Thomists can spend many years embarrassed and befuddled by the fact that we can only define a single substance (rational animal) and that St. Thomas even says twice that we do not know substantial specific differences. But the lesson to take from this is not that the system is a failure but rather that sensation and the cosmos are not supposed to instantiate everything – they also remind us of, or suggest to us something known elsewhere. The weakness of definition arises from the things in the world being indefinite – such things do not instantiate essence, determination, or endurance in the way in which we can understand these terms. We can only define one substance because we’re the only substance in the cosmos that is definable.
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E.R. Bourne said,
June 9, 2012 at 1:53 pm
Some questions:
From reading this post and the last, why is it that man would form such perfect ideas if they were not in some way taken from the things of our experience? Is it that we were simply mistaken or does it have something to do with the way humans know things?
Could the fact that we are men mitigate the fact that it is the only substance we can define? If we could know the interior life of another living thing, or even an inanimate object (if that makes sense), perhaps we could define it as well.
James Chastek said,
June 9, 2012 at 2:53 pm
why is it that man would form such perfect ideas if they were not in some way taken from the things of our experience
The qualification in some way opens up too many options. Plato’s theory of recollection, for example, requires that we only come to know the idea of justice after experiencing various just things.
My argument, at any rate, is that we do form them after experience. The process is something like this – we come up with an idea like “definition” or “essence” or action” and see it is a fundamental idea. Then we look at nature, or look at it closer, and nature says “I have something like that, but it’s not a mere instantiation of your idea”. The Naturalists and Empiricists point this out and say “look around: there is no such thing as essences, definition, action, etc. therefore, we have debunked the idea” They have a point. On the other hand, one version of Platonism could say “look around: there is no such thing as essences, definition, action, etc. therefore, this world has a fundamental unreality”. But the idea of analogy does not draw a conclusion, it simply takes both as real and explains the order among the diverse realities.
If we could know the interior life of another living thing, or even an inanimate object (if that makes sense), perhaps we could define it as well.
You can’t mean knowing it extrinsically, for we already know it that way. You must mean knowing it in the way that we could call it our self. But to know it in this way is to be human in the philosophical sense. A sentient stone would be an animal in a univocal sense.
In other words, the interiority that makes definition possible is not something in addition to the human, it is what the human is. Things are definable in the measure that they are definite and they are perfectly definite only when they are free of matter and therefore intellectual and interior.
E.R. Bourne said,
June 9, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Both of your answers are satisfying, but I must say that the second one is perfect. I did mean knowing in a way that we could call it our self. And it is true that perfect definition or determination means immateriality and therefore intellectuality. I overlooked that this is not accidental but essential to being human. I see this now clearly.