This is an answer principally to concerns raised in Objections 2 and 3, namely, that human language necessarily carries with it an idea of composition.

I've always thought that this claim contradicts Aquinas's claim above, in Article 2, where he argues that these names do, in fact, refer to God substantially, or essentially (and thus to the divine nature). What do you think?

In medieval copies of Christian scripture, marginal notes ("glosses") were part and parcel of the manuscripts, and commentaries exist that focus solely even on these glosses.

In other words, although initially derived from God's observable actions in the world (or what are thought to be such), the name "God" still ultimately refers to the divine nature itself and not to these actions.

This is an example that Aquinas already brought up, and while a vivid illustration of his point, is certainly not too accurate linguistically.

In other words, God is related to creatures in only the third sense mentioned above — with regard to the creature, there is a real relation to God, but with regard to God, there is a relation with creatures only in the mind.

Here Aquinas introduces his own logical category, which falls in between pure equivocation and pure univocality

Like Maimonides, for instance

In an Aristotelian cosmology, the sun was viewed as the immediate active-intelligent force that generates the multitude of forms in this universe

"Equivocal": what might just as well mean one thing as another

"Univocal": carry the same meaning

or more simply, "likeness," "similarity"

Yet in this objection, human language precisely does not work this seamlessly and the distinction between "what is signified" and the "mode of signification" is an unjustified one

This, indeed, is how PD represents these names in Divine Names, Yet Aquinas glosses over the more absolute negation of these names that takes place in Mystical Theology.

Seems largely again to be a claim derived from Maimonides

If this is the case, then how can we be sure that our predication of "life" or anything else to God is at all even of the same order?

A severe twisting of the plain sense of John of Damascus's words.

This is an exceedingly peculiar distinction to make. At least in a traditional Aristotelian framework, to predicate something according to its essence or substance is to form an adequate and full representation of it. Here Aquinas seems to suggest that we can predicate something essentially of God and yet fall short of an adequate or full representation — he wants to have his theological cake and eat it too.

This is also what Maimonides claimed about the names given to God in the Jewish scriptures (aside from YHWH that is)

This question has many overlaps with Pseudo-Dionysius's Divine Names and Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed 1.60–67.

This doesn't respond to the objection adequately, because the objection is not that God is the "essence" of anything else but rather that God, as existence par excellence, enters necessarily into the composition of things, since things require both essence and existence, and existence is not merely an extraneous "addition" to essence but actualizes it and individualizes it.

This is also why Anselm's "definition" of God as "that than which a greater cannot be thought" is inadequate, because this is not a proper definition, which requires both genus and difference. For example, a human is defined in Aristotelian philosophy as a "reasoning animal" — "animal" is the genus and "reasoning" is what differentiates human beings (supposedly) from non-human animals.

Since God cannot be included in a genus, this is one of the primary reasons why no definition of God is possible in this life (aside from the more general claim that God is infinitely beyond human understanding, that is)

Why is God not included in a genus according to Aquinas?

1) Genus is concretized and further actualized in its various species, but God is pure actuality so cannot be included in any genus in need of actualization.

2) unlike genus, existence admits of no differentiation in and of itself. Since in God, God's essence=God's existence, there can be no differentiation and thus, no genus.

3) for a member of a genus, existence and essence must differ, but God's essence = God's existence, so God cannot be a member of a genus.

Note what a meager conception of God is possible for the human intellect in Aquinas's eyes — at least as unaided by divine revelation. We can purportedly merely know that when we say "God is" we are speaking the truth, though we don't really know what we are saying when we speak these words.

In God, "existence" and "essence" coincide for the following reasons according to Aquinas:

1) existence is necessarily caused by another for all things in this universe, but God cannot be caused by another. God's existence, therefore, is the same thing as God's essence.

2) existence is the actualization of any particular essence in this universe, but for God, who is pure actuality, there can be no process of actualization. God's existence, therefore, is the same as God's essence.

3) the distinction between existence and essence among things in this universe presupposes a participation in existence, but God exists self-substantially, so cannot be in existence by participation in anything else. Thus, existence and essence coincide for God.

In other words, the way we speak about God sometimes indicates more about human cognition than it does about God

Later in the Summa Aquinas claims that angels also fall into this category of self-subsisting forms that need no material substratum for their individuation.

A summary of reasons that Aquinas provides as to why God is not composed of matter and form:

1) matter entails potentiality, but God is absolute actuality so cannot be material.

2) matter derives its goodness from its form, but God is in no way derivative, so cannot be material.

3) matter is put into action by form, but God is pure action so cannot be material.

"God" that is

As Maimonides (and indeed, most Jews, Christians, and Muslims in late antiquity and the medieval period) claimed

In summary: God is not a body because

1) bodies necessarily come into being and pass away, but God is unchanging in this way.

2) bodies necessarily carry the notion of potentiality, because even if said bodies do not themselves develop, nevertheless, as extensions in space, these bodies can potentially be divided up into infinite pieces. But God can maintain no notion of potentiality, for God is absolute actuality.

3) God is the noblest of beings, and since animate bodies are purportedly nobler than inanimate bodies, what makes them nobler must come not from their bodily existence but from something else ultimately separable from bodies, which is God.

