, quote, "Has no quiddity other than its individual existence." That's how I render inia. Marmura had just existence, but it's his individual existence for inia. For Avicenna, the arguments do indeed lead to the ultimate cause necessitating all other things. In this context, we should take special note that the simplicity of the necessary being requires that it have only one act, which is to bring about the first created intellect, and then through that first created intellect, appear the rest of the hierarchy of intellects, souls, and celestial bodies, all the way down to the agent intellect, which oversees and provides forms for the sublunar world. Here, the agent intellect, replete with forms, communicates forms to things when the material substrate is suitably prepared to receive form. Special attention needs to be given to his view that the necessary being is not the direct and immediate cause of being given by efficient causality to individual entities which are composites of essence and existence. Rather, it is the ultimate principle of the necessity required by the universe of actually existing, uh, namely necessitated beings, which are essentially possible in themselves. The principle for all the quiditativ- quiditative essences of created being is the first created intellect at the top of a hierarchy of created and creating intellects. Both being or existence and forms are provided by the members of the hierarchy, since a plurality of immediate actions cannot in any way be attributed to the perfect simplicity of the necessary being. The first and unique act of the necessary being is, again, the creation of the first created intellect through which all other things are created in existence. The necessary being alone is the absolute, mutlak, absolute creator, since its act depends on nothing else, while the mediating intellects in the emanative hierarchy are each creators and create-- and causes of necessity of being in all other possible beings. This protects the simple necessary being from plurality of acts. The reasoning here is founded on necessity and possibility, which are also event-- which also eventually requires that the necessary being is not properly a substance. While Avicenna's metaphysics is the primary source for Thomas on the idea of a distinct distinction of essence and existence, it was impossible for the Dominicans simply to adopt the Persian philosopher's account without significant revision, particularly in regard to the doctrine of immediate creation. While Avicenna argued that the distinction of necessary and possible up to the necessary being, which is the cause of the realization of possible beings by providing the necess-necessity of existence through a plural hierarchy of entities, Aquinas chose to focus on being rather than necessity. For his doctrine, Thomas draws on his own theological tradition of the immediate presence of God to creatures, and understands that this involves the donation of existence by efficient metaphysical causality as active existing to every creature. That is, using Avicennian Latin phraseology to provide to the creature esse ab alio. For Thomas, this also involves a second Arabic source, the Liber de Causis, the Kalam fi ma taqdir in Arabic. Uh, the Liber de Causis in which Thomas read that the first cause alone gives being to the creature as supplying a substrate of being or existence able to receive forms by informatio from the first created being, intellect. The author of the Liber de Causis escapes disruption of the creator's simplicity by assigning, in Plotinian fashion, the provision of the plurality of forms of things to the first created intellect. Somewhat similar to Avicenna-- what Avicenna will do, and this text was preceded Avicenna by quite, quite, uh, over, well over a century. But precisely how should the Liber de Causis be understood when it affirms that the first cause is the sole and unique creator itself alone giving being to all other things, while things below it come about only through the mediation of the first created intellect, which provides the quiddities or essences of