Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus, Secunda Pars Artis Logicae

TWO THINGS MUST BE EXPLAINED for an exact resolution of this difficulty: first, whether a relation is really distinct from its foundation; second, what sort of distinction it is, whether real as one thing from another or as a mode from a thing. We are speaking only of categorical relations, because transcendental relations are not something distinct from an absolute thing, but are truly absolute entities. They do not have a special category, but range across all categories; by their transcendence they are immersed in the absolute thing itself rather than distinguished from it.

On this difficulty the AUTHORS are divided. At one extreme, some think relations are not really distinguished from their foundations, but only by reason; this opinion is usually attributed to the Nominalists, against whom we argued in article 1. Some who admit categorical relations against the Nominalists nevertheless follow them in holding that relations are distinguished from their foundations only by reason. So Father Suárez, Metaphysics, disputation 47, section 2. At the other extreme, others distinguish all categorical relations really from their foundations, as the Thomists commonly do, although some distinguish a relation from its foundation as one thing from another, and others only as a mode. There is also a third, intermediate opinion, which distinguishes some relations from their foundations and not others. Some relations can exist without their foundations, such as paternity, likeness, and the like. These are really distinguished from their foundations. Other relations cannot exist without their foundations, as a creature cannot exist without its relation to God; these, they say, are not distinguished from their foundations. So the followers of Scotus commonly hold; see Father Merinero here. These relations, which cannot exist without their foundations, are not distinguished from transcendental relations. If any categorical relations are founded on such transcendental relations, they are thereby conceived as distinct from the transcendental relations.

THEREFORE, FOR THE RESOLUTION, I SAY FIRST: Every categorical relation is really distinguished from its remote foundation, which is its subject.

This conclusion is drawn from many passages of St. Thomas. In Summa theologiae I, q. 28, art. 2, ad 2, he says “that what is found in a creature beyond what is contained in the signification of the name of a relation is another thing, whereas in God there is no other thing.” Relations, however, are clearly founded on something absolute. Therefore, if what is found beyond the signification of the relative name is another thing than the relation, consequently the foundation is another thing than the relation. Again, in Against the Gentiles IV, chapter 14, replying to objection 9, he says that “in us relations have dependent being, because their being is other than the being of substance; hence they have their own mode of being according to their own character, as happens with other accidents.” He teaches the same in Metaphysics XII, text 19, lect. 4¹. He likewise teaches that relation is an inhering accident in On Power, q. 7, art. 9, ad 7², and q. 8, art. 2³.

THE BASIS IS the supposition, established in article 1, that relations are not extrinsic denominations but give an intrinsic formal effect. We see that this formal effect can be removed while the subject remains undestroyed. Therefore the form itself, which provides that effect, is also removed, while the subject is not removed. Therefore relations are really distinguished from their subjects by some real distinction. Whenever one thing is really removed from another, they are really distinct, because separation itself is the clearest proof of distinction.

The antecedent is self-evident: if one white thing is really similar to another white thing and the latter becomes black, it loses its likeness. Similarly, a man is not a father before he begets a child, but is a father afterwards. Therefore this relation is sometimes found in the subject and sometimes not, while the subject is not destroyed.

YOU WILL SAY that the reality of the relation is not destroyed even if its formal effect ceases, because its reality remains while the foundation stands, just as it arises in the foundation without any real change when the terminus is posited.

But the contrary is true. The formality that is destroyed or posited when a relation is destroyed is either something real or nothing. If it is nothing real, then no reality of the relation is destroyed when the terminus is destroyed. Consequently, when the terminus is destroyed, not only does the relation's reality remain, but so does the real formality it had before, and therefore its primary formal effect remains. For no form can be understood to be posited in a subject without its own primary and proper formal effect. Thus, if the whole reality and formality remains in the thing, its whole formal effect remains. If, however, the formality that is destroyed is something real, then it is either extrinsic and informing, in which case one falls into the Nominalists' opinion, refuted in article 1, or it is intrinsic and informing, in which case it is really distinct from its foundation or subject.

YOU WILL SAY AGAIN that when the terminus is directly destroyed, the formal effect of that entity insofar as it is relative is impeded, although the entity itself is not destroyed. For example, when a hypostatic union is posited in a soul, the soul is made incapable of receiving the formal effect of grace in the character of adoption, while the whole reality of grace remains with respect to its other effects. So the whole reality of a relation remains, but because a required condition—the coexistence of the terminus—is lacking, the subject is made incapable of its formal effect.