A central concern, as we might recall, of Maimonides

These are considerations all taken up after 1.1.3, but they largely just elaborate the conclusion of this current question.

Although PD makes claims similar to these, ultimately he has a more complex answer to this objection. Whose account do you find more compelling?

In summary:

1) Something must have initially started the process whereby what is merely potential is brought into actuality. That something we call God.

2) Something must have started the chain of efficient causes we see in this universe. That something we call God.

3) All things in this universe have merely contingent being, insofar as they are caused by something else. Yet this chain of contingent beings cannot (supposedly) go on indefinitely and needs a first being who is not contingent. This we call God.

4) We presuppose gradation in the way we think and speak about this world. Gradation in and of itself ostensibly necessitates a pinnacle. This pinnacle for all things we call God.

5) All things naturally aim for their own good. This natural inclination, since it is clearly rational, is implanted by a supremely rational being. This we call God.

Here Aquinas argues from the kind of hierarchy of being that we have seen in, for instance, Pseudo-Dionysius or Anselm. Little consideration, however, is given to the deep imbrication of this hierarchy in human culture.

This is very similar to Avicenna's proof in the Metaphysics, but is definitely a simplified version of it that verges even more (and probably intentionally so for Aquinas) on being a purely cosmological rather than an ontological (or conceptual) proof

Avicenna, of course, allows for a far less unilinear progression of efficient causes in his "proof" of God.

Note that Aquinas agrees with this objection's claim that God's effects are disproportionate to God's essence. This, however, supposedly does not rule out some knowledge of God — only a "perfect knowledge." This claim, however, disregards a crucial part of the objection — that the effects in this world are "infinitely disproportionate" to God.

In other words, since we cannot arrive at a veracious concept of God, we have rather to substitute observable effects — for example, the world is purportedly ordered, beautiful, etc. etc. This order or beauty has to come from somewhere, and "God" is precisely this

And that's why Aquinas puts these considerations in this opening section of the Summa. He really only returns to theology in the most proper sense in 1.1.12–17, which continue the basic task of defining the scope, method, and object of "sacred teaching." Then and only then are the more specifically Christian teachings brought up in the vast amount of material that follows.

This is a mode of syllogistic inference developed more extensively by Avicenna, particularly in the context of medicine. Even if one did not know why a particular herb or root, for instance, had a healing effect, one could substitute this commonly observable effect for the middle term of a syllogistic inference. For instance:

Ariel has stomach problems. Ginger root often helps with stomach problems. Ginger root will most likely help Ariel's stomach problems.

Note that Aquinas is claiming here that sacred teaching at least partially is an empirical science along these lines, insofar as it never arrives at an adequate definition of God.

Here is the true crux of Aquinas's critique of Anselm (rather than in the objection, which is merely what critics of Anselm during his lifetime said as well). According to Aquinas, "that than which a greater cannot be thought" is not an adequate conceptual definition of God — and thus, cannot serve the privileged role that it does in Anselm's conceptual proof — because ultimately what God is, God's essence, cannot be known by human beings in this life. Whatever we might think to be the highest thought imaginable, therefore, would still fall woefully short of God, and working out the implications of such a concept would only ever get us at an extremely abstract human conception of what God might or might not be and never truly at God.

"definition" is the more standard Aristotelian term here. "Human," that is, is defined as "a reasoning animal" or sometimes "a mortal, reasoning animal." Thus "animal" is contained in the definition of "human."

Crucial claim here for how the language of scripture works according to Aquinas

It seems to me that this is the only real objection. Objection 2 and 3 merely disagree on what to designate the various senses of scripture. Could Aquinas really think of no better objections than these?

Aquinas means "Christ" here

Aquinas's Aristotelian commitments are on full display here. Sensation does not deliver reliable truth in and of itself but certainly provides the material from which to abstract veracious theoretical knowledge

Note the hierarchy of authority here for sacred teaching in Aquinas's eyes:

1. scripture
2. teachers of the Church (i.e., Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, all of the other figures quoted by Aquinas that we have not read this semester)
3. philosophers

This is a key claim by Aquinas that gets worked out in various ways in the entirety of his theology.

But who other than humans gets to decide what is counted as divinely revealed?

This, in fact, is what Anselm was attempting to do as well, though a little tension existed with him, because in both of the treatises we read by him he was engaging in "as if" scenarios that in part did seek to prove the very articles of faith that Aquinas here claims must simply be accepted — he argued for the existence of God "as if" from reason alone in Proslogion and for the crucifixion of Christ "as if" Christ had never existed in Why God Became Man

cf. the final chapter in Avicenna's Metaphysics, book 1, on truth

Put this on my tombstone

Here is the crucial distinction, and "aspect" is the key word.

Here, again, Aquinas distinguishes the theology of "sacred teaching" from the theology of metaphysics. Both can be called wisdom, but the clearly the one that (purportedly) comes directly from God is superior to the one that is directed towards God but comes from the human intellect

Recall Avicenna's identification of metaphysics with wisdom

Recall Aquinas's discussion of other realms of human knowledge and culture in Teaching Christianity

Again Aristotle

Note how Aquinas has a pretty difficult time fitting "sacred teaching" into an Aristotelian division of the sciences. Sacred teaching is simultaneously both speculative and practical because for God these two realms of science are united. However, from a human perspective, sacred teaching is primarily speculative, since it first and foremost is concerned with God and only secondarily with human acts (at least on Aquinas's count).