creatures? To begin consideration of this, let me state clearly despite the, that despite the language and despite the terminology from Liber de Causis, such as being an- for ania huia, being as discussed in Liber de Causis is not a notion in accord with the doctrine of Aquinas. This, uh, Liber de Causis doctrine is also different from that of Avicenna, who held a hierarchy of created intellects as causes of being to all that is below them. Young Thomas knew the Liber de Causis well, of course, right from the beginning of his career, and of course, Albert. His work with Albert, too. Everyone had to read it. It's required reading, uh, and everyone did. Um, uh, also Liber de Caus-de Causis well, of course, and certainly held with the unknown author of that short metaphysical text, the view that only the first cause could give being. In chapter eight of the Liber de Causis, it is said that all things except the first cause are composites of form and being, while the first cause uniquely is only being, ania facut, esse tantum. That's where the lang- Thomas picks up the language of esse tantum. In his De Ente et Essentia, Thomas, Thomas quite clearly explains how esse tantum is to be understood. He writes, uh, there of, quote, "Something which is only being, esse tantum, such that its very being is, is subsisting," ipsum esse sub-subst- uh, substance, subsistens, quote, quote, "and holds for a reduction of all things to a first cause, which is the cause of being." Causa essendi for all things because it is only being, esse tantum. So he loves the phraseology. The notion in Liber de Causis that intellect is form and being is grounded in the fact that everything but one, quote, "has being from the first being, which is only being," esse tantum, uh, and this is the first cause, which is God, close quote. Here we see Thomas has adopted the account of the necessary being from Avicenna, and yet dismissed its doctrine of mediate creation. Instead opting to use the words of Liber de Causis to express his own doctrine of God as ipsum esse subsistens or ipsum esse per se subsistens, and as the sole giver of being to each creature by a metaphysical s- efficient causality not found in Avicenna. Yet is this understanding of metaphysical causality in accord with his source that in the doctrine Liber de Causis? No. For the author of the short, that short work The cause of being of each thing is the first cause alone and not by efficient causality, but by a Platonic paradigmatic participation, a notion very different from that of Thomas. For the author of Liber de Causis, the first cause gives being to things by creating being as the formal substrate for forms provided by the first created intellect. In chapter three, the author writes, quote, "When the first cause created the being of soul, it fashioned it as something subject to the intellect on which the intellect carries out its operations." And that's the sort of thing it does with regard to all things. It creates the being, which is the foundation for other predicates or characteristics. Uh, the Arabic, uh, kabasit and lil aql here corresponds to the Greek, which you have there as well, and I give you that. I'm gonna carry on. In Proclus, uh, proposition two thou-- two hundred and one and is translated by Dodds as, "Renders them susceptible of the influence from intellectual essences." Close quote. Suffice it to say here, this conception of the action of the first cause and its causality in Liber de Causis was not one that was used by Thomas, though he did use, uh, though, uh, pardon. Uh, though he did, uh, take the fr-- uh, take the words of Liber de Causis and transform them into his own teaching of God as the immediate efficient cause of being of each and every creature. Since creatures have being while God is being. While the Liber de Cau-- uh, while the Liber de Causis and Avicenna are key sources for Thomas, he forms his own distinctively different doctrine of divine causality, uh, by being, uh, by the, by, uh, causality of being, by the creator who is only being the efficient cause of being in everything outside God.

