2.2.1. The notion of object in general
a) Definition
Etymologically, "object" translates "ob-iectum", from "ob-icere", "to put before" or "to present". Its use follows this origin: the object of an inquiry, a discipline, a faculty is that which stands before, not in a purely casual way, but rather insofar as it determines.
This is how St Thomas explains this point:
Now properly speaking, the object of a faculty or habit is the thing under the aspect of which all things are referred to that faculty or habit, as man and stone are referred to the faculty of sight in that they are colored. Hence colored things are the proper objects of sight.
I,1,7,c.
b) Division
Taking their cue from this doctrine, posterior scholastics distinguished:
obiectum
[a] formal object
[aa] formal object quo: eg. light
[ab] formal object quod: eg. color as such
[b] material object: eg. the colored thing
The material object [b] is the thing (res) which is presented to the potency or habitus and in which their act terminates, for which reason it is also called the terminative object. The formal object [a], on the other hand, is the aspect under which the thing (ratio) is presented to the potency or habitus and which moves it to act, for which reason it is also called the motive act*. For example, the sense of sight has for its formal object color (the green of the tree), and for material object the physical colored body (the tree).
But it is necessary to be still more precise. In fact, the formality of the object is two-fold: there is a formality which constitutes the formal object in its being, and there is another formality which constitutes the same formal object in its being reachable by the potency or habitus which will be specified by it**. For example, color specifies vision (the visive potency) by the above two conditions: it is necessary to have, from the being of the colored thing, the effective presence of the accident color, and it is necessary to have, from the being knowable of the colored thing, the effective presence of the light which renders it visible in act. The first dimension is called the object quod, because it is what is reached by the potency or habitus, whereas the second dimension of the same formal object is called quo, because it is that by which the object quod is reached.
Synthetically, one can see that the notion of object of a faculty or habit includes three dimensions:
1 - the thing "objectified" or reached (ie obiectum materiale);
2 - the formal aspect (ratio quae) which is "objectified" or reached in this thing (ie obiectum formale quod)
3 - the formal aspect (ratio qua) which ultimately makes this thing in its being the object of a determined faculty or habit (ie obiectum formale quo)
One will note that the formal object quod is formal with respect to the material object, because it determines the ontological dimension of the thing under consideration; but at the same time, the same formal object quod is material with respect to the formal object quo, because it is determinable by its reachability.
When one scientifically analyzes a faculty (intellect, will, sensible appetite, etc) or a habit (scientia, faith, etc), one should always determine these three modalities of the object.
Let us note in closing that the formal object quod of a science is also called, in the language of St Thomas, subiectum. This is justified by the fact that such a formal object quod constitutes the subject of attribution of all the predicates which will be demonstrated in said science***.
*: Cf De Caritate, 4, c:
but in object something is considered as formal and something as material. Formal however in the object is that according to which the object is referred to a potency or habit; material however that in which this is found: such that if we were to speak of the object of the potency of sight, its formal object is color, or something of the sort, for insofar as something is colored, to that degree it is visible; but the material object is body to which color inheres.
**: Cf Iacobus [Santiago] RAMIREZ, O.P., De fide divina (Opera omnia, t.11), Salamanca, 1994, p.25:
"However the formal object is subdistinguished into purely formal and not purely formal. For the ratio obiecti, which is the formal object, can be twofold, namely on the one hand, the ratio of the thing-object as it is a thing, absolutely, and this is called ratio formalis for which it is the object and to which the motion or drive of a potency or habit or act terminates, and therefore it is called the formal object quod; on the other hand, the ratio of the thing-object, not insofar as it is a thing, but only insofar as it is the object or related to potency, habit or act, and this is called ratio formalis qua the thing-object first moves potency, habit or act, and is therefore called the formal object quo".
***: Cf I, 1, 7, c:
The relation between a science and its object is the same as that between a habit or faculty and its object.
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7 comments:
I wonder if the distinction between quo and quod might be helped by considering it in other knowing powers. What is the distinction in hearing? I would guess that it is the medium considered as referred to the sounding object, and to the sounding subject.
I wonder if the tired old koan about "the tree that falls in the forest" is about a tree that has a quod but no quo. I suppose not, since the distinction between quod and quo is not made with reference to actual hearing.
So maybe with sound it's the difference between the medium as manifestive to another (quo) and as cooperating with something to produce sound (quod) but this doesn't seem right either. do we hear the medium in and way, even as cooperating?
So maybe it's the act of the medium as communicative to another, and the act of the medium as caused by the sounding object. Here again, though, it seems that hearing would not be properly of a thing, but the effect of a thing.
All very tricky.
It is tricky.
For hearing, I think you are too subtle. The formal object quod is sound as such, just as for sight it is color as such. That by which we hear is air - no sound in a vacuum. Material object is the sounding thing.
So, what do we hear? Do we hear sound, or the sounding thing? Well, if you ask it like that, we hear the sounded thing - for example, in our ordinary speech we speak of hearing sirens, or bells, and so forth. Even when we speak of hearing shouts or cries or whistles, these things are said with reference to a sounding thing.
A proof of this is that in old mystery shows, a sound without a sounding thing is often used as a device to invoke wonder, to confuse or bewilder.
quo is not distinguished from quod by terms of the relation of sense (subject-object). Rather, they are two different aspects of the colored (or sounded etc) thing - one (quod is 'which', and one quo is by which.
Does this seem clear and reasonable to you?
The tired old koan as I understand it is a play on potency and act - if no one is hearing it, does sound exist?
Sometimes it is used simplistically as a touchstone for "objectivism", whatever that is - if you say there is no sound, then you are a relativist.
But if there is no subject, there is no object. Just things.
I don't know- we have a word for the act of the transparent-light- and that is how I took light as the quo. On the analogy, we would need some word for the act of the sound conductive.
But another refutation of my point might be that I seemed to be supposing that one hears the sounding subject as such, but the subject of sound or of any sensation is only sensed per accidens.
maybe vibration for the quo?
It puts in act the material object, just as light does.
Hi niggardly phil, are there any texts you would recommend that explain in greater detail a formal and material object? I am looking in particular for an analysis of acts of the will with these distinctions... (Would the formal object quo be goodness? Or something else?)
Papabear,
I'm sorry for the delayed reply, I haven't figured out how to be notified of comments yet.
I will have to look for some texts.
I think goodness would be the formal object quod, since it is what the will desires, and that the relevant form of "perception" (ie reasoning in the case of the will which desires universal) which presents the object to the will as desirable would be the quo, since it is that reasoning by which it desires.
But I'll try to get an auctor to back it up.
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