Here is the crucial distinction between theology in the Aristotelian metaphysical sense and theology in the sense that we've seen it especially in Augustine and PD

This, of course, is the same distinction among sciences that we've already seen in Avicenna — theoretical, or speculative, on the one hand, and practical, on the other.

"Sacred teaching" (sacra doctrina) is the term Aquinas uses as more or less synonymous with "theology" in the sense that we have seen it already in Anselm or PD, for instance — study of God's revealed words (in their minds, of course).

Open to multiple meanings

The supposed translator of one of the most popular Aramaic translations of the Jewish scriptures in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Targum Onqelos

Form, that is, in the Aristotelian sense: the essential core of a thing (rationality for a human being, at least in Aristotelian philosophy)

A type of commentary on the Jewish scripture

That is, traditionally the book of Isaiah was viewed as having been written entirely by the prophet Isaiah, who lived before the Kingdom of Judah fell to Babylonian invaders in 605 BCE. The book of Ezekiel, on the other hand, was thought to have come entirely from the prophet Ezekiel, who went into exile to Babylon with other prominent Judean families after Judah fell.

(Modern scholarship, by the way, has argued for far more complex compositional histories for both the books of Isaiah and Ezekiel, though this is not consequential for our current considerations.)

A tractate in the Babylonian Talmud, the most authoritative commentary on the Mishneh compiled in Late Antiquity.

In Hebrew (and other Semitic languages), most words are formed from roots of three consonants and the verbs between these consonants can vary based on grammar. Certain weaker consonants, however, can drop away completely or be replaced in certain environments. (For example, the guttural stop, 'aleph, often drops away if it is at the beginning of a word.)

A prominent Aramaic translation of the Jewish scriptures that was widely read in late antiquity and the Middle Ages.

This is a similar sentiment to that expressed by Avicenna in The Prophet Muhammad's Ascent into Heaven, where the Qur'ān is said to be both an immediate divine intuition on the part of the prophet and its externalization in words, which preserves the intuition though is meant to be more accessible to those only concerned with sense impressions.

Though not until a pretty late stage of Hebrew (and thus,this is a faulty etymology)

Further names commonly given to God in the Jewish scriptures

This is the "name" that God first gives to Moses in Ex. 3:14 (more of a riddle in Hebrew than anything else)

In other words, prophecy became political with Moses, because prophecy before (at least in Maimonides's estimation) had been confined to personal affairs — this, at any rate, is largely in the narrative of the Jewish scriptures, though not at all in a wider cross-cultural perspective.

When reading the Jewish scriptures aloud, many Jews substitute "Adonai" ("Lord") for "YHWH," whenever this word occurs, though some instead substitute "Ha-Shem" ("the Name").

YHWH: the Tetragrammaton (lit. "four letters"); in Jewish tradition the unpronounceable proper name of God.

Here is a point at which Maimonides fundamentally disagrees with something like Aquinas (as we will see in a few weeks). Aquinas thinks that whatever we think of as a perfection has a coherent analogical relationship with divine perfection (i.e., "goodness" among humans has some link, however faint, with the Goodness that is God). Maimonides, however, thinks that any divine perfection is so infinitely transcendent that it cannot maintain any kind of relationship with human perfections.

In this example, Maimonides illustrates how systematically negating many attributes to something can still give some indication of the outlines of this something.

This should sound quite a bit like Pseudo-Dionysius to you: Maimonides wants his reader to recognize the necessity of multiplying speech about the divine through negation — i.e., saying everything about God since nothing really applies to God.

Throughout this section, of course, we could draw quite a few parallels with Pseudo-Dionysius's claims in Mystical Theology.

pure conceptual intuition

These are the nine accidental categories of predication that Aristotle discussion in his Categories.

The person who performs the call to prayer for a mosque.

Buraq is the name of a heavenly horse in Islamic tradition, one which often carries the prophets places.

Pay attention to the claim here: Avicenna takes it for granted that a journey from Mecca to Jerusalem would be naturally impossible in the course of one night. This natural impossibility is not miraculously overcome through a miracle (or through an alien spacecraft, as the History channel racket Ancient Aliens might ridiculously claim), but is meant to point us to interpreting this story figuratively.

Not as in social class but in the sense of "those who can comprehend intelligible realities" and "those who are focused only on things of the senses"

Metaphorically or figuratively — again, as we have already seen in Augustine.

This, of course, echoes Augustine's discussion of those who are enslaved in spirit and thus unable to appreciate the "spiritual" truths purportedly hidden beneath the literal adornment of scripture.

Note the similarity here with what we have already seen in Augustine's approach to scripture.

What Avicenna here calls "Divine Command" quite literally occupies the place of human intellect in a prophet. Notably, it is as close as possible to God, the Necessary Existent, even closer than the First (planetary) Intelligence.