Creation From Nothing

Speaker 8 1:27:33

Now, for creation Uh, now I go to the second book of the commentary in the sentences. Uh, in the first paragraph, Thomas mentions Plato's account in the Timaeus and explains that a creator is one who makes something from nothing, and the creating properly so-called is precisely that. While humans or angels are said to make things, they do not-- they are not said to create, since the name creator properly belongs to God alone. He adds that oftentimes in scripture, to make and to create are used without distinction. In the first article of question one on first principles, Thomas remarks again that the quiddity of a thing can be understood without understanding whether the thing exists. From this, he goes on to indicate it is necessary that things have their being from another and ultimately from a nature that is being itself, ipsum es, ipsum suam esse, such that what it, so that what gives being to all things must itself be one, since the nature of being is one in all things by analogy. This unity of effect requires that there be unity in the per se cause. In the second article, whether something can go forth from God by creation, Thomas explains creation is not only a matter of faith, but something that can, that reason can, has demonstrated. In his response In his response, creation is not only, uh, uh-- Pardon me. In his response, he explains that creation involves producing a thing in being according to the whole of its substance. And then he adds that, that there are two things involved in creation The first is that it presupposes nothing in the thing which is said to be created. The causality of creating extends itself to all that is in the thing. For this reason, creation is said to be from nothing because it is, there is nothing which preexists creation as if uncreated. The second is that in the thing which is said to be created, non-being is prior to being, not by a priority of time or duration, so that earlier it was not and afterwards it is, but by a priority of nature in such a way that if the created thing is left to itself, non-being would result. For it has being only from the influence of a superior cause. For what does not have being from another is prior to what has being from another. On the basis of this, creation differs from eternal generation. For it cannot be said that if left to himself, the Son of God does not have being, since he receives, since he receives from the Father that very being which belongs to the Father, which is qualified being not dependent on anything else. Unqualified, pardon me. He then continues to explain further the nature of created being from, uh, of creation from nothing For those two reasons, creation is said to be from nothing in two ways. One is such that the negation negates the order of creation in regard to something preexisting implied by the preposition from. So the being is said to be from nothing because it is not from something preexisting. That is with respect to the first, he says. The other is such that the order of creation in regard to nothing preexisting remains affirmed with respect to nature, and that creation is said to be from nothing because the thing created naturally has non-being prior to being. If these two suffice for the notion of creation, then creation can be said to be demonstrated in this way, and in this way the philosophers have demonstrated creation. However, if we take a third consideration to be required for the meaning of creation, so that the thing created has non-being in duration before being, so that it is said to be from nothing because it is temporally after nothing, creation cannot be demonstrated in this way, nor is this conceded by the philosophers, but is supposed by faith. Thomas then adds in response to the first objection that Avicenna had indicated there are two senses to the notion of agent cause, the cause of motion and a divine causation, which is the giving of being. The former involves a passive potency, while for the other, a thing, quote, is made insofar as it receives being from a divine agent without motion. Uh, if that thing is, is new, made, that thing made is new, it is necessary that an active and not a passive potency precede its being, and such a newly made thing is said to be possible to come to be by an active potency. However, if it is not new, then the, an active potency does not precede it by duration, but rather by nature. That's Thomas. Later in the solutio of the fourth Tom, article, Thomas adds, quote, God alone is the immediate cause of all th- those things that come forth into being by creation. Now- Avicenna's Metaphysics, Book Eight, is about the existence and attributes, including unity and uniqueness of the first principle. In the opening paragraphs of eight one, he gives a precis of what is to come later, particularly at eight three. He reasons that there, there cannot be an infinity of intermediate causes. If the series of causes is ordered as an infinity, uh, as an infinite plurality, and the extreme is not realized, then the entire infinite extreme would share in the special characteristic of intermediacy. Hence, it is not possible for an aggre-aggregate of causes to exist without including an uncaused cause and a first cause, close quote. After reasoning in eight one, uh, that there-- eight one seven, that there