But the contrary is true, because a condition sufficient to make a subject incapable of a primary formal effect is sufficient to expel the form entirely from the subject. Where there is no primary effect, the form is not communicated primarily and immediately to the subject; thus the form is not in the subject, at least in the connatural manner. I am not now discussing whether grace or intellection could exist in a stone as a sustained quality without giving its own specific formal effect. If that happened, it would not occur connaturally, nor could it happen naturally, just as a subject naturally remains without the formal effect of a relation. In the example given, however, adoptive filiation is a secondary effect of grace consequent upon its primary effect, which is participation in divine being, on which filiation is founded. If someone says that the form which is a relation is an absolute entity in its entitative being but relative secondarily, and that this effect is impeded in that entity when the terminus is destroyed, this either falls into the Nominalists' opinion that denies relations, since all entities would be absolute and nothing purely relative would exist, or it confuses categorical relations with transcendental ones and must deny Aristotle's definition: the whole being of a relation is toward another. On this account, however, its whole being would be primarily absolute and only secondarily toward another or relative. St. Thomas said this of transcendental relations, as we saw above in article 2.

Therefore, since a categorical relation is one of the ten categories, if it has no real distinction from the others, it is not a distinct category, since a category consists only of real natures and, consequently, a distinct category consists of natures really distinct, not different by reason alone.

Furthermore, if a categorical relation is really distinct from its subject, it is distinct from the subject even if it is inseparable from it because its terminus cannot cease to exist. That inseparability does not prevent it from being a categorical relation and therefore of the same nature as other categorical relations. But the nature of such relations requires that they be really distinguished from their subject. Therefore this is found in all of them.

I SAY SECOND: With respect to its proximate foundation, it seems more probable, following St. Thomas, that a relation is not distinguished from it as one thing from another, but as a mode. Nevertheless, through this foundation, with which the relation is identified, it is not incompatible for the relation to be really distinguished from the subject, if that foundation is really distinguished from that subject.

That a relation is only a mode can be proved with some force from St. Thomas's common statement that among all genera relation has the least and weakest being, as he says in Against the Gentiles IV, chapter 14, ad 9, and Metaphysics XII, text 19, lect. 4⁴. It is clear that some genera are only modes and not realities, such as where, position, and the like. Therefore, if relation has the weakest being among all genera, it must be less than those that are modes; thus relation itself will not be a reality, since it would then be more perfect than those genera.

The argument is pressed further because relations can be founded on where, position, and other modes—for example, likeness or unlikeness, effect or cause, and so on. In that case, relation will not be a reality but a mode, since its foundation is a mode; an entity founded on another cannot be more perfect than its foundation. If, then, one relation is only a mode, all the other relations will also be modes, since they have the same quiddity and genus and consequently the same kind of entity. Things that directly and per se belong to the same genus cannot be so related that one is a thing and another a mode.

Nevertheless, different passages of St. Thomas and different Thomist opinions are found on this point. In Summa theologiae I, q. 28, art. 2, ad 2, he says that “what is found in a creature beyond what is contained under the signification of the relative name is another thing.” But in opusc. 48, treatise On Relation⁵, he says that the relation of likeness is not another thing than whiteness. In Sentences I, dist. 33, q. 1, art. 1⁶, he says that relation, as an accident, makes a composition with its subject. But in On Power, q. 8, art. 2⁷, he says that what is attributed to another as proceeding from it into something else does not make a composition with it, as action does not compose with the agent. In Against the Gentiles II, chapter 12, final argument, he says that if real relations came to exist really in God, God would be changed per se or per accidens. But in Physics V, lect. 3⁸, he says that when something begins to be equal to another, nothing new comes to it, and that I am equal to another only through a change in the terminus.

Since this variety of passages is found, to reconcile them we use the distinction stated above: a relation is compared either with its foundation or with its subject, which is also called its remote foundation. Compared with the foundation, it is distinguished from it only modally; compared with the subject, however, it is distinguished from the subject in the same way as the foundation with which it is identified. For example, degrees of intensity and the character of extension in habits are distinguished from a quality only modally, but from the substance or subject of the quality they are distinguished in the same way as the quality itself, with which they are identified.