This is a reference to a tradition (prominent among Jews, Christians, and Muslims) that at the end of the world humanity will be separated into the just (who will be on the right of God's judgment seat) and the unjust (who will be on the left of God's judgment seat).

Gabriel is the angel who regularly appeared to the Prophet Muhammad according to the Qur'ān. Coincidentally, he is also the angel that the Gospel of Matthew claims announced the birth of Jesus to Mary.

Reflected here are widespread speculations as to the character of the influence of the planets (what were deemed planets at the time, at any rate): Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, the moon.

angels, first and foremost (recall similar claims in Pseudo-Dionysius)

In Avicenna's fully developed metaphysics, after God, there are a series of increasingly less perfect "celestial intelligences" (i.e., the planets, which were viewed by many as sentient, intelligent beings more divine than angels). Each in powerful enough, however, to generate the subsequent one — that is, until earth, which has its own intelligence (like the other planets) but does not have enough intellectual power to reproduce itself. Nevertheless, through the earth's "Active Intelligence," all things are overseen and regulated, including the particular emergence of humanity.

Avicenna was certainly not alone in positing a kind of central hub of the senses that unites information given from the separate senses and relays this information to the rational part of the soul.

The liver was thought to be the site of nourishment, filtering, and growth for animal organisms.

Probably better translated as "motivation"

I.e., desire

"Humors": standard fare in medical literature of the medieval period; humans were thought to contain variable mixtures of four humors — black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. The proportion of these substances was thought to determine a wide range of things about a person's demeanor and health.

A reference to the description of Paradise in the Qur'ān

Although "soul" is an adequate translation, ruḣ is better translated as "breath," insofar as the spoken word necessarily requires breath for its enunciation.

This is a theme that we have seen already in Pseudo-Dionysius, and we will see it again in Maimonides.

What Avicenna appears to be saying at the beginning of this chapter is that there cannot be two necessary existents because there would be no meaningful way to distinguish them.

If they differ according to essence, then only one of them can be necessary, because as Avicenna already argued, the Necessary Existent is necessarily the way that it is in its essence (i.e., the core of its being cannot not be the way that it is). Anything that would be a Necessary Existent, therefore, would have to have this same essence necessarily.

As per accidents, in a wider sense, everything about the Necessary Existent would have to be necessary (not just its essence). So if there were multiple Necessary Existents that differed only according to non-essential accidents (i.e., position, relation, quality, etc.), then this would mean that one accident would be necessary in one Necessary Existent and not necessary in another — that instead of all things being necessary in the Necessary Existent some things in fact admitted of potential variation.

Here is a subtle dig at Christian teaching on the Trinity. In Avicenna's opinion, no matter what Christian theology might say, ultimately, there is only one true God — the "Father" of Christian theology — insofar as there is only one potential Necessary Existent (the "Son" and the "Holy Spirit" are in some manner derivative from the "Father").

Pay attention to the phrase "in itself" throughout this chapter, as Avicenna's arguments rely heavily on this qualification. Every existing thing is a necessary thing (otherwise, it would not be existing), though everything other than one Reality (in Avicenna's opinion) is in itself potential and derives its necessity from outside itself (often through multiple causes and an entire causal chain).

This chapter contains a very brief summary of Avicenna's "proof" of God, which is elaborated at length in book 8 of this work (which we will not be reading). Key here is the concept of "necessity" that Avicenna introduced int he previous chapter.

That is, existence most properly is predicated of the essence of something and only in a derivative way of the accidents of this essence.

For example, if a person sees a 5.5 foot tall two-legged thing with arms and a head walking in the distance, the most immediate existential predication would be: "That is a human." A person would likely not first predicate one of the accidental aspects of humanity of this thing: "That is a brown-haired thing," for instance, or "That is a distant thing." These accidental predicates, in fact, do not really say what the "thing" is at all and merely give additional information about it.

In other words, we can never think the notion of "the thing" without simultaneously thinking that this thing in some way exists. This is what Avicenna means by "necessary concomitance."

Here Avicenna makes his fundamental distinction between existence (or "esse," as it is known in medieval Latin philosophy) and essence ("essentia" in medieval Latin philosophy).

The notion of "the existent" (existence) in Avicenna's sense merely draws attention to the fact that something is. The notion of "the thing" (essence), however, draws attention to the fact that something is in this particular way.

In other words, "the existent," "the thing," and "the necessary" are notions that Avicenna assumes are innate to human intelligence as such. He presumes that human thought in general is impossible without these basic categories.

Even if there are innate notions, however, are these necessarily universal and unchanging? Or are such abstract notions themselves historically contingent? What do you think?

Someone today like Noam Chomsky would likely agree with Avicenna, insofar as Chomsky claims that every language necessarily presupposes a kind of universal grammar.

That is to say that the purportedly universal notions that Avicenna posits here are known to all, even if they are not known to be known to all. What is needed in some cases is merely a word or a name to indicate or point to such an innate notion.