cannot be an infinity of intermediate causes, he concludes, uh, in the eighth, eighth paragraph, "Thus it has become evident from all these statements that there is here a first cause, for even if that which is between the two extremes were not finite, and this extreme exists, then that extreme would be a first for what is infinite and a cause that is not caused." Later, he explains, quote, "We are not speaking here about what is, what in its individuality, not its specificity, is a principle, and what is accidentally, not essentially a principle. For we allow that there are infinite causes in the past and future, but it is incumbent on us to show finitude in the things that are causes in their essences. This is the state of affairs in the second of the two divisions, and this after we als-- A-and this after we also seek assistance from what has been said in the Physics," Aristotle's Physics In his metaphysics eight three five, Avicenna begins his argument for a first efficient cause by drawing on his discussion in book one, as we've already seen. And at paragraph six, he explicitly references it in writing. Uh, and again, we previously explained that the necessary existent is numerically one, everything without exception of the one who is in his essence one, and the existent who is in his essence an existent, acquires existence from another. But then he goes on, this is the meaning of a things being created, that is attaining existence from another. It has absolute non-existence, which it deserves in terms of itself, is deserving of non-existence, not only in terms of its form without its matter, or in terms of its matter without its form, but in its entirety. This is what Thomas is reading and using. Hence, if its entire, if, if its entirety is not connected with the necessitation of the being that brings about its existence, and it is reckoned as being dissociated from it, then in its entirety, its non-existence becomes necessary. Hence, its coming into being at the hands of what brings about its existence, uh, is in its entirety. No part of it in relation to this meaning is prior in existence, neither its matter nor its form, if it possesses matter or form. This is again, this is what Thomas is using. That is Av- that is Avicenna's third definition of creation. In book six, chapter two, are two more. If something by virtue of its essence is a cause for the existence of something else that is permanent then it is its permanent cause as long as the essence exists. If the cause exists permanently, then the effect exists permanently. Such a thing among causes would then have a higher claim to causality because it prevents the absolute non-existence of the thing, namely the lower thing. It is the one that gives complete existence to the thing. This then is the meaning that for the philosophers is termed creation, ibdab. It is the giving of existence to a thing after absolute non-existence. It belongs to the effect in itself to be non-existent and then to be by cau- by its cause existing. That which belongs to the, in the thing intrinsically is more prior in essence for the mind, though not in time, uh, than that which belongs to it from another. He goes on at six two eleven writing, If its existence were not absolute existence, then its preceding from the cause in this manner would be creation, and it would represent the highest mode of giving of existence because non-existence would have been utterly prevented, existence being fully empowered over it. And then in six three seven, Hence, the whole in relation to the first cause is created. Its act of bringing into being that which comes to be from it would entirely rule out non-existence in the substances of things. Rather, it is an act of bringing into existence that absolutely presents non-existence in things that bear perpetualness. Okay, in the perpetual things, uh, and none of these perpetual things ever came into existence as such. Okay, this then is absolute creation. Bringing into existence in the absolute sense is not just any kind of bringing into existence, and everything is originated from that one, that one being the originator of it, since the originated is that which comes into being after not having been. And he concludes the chapter, the state of affairs that, that a thing possesses from itself precedes that which it has from another. If it has existence and necessity from another, and so I stress that, existence and necessity from another, then from itself it has non-existence and possibility. Its non-existence was prior to its existence, and its existence posterior to its non-existence, involving a priority and posteriority in essence. Hence, in the case of everything other than the first, the one, its existence comes about after n-not having been a non-being that it itself deserves. Note that in these texts, Avicenna is taking care to explain that the perpetual entities do not have per se the necessitation of existence that constitutes, constitutes their ontologically unending existence, and consequently are said to be created ultimately by the necessary being. Immediate creation through a hierarchy of intellects, each of which is itself a possible being, requires the culmination of necessitated possible beings in the ultimate, in the unique first cause, the necessary being Um Oh, did I skip a page? What did I do