This explains how a relation can be founded even on any modes whatever, which would not be possible if relation in itself were a reality distinct from its foundation. It also follows that a relation is said to result without physical change when its terminus is posited, as St. Thomas often asserts according to Aristotle's thought, especially in Physics V, lect. 3⁹, and Sentences I, dist. 26, q. 2, art. 1, ad 3¹⁰, where he says that a relation ceases without any change taking place in the thing itself that is related. This is understood to happen without physical or entitative change, solely through the result of a new mode. St. Thomas does not deny this, but clearly posits it in the cited passage from Physics V, saying that the root of a relation, which is in something, is newly determined when a relation to this or that thing is posited, even though nothing new comes to it.

The passages of St. Thomas that speak of a real distinction as one thing from another do not concern a relation with respect to its foundation, but a relation referred back to its subject. Thus he either speaks expressly about the subject when he says that a relation has a being other than its subject, as in Sentences I, dist. 20, q. 1, art. 1¹¹, and dist. 33, q. 1, art. 1¹²; or he speaks of that which is said relatively, which is certainly the subject, as in Summa theologiae I, q. 28, art. 2, at the beginning of the solution to ad 2: “As,” he says, “in created things, in that which is said relatively, one finds not only a respect, etc.” It is less of an objection that in Sentences I, dist. 2, q. 1, art. 5, ad 2¹³, he teaches that “thing” is transcendental and therefore applies commonly to absolutes and relatives. There he takes “thing” transcendentally, as common to entity and mode. And when he says that relation makes a composition with its subject, this is understood through the foundation, which is distinguished from the subject: in this way it makes a real composition with the subject and a modal one with the foundation.

We say these things to preserve the explicit passage of St. Thomas in opusc. 48, chapter 2, On Relation¹⁴, where he expressly states that relation is not a thing distinct from its foundation. Nor should we deny this work to be by St. Thomas, whose authority we invoke so often.¹⁵

Nevertheless, YOU WILL STILL OBJECT AGAINST THE FIRST CONCLUSION: If a relation is really distinguished from its foundation, God could impede it from resulting when the foundation and terminus are posited, because things really distinct can be separated or impeded. Yet it is unintelligible for two white things to exist and not be similar, precisely because they are of the same nature. Second, if a relation is distinct from its foundation, there is no reason why there should not be per se motion toward it, since every entity, even a modal one, is capable of motion, as are where, position, and so on. Yet the Philosopher denies that there is per se motion toward relation in Physics V, chapter 2¹⁶. Third, the relation of double to half in the number four with respect to two must belong to the whole number four; but if it is something distinct from its foundations, one real accident or mode will be in several subjects. Finally, there will be infinitely many relations, because in every continuum there are infinitely many proportional parts, each of which has its own relation to another; it is unreasonable to multiply so many distinct entities.

To the first, the reply is that, even if the relation were impeded, those two white things would remain alike fundamentally, though not formally. The relation serves to make things formally, not fundamentally, be called related. Or, second, not everything really distinct from another is always separable from it, if it is a thing, or can be impeded from resulting, if it is a mode. According to St. Thomas, matter cannot be separated from every form, nor bounded quantity from every figure.

To the second, the reply is that per se motion cannot be posited for every real entity. Some result is sufficient, as with proper attributes, which are not produced per se but result from the production of substance. A relation, however, is an entity that follows from a foundation and terminus. The modes cited in the argument are not something that follows from another, but are producible per se; therefore they terminate change per se, not merely through a new result, as a relation does. On this see St. Thomas, Physics V, lect. 3¹⁷.

To the third, the reply is that the relation of double or proportion found in four will be subjectively only in the final unit, although it presupposes the other units, as we said about number in the preceding question¹⁸; for this relation entirely follows the character of number itself. If number is not a being per se but only a multitude, then the relation of a greater number to a lesser, or conversely, is not one simple relation; rather, each subject has its own relation, insofar as it is a part composing that multitude and is comparatively in excess over the parts of the other number. It is like several people pulling a ship: in each person there is not simply a relation of “puller,” but one of contributing to the pulling and thus constituting the traction.

To the final objection, the reply is that, according to St. Thomas's opinion that one relation can regard several termini distinct only in number, the argument presents no difficulty, because one part can regard infinitely many others through a single relation. The truth, however, is that those indesignable parts are not actually infinite but potentially infinite, because they can be divided infinitely in a syncategorematic sense. Therefore, it is not necessary that there be actually infinitely many relations, but only potentially so. On this see more fully Physics III¹⁹.