This portion of Avicenna's Metaphysics (found in books 9–10) contains subjects that more typically would be treated in theology proper, but note that Avicenna thinks that these considerations are necessary conclusions from the rest of his metaphysics. Humans, like all existing things in the universe, are ultimately meant to aim for God, their highest goal of perfection. Any disruption of this orientation would therefore be a departure from human nature (according to Avicenna). Thus "prophecy" would be the perfection of human nature, at least to the extent this is possible in this world. Avicenna seems to ignore the fact, however, that "prophecy" would in no way be a necessary conclusion from his arguments if there had not already existed people who claimed such a prerogative for themselves to begin with. In other words, some presupposition of specific revelation — in this case, the Qur'ān — already underwrites Avicenna's metaphysics, which claim merely to explicate universal, rational principles (such is the case with Jewish and Christian philosophy of the Middle Ages as well).

In other words, Avicenna assumes that existence entails some sort of cohesiveness. Something cannot exist in Avicenna's sense if it is not somehow a single reality — something existing multiply in simultaneous dimensions is not something Avicenna can even imagine.

According to Avicenna, his "proof" of God, the First Case (which we get a preview of later in this chapter) is the natural outworking of the universal principles of reason he purportedly examines in this work. These principles, in and of themselves, supposedly tell us three things about God:

1) God's existence is necessary; 2) God's existence cannot admit of change or multiplicity in any respect; and 3) God is the sole cause of existence.

We'll have a chance to evaluate Avicenna's "proof" during the next class. For now, this is a little preview of what he'll be arguing.

anon: soon, shortly

Metaphysics is not circular in Avicenna's estimation because:

a) some of its principles are self-evident, meaning that universal human reasoning simply takes them for granted;

b) some of its principles are derived from these self-evident principles (but not in the specific manner in which the particular sciences might derive their principles from these self-evident principles);

or c) some of its principles are derived from the existence of the First Cause (something that will be purportedly proved in this science).

The "benefit" of metaphysics, according to Avicenna, is to provide firm grounding for any particular science, insofar as all of the broadly necessary presuppositions of any and every science are presumably treated herein.

In Aristotle's opinion, the ultimate human happiness is to be found in the mind's process of acquiring ever-increasing insight into the universe (e.g., in the Nicomachean Ethics). Since Avicenna takes for granted the existence of one object of (infinite) knowledge beyond this universe — i.e., God, the "First Cause" — the culmination of this happiness can only be had in the hereafter.

This concept of metaphysics — as taking for its subject matter that which is always necessarily abstracted from matter — is not comprehensive enough in Avicenna's opinion. Certainly, this is one of the entries into metaphysics, but in Avicenna's opinion, metaphysics also looks into notions that are never found present in material things (and at notions that have a more complex relationship with material reality than either of these ends of the spectrum).

Recall Boethius's discussion in Consolation of Philosophy 3.11, where "oneness" (or "unity") is claimed to be a necessary component of any being's existence.

In other words, the positing of basic existence does not necessarily require that anything follow from it, unlike any other proper principle, inasmuch as anything could follow from it potentially — i.e., there are seemingly an infinite number of ways in which something might be said to exist. Mere existence, in other words, is a pure abstraction and only becomes a principle for investigation when we make it one in a very particular manner — i.e., when we strip away all particular content from existing things and see what remains necessarily attached to the notion of existence as such. And the various things attached to the notion of existence as such are all individual principles of Avicenna's investigation — causality, sameness and difference, number, etc., etc.

Here Avicenna seems to be saying that although we can divide existing things up into various categories (some are concrete, individual existing things; others are numerical realities; others are particular characteristics or attributes), this division is not mutually exclusive. Something can be substance, quantity, and quality all at the same time.

In other words, the point of Avicenna's metaphysics is to answer the following fundamental question:

What formal principles accompany any and every existing thing?

"quiddity": again "whatness," or "distinguishing characteristics"

Here Avicenna seems to imply that metaphysics does not set out to prove the existence of existing things or to demonstrate the character of such general existence (its "quiddity").

Rather, these two things are taken for granted — both ancient and medieval philosophy can be considered fundamentally (and sometimes naively) "realist," insofar as the actuality of existence outside of human consciousness was simply assumed.

These are all conceptual categories taken for granted by particular sciences, and Avicenna claims that the task of metaphysics is to look at these very categories themselves.

In other words, all of the abstractions treated in metaphysics (as Avicenna defines it) necessitate simple existence and nothing else more specific than that. What constitutes existence as such is the subject matter of this science, and this constitution of existence, as Avicenna soon specifies, includes various conceptual abstractions that can apply to any class of existing thing, whether a particular thing is perceived with the senses or only in the mind: necessity and contingency, potentiality and actuality, causation, etc.

Important: not necessarily connected with sensibles. The subjects treated in Avicenna's metaphysics can, of course, be abstracted from things we perceive with the senses, but can also be abstracted from purely conceptual or notional phenomena (numbers, ideas, theories, propositions, etc.).

In Aristotelian physics, anything existing in the natural world is necessarily composed of two aspects, which are not separable in reality, but are so in abstraction:

1) Form: the blueprint, or internal structure, of something, as it were. Ex.: In Aristotelian science, the "form" of humanity is "humanness" as such — what it is that makes humans distinctly human as opposed to other animals. This is also called the "definition" of something and includes the genus of a phenomenon as well as its differentiating aspect or aspects. Thus, humanness is the same as "a speaking animal" in Aristotle's conception of things. In contemporary science, the "form" would line up well with the particular genetic makeup of a species.