Speaker 4 1:39:07

here? Um Not sure how to go back. Uh, I want to go page up. I'm just gonna go page up. Uh Oh, okay. Um, okay, book... No, I'm, I think I've got it now. Okay. Okay, new paragraph. Book nine is On Emanation From God and the, and The Return to God, and the first chapter is, is... I'd like to scroll. I need some help scrolling. Sorry, I'm a Mac user

Speaker 8 1:39:45

Oh, over there. Okay. Thank you. All right. Um, book nine is on emanation from God and the return to God. And, and the first chapter is entitled On the Attribute of Efficacy or Agency, Fa'aliyya. I like agency better. Of the first principle. For-- So I'm almost done, as you can see. For our concerns here, the key teachings are in chapter one, paragraph nineteen and following, which constitute a critique of the notion of creation and time. Avicenna writes at the beginning of nineteen: Moreover, by what does the first precede his created acts? By his essence or by time? If only by essence, as one is to two, even though both are simultaneous, and as the movement of the thing in motion, in it, it moves, uh, by the motion of that which moves it, even though both are simultaneous, then it follows necessarily that both are temporally originated, and, uh, that is the eternal first and the acts generated by him. The issue, the issue is one of, of conceptual and real coherence. Was there a time before the creation of time and motion? To this, Avicenna responds, "Now, if he did not precede by some past thing, the first temporal moment of, of, uh, the origin of-- origination of creation, then he would have come into being in time. With this temporal coming into being, how, according to things they had posited," he's talking about the Christians who hold for creation ex nihilo, "posited, would he have not preceded the very first moment of time by some state when he was, and there was no creation, and then he was, and there was creation?" At 9411, Avicenna provides an account of the necessary and the possible, which finds emanation as the installation of plurality in the world by God. He then goes on in chapter 12 to assert that origination or creation as ibda, which is the term which we use for creation ex nihilo, uh, in Al-Kindi, uh, which was reserved by the earlier tradition of the Plotiniana and Arabica and, and, and the liberate causes to God alone, indicating creation can appropriately be asserted in the description of the activity of the mediate intellects in the Avicennian, uh, emanative hierarchy. That is, Avicenna teaches mediate creation, though he also continues to hold the doctrine of primary causality and necessity, again, I-- necessity, I stress, tracing every entity back to the first, the necessary being. He does, he does allow so by allowing the-- he does so by allowing the, uh, that creation ibda as ibda is the origination of something caused, um, by immaterial efficient causes which do not have any preexisting external substrate in which the, that origination takes place. So they are genuine creators, but they're doing it in virtue of power given to them by the, by the, the first. Uh, this, uh, this sense of ibda suits both God and the hierarchy emani-emanated immaterial intellects. However, a more strict or absolute mutlak sense of ibda denotes create-- divine creation, which depends on nothing prior and presupposes nothing prior to its act. In contrast, the created and emanated immaterial intellects presuppose something prior to their existence, a higher intellect or the necessary being itself. In this way, Avicenna presents a distinction between divine creation ex nihilo and mediate creation ex nihilo. What we see in the preceding text of Avicenna is a clear insistence that creation necessarily requires efficient causality, even if that efficient causality is eternal. There is nothing outside the first cause or God, uh, pri-as prior, either as a cause of God or as a substrate in which divine action of creation comes about While Avicenna certainly holds for a final causality that draws all things to perfection, the ultimate of which is in the necessary being, his understanding of creation is that of a procession of all created things from God by efficient causality. Creation cannot take place without divine efficient causality, and one must not forget the efficient creative causality of the hierarchy of intellects. No activity can properly be denominated creation in the absence of efficient causality. This account of efficient causality is posterior to what's found in the ninth century Arabic text of Liberde Causis, in which the first cause alone gives being as substrate for the installation of forms by the first created intellect and what follow. The causality of creation in Liberde Causis is something that does not take place by a giving of necessity of being on the part of an intermediary hierarchy of intellects as Avicenna had it. Okay, Avicenna, it gives necessity. Nor is it the immediate giving of being to, to act, as act to individuals, which thereby have the actuality of existence from a first cause that is itself subsistent being and unique efficient cause of being or existence in every other entity, as Thomas has it in his account. Rather, as I indicated in the previous section on essence and existence, the account from Liberde Causis for being in creation to be a platonic form of paradigmatic participation provided by the first cause. Being then is the substrate on, on which formal characteristics of things are built, a conception of being very different from the understanding of the text by Thomas, who twisted that from that short work, his own understanding of esse tantum or aniafacat as ipsum esse subsistens, something quite clear in the De Ente et Essentia. That is, while Thomas drew heavily on the text of Avicenna in Liberde Causis, neither actually match his account of the metaphysics of efficient causality. Anton Pegis saw so many years ago, Tom-- As Pegis saw so many years ago, Thomas was very familiar with these teachings found in Avicenna's metaphysics, as is clear from the few texts of Thomas I've presented. Thomas agreed, uh, with the importance of efficient causality and the notion that the first cause is responsible for the being of all subsequent things. That is, he accepted the notion of a single ultimate necessary being. But in accord with what I've discussed above about essence and existence, Thomas could not tolerate Avicenna's doctrine of creation and mediation on the part of what is other than God. Moreover, the notion in Liberde Causis that God alone is the creator and is the sole cause of being for everything, Thomas also accepted, but not with the meaning set out by the author of Liberde Causis. Instead, he understood the, that the presence of the creator as source of being must be understood to be found immediately in every instance of being What I briefly presented here is a short consideration of the importance of Avicenna in the thought of Thomas. Similar importance of philosophical writings, the Arabic text in Latin translation by Avicenna as well as by Averroes, can be seen in the philosophical accounts of Thomas of human soul and intellectual knowing, ultimate happiness, and more. Through the study of Thomas's early works, where he more, he more explicitly references his sources. Later, those explicit references gradually become more rare. Still, the importance of the translated Arabic sources for the formation of his own thought throughout his philosophical writings does not wane. Thank you.

Wrap Up and Q&A

Speaker 1:47:25

Thank you, uh, Professor Taylor. Um, our time is up, but I wanna ask forgiveness. We-- I'd like to have a couple of questions because this is so rich we cannot just, um, end right now. So just one question at least, if you would.

Speaker 8 1:47:39

Quick, somebody ask me about necessity.