And 2) Matter: the stuff that constitutes a given phenomenon. Ex.: A human being is made up of flesh, bones, cartilage, tissue, etc. On a molecular level, humans have similar building blocks to other animals (protein, carbohydrates, DNA, water, etc.), but these are structured and proportioned differently in each species.

Neither the material stuff nor the genetic structure of a human being is able to actually exist in separation (though the genetic structure can be mapped conceptually), but looking at both in abstraction gives us enormous insight into the human organism.

By this, Avicenna seems to have in mind the basic structure of a syllogism (or "logical inference") in Aristotelian logic:

A. General statement/major premise (primary intelligible idea)

B. Specific statement/minor premise (secondary intelligible idea)

C. Conclusion

Thus:

A. All of those born within the United States are citizens.

B. Alasdair was born within the United States.

C. Alasdair in a United States citizen.

Logic in Avicenna's sense (and Aristotelian logic in general) looks to explicate the various ways in which such inferences can take place and does not examine the fact that such logical inference is possible in the first place.

Avicenna appears to opt for option a) elucidated above: that metaphysics studies the four individual causes as they occur among existing things. This discussion thus allows Avicenna to land on the true subject matter of metaphysics: existence itself (whatever exists in this world insofar as it simply exists, and not yet with respect to its particular mode of existence).

Just as metaphysics in Avicenna's sense sets out to prove that God exists, so also it sets out to prove that the four causes are legitimately causes.

In other words, metaphysics, when framed as the conceptual study of the causes in complete abstraction, does not cover the other abstract concepts that would necessarily attend such a consideration.

In other words, framing metaphysics as the conceptual study of the four causes in an absolute sense jumps the gun, inasmuch as a person first has to establish that these causes exist.

"concomitance": basic awareness that certain things occur at the same time (though this awareness does not contain any knowledge of whether such occurrence is always the case or why it might be the case).

For example, I might observe at one point in time that when I try to open a particular app on my phone, my phone freezes. Is this something that always happens? If so, the particular app may have a bug or there might be a more comprehensive problem in the OS of the phone. This insight, however, only comes with experimentation and conceptual knowledge (an understanding of the code of the app or the OS of the phone). Observation, in and of itself, does not lead to this kind of knowledge.

Here the language is rather obscure. I personally take Avicenna to mean that if metaphysics is fundamentally the study of the four causes (see above), then it can either be a study of these four causes:

a) individually, as they occur variously throughout the realm of actually existing things;

Ex.: one can study the "efficient cause" across the diversity of phenomena.

b) abstractly, in and of themselves, with no necessary relation to actually existing things;

Ex.: One can study the efficient cause as such, as a formal structuring principle of the universe.

c) individually, but with respect to how they come together in any particular phenomenon;

Ex.: One can study the formal cause in a particular species of phenomena and relate this study to the other causes at play therein (i.e., how does "dogness," the formal cause of a dog, function in and of itself, and how does it relate to the three other causes in so functioning).

or d) structurally, i.e., their interaction among themselves as they coalesce in any particular phenomenon.

Ex.: How do the four causes specifically come together with dogs? For instance, how is the formal cause ("dogness") related to the efficient cause (a dog's immediate ancestors)?

By this Avicenna has in mind the standard Aristotelian notion that when considering any reality in this world, we can avert to four classes of explanations or "becauses" (these are commonly called the "four causes"):

1. Efficient Cause: what external phenomena initially caused the thing to be the way that it is?

Let's take the example of an automobile. In this case, the "efficient cause" of the automobile could include various things: the person or people responsible for manufacturing the car; the machine used in the manufacturing process; etc.

1. Material Cause: what is the thing made of?

Taking the same example of an automobile, the material cause would include the plastic, aluminum, steel, leather, etc. that the car is made of.

1. Formal Cause: what structures the thing?

With the automobile example, the "formal cause" is the plans used to manufacture the car.

1. Final Cause: for what purpose does the thing exist?

Finally, with the automobile example, the final cause would be: "for the purpose of driving."

These four "causes," do shed quite a bit of light on any given phenomenon, though in contemporary sciences there are certainly other explanatory mechanisms as well.

Again, notice the particular progression of knowledge that Avicenna takes for granted here.

I.e., Avicenna occasionally makes claims about God in contrast to physical realities in his Physics, but these claims are meant to help illustrate his points and are not something inherent to the subject

Note that Avicenna claims that God's existence is not something that all humans intuitively grasp but something that must be demonstrated. We will see slightly different opinions on this matter when we read first Anselm, then Aquinas.

"proof of God" — i.e., the proof of God's existence. Note that Avicenna does not think that any other science can or should yield such a proof.

In other words, metaphysics as Avicenna defines it does not study how God exists, but merely looks to arrive at the conclusion that God exists (even though the particular sense of this conclusion necessarily remains undefined). However, this, as Avicenna will go on to claim, is only one of the tasks of metaphysics.

For example, a person certainly does not undertake the study of evolutionary biology if they do not admit that evolution has taken place!

"First Cause": here meaning "God," just as we saw in Boethius and Pseudo-Dionysius

One way of framing the ancient discipline of metaphysics, that is, was as the study of the abstract concepts underlying and making possible all of the particular sciences.

Here Avicenna provides his general framework for understanding any specific science. It must have the following aspects:

1. A subject matter:

Ex.: the numerical in mathematics; the human past in history; etc.

2. A set of unknowns or questions:

Ex.: "how do organisms adapt to changing environments" in evolutionary biology; "how do human collectives structure themselves" in sociology; etc.

3. A set of starting principles or axioms:

This particular requirement might not hold as much weight in many contemporary sciences, insofar as such principles or axioms are themselves sometimes the object in question. Nevertheless, at an earlier stage in the discipline of modern physics, for example, Newton's laws of gravity held such an "axiomatic" position — i.e., everyone working within the field of physics took these laws for granted. In the early twentieth century, physicists like Albert Einstein arrived at theories beyond the scope of Newtonian physics, yet Newton's laws of gravity still hold in standard, introductory physics.

Avicenna, of course, has in mind a more stable set of sciences, whose basic principles are not called into question as often as they are in contemporary sciences.

We, of course, do not remember it, since we have not read it in this class!

See the comment above on "divine" under paragraph 3 of this chapter.

By "divine" here Avicenna does not principally mean "theology" in the sense that we have looked at it thus far (i.e., the study of the "divine words"), but rather "metaphysics," which he goes on to define soon.

In contemporary lingo, we would probably call what Avicenna has in mind here simply mathematics, on the one hand, and applied mathematics on the other. The first deals purely in a realm of abstraction and the second still deals in this realm, though only insofar as what is abstracted is abstracted from actually existing phenomena.

Note, too, that Avicenna claims that practical philosophy still focuses on concepts in the mind, only here these concepts are our own moral and political concepts. Through such a focus on concepts, nevertheless, Avicenna assumes that our actions and attitudes (what he means by "practical faculty") will themselves change necessarily, as a corollary.

In other words, theoretical sciences in Avicenna's sense aim for an understanding of things as they are in themselves and not as they pertain to our own individual livelihood.

This is perhaps a rather convoluted way of phrasing things (this translation in general errs with over-literalness when translating Avicenna's Arabic, but that is ultimately a good thing, insofar as Arabic itself had to translate Aristotle with sometimes clunky or complex constructions).

At any rate, Avicenna seems to be saying here that the goal of theoretical sciences is to bring the mind, which potentially has a conceptual understanding of all things in this universe, to the point at which it does in actuality.

This is a division that Aristotle himself makes in the Nicomachean Ethics (and elsewhere). The pursuit of the good life (ethics) and critical reflection on the polis (politics) are practical in scope, whereas logic, physics (in the ancient, more wide-ranging scope), and metaphysics are theoretical in scope. Avicenna's distinction between these two focuses of philosophy in what follows largely reproduces what Aristotle says.

This is what Avicenna has done in the books of The Healing leading up to On Metaphysics. If we had a limitless amount of time, of course, we would read these works in preparation for On Metaphysics. That, at any rate, is how Avicenna and most medieval thinkers envisioned the necessary order of study: begin with the study of logic and math (sometimes sciences derived from these would be included here, like rhetoric, astronomy, or music, for instance). Then move on to a study of the natural world, broadly understood. And only after these subjects would one be prepared for the far more abstract topics of metaphysics. Notably, theology (whether for Jews, Christians, or Muslims) would only come after the study of what is here called metaphysics, insofar as God was posited as above and beyond the structure of our universe and the scriptures (in whichever variety) were thought to include all of the prior sciences hidden within them.

"Sciences" is here meant in a much larger sense than modern usage of the term — true knowledge in general.

"quiddity": literally "whatness," something's distinctive character

In this one paragraph, Pseudo-Dionysius just negating the entirety of Divine Names. What do you make of this move?

Pseudo-Dionysius thus preserves some basic framework for understanding the divinity — some terms are, he claims, better suited to the divinity than others, even if none are properly applied.

Note the reversal in procedure here. Whereas Pseudo-Dionysius's other treatises supposedly descended from the most conceptually abstract to the most concrete and tangible, here he promises to ascend from these latter terms to the most abstract and then to embrace silence itself.

Thank goodness Symbolic Divinity didn't survive! Can you imagine how long that would have been if Pseudo-Dionysius considers Divine Names to have been "briefer"????

The divine names, in other words, do not so much point to an infinitely transcendent positive content as they indicate a gaping whole where this divinity dwells.

Another apostolic figure, though it is unclear if Pseudo-Dionysius is merely fabricating this reference or if he is referring to an actual work that circulated (again, falsely) under Bartholomew's name.

Note that Pseudo-Dionysius sees tremendous danger in merely making affirmations about God — whenever an affirmation is made, it must immediately be followed by a negation or qualification. The safer path in his mind is perhaps to begin with negating the applicability of all things to God.