Speaker 1:47:41

Oh

Speaker 4 1:47:48

I'm sorry. Apology accepted

Speaker 11 1:47:51

I was just wondering, thank you so much for the talk. Would you mind explaining, um, why a necessary being cannot be a substance and what kind of... Yeah. Sorry if that's really basic, but

Speaker 8 1:48:07

Thomas is following, following Avicenna in this too, right? Mm-hmm. So, so it, it can't be a substance because it can't be, can't be in a genus as well, and so there's nothing, there's no f- it, it has, um, it's not a, a s- a substrate for anything at all. So it's, it's taken just in itself. Now, I'm sure you wanna ask me about necessity, don't you? Please. Thank you very much for asking that question about necessity, okay? What's implicit in what I've been saying here is that in fact, uh, creation for Avicenna primarily is necessitation. That's what I... A- and, uh, uh, it was pretty obvious to me, but I re- as I was reading the paper to you, I didn't see that so obvious. Uh, but, uh, so the necessitation is what makes something, uh, makes a possible thing into actual existence. And Thomas' focus is more on being Avicenna through and through, is foc-focused on the necessary and the possible. And Stephen, you have a, had a comment or question. We're done, but nobody's, not everybody's left

Speaker 2 1:49:14

It's, um, s- it's, uh, what's really important for Avicenna in the doctrine of media creation is that from one, only one thing can come. So I don't know if I caught it or I just missed it in there. Does Aquinas just think that principle isn't a sound principle, or does he think there are just stronger arguments on this other side of being as the cause of all other beings, like absolute, absolute being being the cause of all other beings? Or how, how would you, how would you put the argumentation there for,

Speaker 8 1:49:48

for Aquinas? Oh, that's excellent que- excellent question. So Avicenna, uh, follows, re- argues his way up from the division of necessary and the possible all the way up to the first necessary being, and it can have only one act. Otherwise, it's a plurality. So it can only have one act, and in that sense that he follows out what, what comes from that. Thomas instead focuses on the notion of being and, a-and sees in that, uh, uh, no necessity in the activity of the divine. Whereas for Avicenna, it's, it's required because his argument is not so much about being but about necessity. That's where the argument starts and it ends. So it, and this is the best of all possible worlds, and there can also be no other, no other world because the necessary being is most perfect, etc. So all of that is necessitated. But for Thomas, there could be a different world. And so it's a different conception about the nature of the, of the will of the, of the, uh, nes- the ultimate, ultimate first cause. And even the term will is, is, uh, although he uses it, I think properly, it's inappropriate for Avicenna to speak of the will of the necessary. He's using it in a different sense of the word. Whereas A- whereas Aquinas thinks that a divine, divine being wholly has will and can choose, so there could be a better or a different universe. So I think that may be what you're getting at. Yeah

Speaker 1:51:18

Just a quick question, I guess

Speaker 12 1:51:22

So, uh, Aquinas says in a few places quoting Aristotle that there can be degrees of error, and then he talks about degrees of truth. So in, in s- in that spirit, I'd like to ask this question, which is, um, do you think he finds just on the whole, if we can phrase it that way, the De causis closer to the truth than Avicenna or Avicenna closer to the truth? Um, and here's the reason I ask the question, because when I read the commentary on the De causis and the De substantiais, it seems like he has a special allergy to mediated creation, but seems much more, um, open to the metaphysics of the De causis and also Proclus, uh, at the same, um, in the same breath. So and it, it may be a, a silly way to frame it, but I'd, I'd be curious to hear your response.

Speaker 8 1:52:09

Well, remember, I'm, I'm using the early qu- early texts.

Speaker 12 1:52:12

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 8 1:52:12

So this is before he knows about Proclus. All right, so, um, uh, he's, he has a great affinity for the very words of the De causis, but he interprets that doctrine as, as, uh, every single instance of being, the divine must be present. Be it a substance or accident, the divine must be present. That's, that's Aquinas. And that is, in a sense, there in the De causis, but not by efficient causality, by something that he does not recognize, by a kind of participation. So, uh, he really likes the words of the De causis again and again, but the interpretation that he has of it, he imposes upon it in metaphysics anyway. Uh, so he likes the De causis more, and he certainly doesn't like the necessitarian discussions in Avicenna, uh, because they undermine will.

Speaker 1:53:05

Thank you all. Uh, and please, uh, join me thanking again Professor Ogden Tyler and Professor Krauss. And if you have burning questions, please reach out to them directly. Thank you