Again addressed to Timothy, like Divine Names

Which Pseudo-Dionysius himself undertakes in Mystical Theology

In Greek, "kyrios" means not only "lord" or "master" in the sense of having subordinates, but also "owner," in the sense of owning land or slaves.

Presumably Pseudo-Dionysius has in mind here the highest rank of angelic beings.

Presumably here Pseudo-Dionysius means the angels?

If you recall, a similar distinction is made in Boethius when speaking about divine eternity in contrast with time as we know it.

This is a peculiar title given in the book of Daniel during one the prophet Daniel's visions.

Why Pseudo-Dionysius is so obsessed with these three movements has always perplexed me. He posits them, if you recall, also among angels and humans.

Notice what peculiar causality divine causality apparently is. At non-divine levels of existence, beings can cause things that do not depart so dramatically from them (humans can "cause" other humans through procreation, an artist can "cause" a work of art that is marveled at through the centuries, etc.). But for some reason, God's causing the universe to be necessitates that this universe is infinitely inferior.

Humanity is said to be originally created "after the image and likeness" of God (Gen. 1:26). Those human beings who reapproach the divinity, therefore, reapproach this same divine resemblance apparently.

Can anyone make sense of this? Is it possible to make sense of this claim, or is it a claim that is meant to break human reasoning, as some of his other claims seem to aim for?

Yet his overflowing goodness does seem to admit of change, decline, deterioration, or variation?

In other words, Pseudo-Dionysius views divine Justice as upholding both equality and inequality — the first in a relative sense (everything is supposedly justly given what it is proportionately due) and the latter in the sense that not all things are due the same. Whereas such conceptions might be abstractly and analogously applied to the cosmos writ-large, it seems like they would lead to severe trouble when translated into and confined to human affairs. Who, after all, gets to decide which humans are supposedly due more than others? And how are divergent claims in this sphere mediated? Pseudo-Dionysius, of course, does not provide us with the tools to think through this question but merely takes the hierarchical structure of his own society for granted as divinely ordained.

This merely means "all-powerful."

Here is a central passage in understanding Pseudo-Dionysius's claims about the possibility for human knowledge of the divine.

Pseudo-Dionysius seems to imply that God's knowledge is limited to a kind of conceptual/abstract knowledge of all things: he knows everything insofar as he knows the essential "because" of everything that exists (why anything exists in the particular manner in which it exists), but apparently he does not know (or need to know?) the non-essential specifics of everything.

very important distinction in how negation or privation is understood by Pseudo-Dionysius when applied to God

As I wonder with Boethius's claims about divine knowing, how is it possible even to abstract from the way in which we know to imagine some superior kind of knowing? Can the kind of purely intuitive conceptual understanding that Pseudo-Dionysius has in mind here even exist if it did not first abstract from sense perception? It is hard for me, at any rate, to imagine how this kind of knowing would even function.

This is the reason why after affirming a name of God, we must then negate it in Pseudo-Dionysius's eyes — so as to make sure that we don't cling to tightly to the pedestrian meanings of our language.

i.e., the Apostle Paul

By "Simon" Pseudo-Dionysius is referring to a figure mentioned in Acts 8:9–24. Although he is a marginal in Acts, in later Christian tradition he becomes the embodiment of error and the source of all deviant teaching. Pseudo-Dionysius seems to have this meaning in mind.

Here Pseudo-Dionysius refers first to the teaching on the resurrection of bodies in the future and then to the fact that this particular aspect of Christian (and Jewish) teaching was much maligned in antiquity by outsiders.

i.e., angels

It is important to recognize that Pseudo-Dionysius is not merely reflecting on how each of these various title applies to the divinity but also is praising the divinity while rehearsing these names.

Here is a central passage in general for understanding what Pseudo-Dionysius is up to throughout this treatise (as well as his imaginary/no-longer-existing ones). In his mind, scripture has given the deity pretty much every name imaginable (and for good reason, in light of this passage), and he sees his task as both affirming this identification and negating it (because not fully true).

This might be an error in the manuscript tradition. Some have proposed emending this to "He is not possessed by existence but possesses existence," but even this seems to bring its own interpretive difficulties (insofar as everything else in the universe is also said to "possess existence").

This might be one way to understand the question of where the derivativeness that is evil comes from. Pseudo-Dionysius seems to imagine the divinity itself as a transcendent monad. A monad that reproduces itself into discrete numbers, however, is not itself diminished in this reduplication, though these other numbers (in ancient Greek mathematics only numbers greater than 1 were numbers in the proper sense) certainly represent a departure from the numerical simplicity of the monad.

Existence, in other words, is the sine qua non in our universe. Other qualification can (and indeed must) be added to the claim that something exists, but there is nothing more basic, more fundamental than simple existence in Pseudo-Dionysius's eyes.

This is definitely one of Pseudo-Dionysius's favorite verses to quote, and he quotes it multiple times in all of his works.

Try to wrap your head around this sentence!

i.e., angels, again a pretty curious way of referring to them, but clear from the context (that is, minds without a body)

In other words, the name "Goodness" refers to the divinity's more all-encompassing outpouring into the universe and the other names treated from here until the end of the treatise look at specific aspects of this "Goodness."

Another work that is either fabricated or has not survived.