Aristotle's Proemium I: The Natural Desire to Know and Wisdom as Knowledge of Causes

Orientation #

The recording begins mid-sentence (“And Sophia meaning wisdom”); the etymology of “philosopher” is already under way. He refers forward twice: “we’ll come back to that when we get to the fourth thing in the introduction to philosophy,” and “in the second reading he’s going to push this further” (wisdom aims at the very first causes and the most universal). The class works from a handout (“page one”, “page two”), identified by the verified sources as “Distinction of the Roads in Our Knowledge”, p. 1. The recording cuts off as he begins the second reading. The next class continues into the common opinions about the wise man and the second part of the proemium.

The class, in order #

1. Lover of wisdom, not wise: the humility in the name (“Don’t call me wise. God alone is wise”) #

The point: “philosopher” carries humility from its legendary origin, and this thought runs through the great Greeks and the Christians.

• Legend: Pythagoras, first man to call himself a philosopher (not the first philosopher). Having discovered wonderful things (the Pythagorean theorem), his contemporaries called him wise; he answered “God alone is wise… call me a lover of wisdom.”
• Heraclitus’ two proportions: as an ape is to a man, so is man to God (inferior in beauty, wisdom, everything); as a child is to a man, so is man to God (to the child the man appears wise; before God, man is not). Aside: biologists call us Homo sapiens, “the wise ape”: compared to the ape we look wise, compared to God we are like an ape.
• Socrates in the Apology: the Delphic oracle said no one is wiser; he knew he was ignorant of many things, so he is not wise as God is, at most in a human sense.
• Plato’s last work (usually taken to be the Laws) against Protagoras: not man but God is the measure of all things.
• Aristotle in this proemium: either God alone is wise, or only God in the full, complete sense.
• Found even more profoundly in Augustine, Thomas, the Christian philosophers; lost among the famous moderns (Hume, Marx): human reason as the supreme mind reigning in the universe.
• So to understand the lover of wisdom we must know what wisdom is and how the philosopher must love it; this proemium is “the best short proemium” to what wisdom aims at and what kind of knowledge it is.

2. What a proemium is (“something shorter than an introduction”) #

Greek word, originally “paving the way.” An introduction leads you into a subject (a whole college course can be an introduction); a proemium is very short, like the prologue to Oedipus Rex (fourteen lines), and prepares the way for what follows. Dei Verbum of Vatican II: the English copy said “introduction,” the official Latin says proemium, “a magnificent proemium.” Almost all of Aristotle’s works have one.

3. The first sentence: meaning, truth, and why he begins there (“all men by nature desire to know”) #

The point: the sentence is examined by three questions: what it means, whether it is true, why he begins with it.

• Eidenai: usually translated “to know,” but can be taken more particularly as “to understand” (which it usually means in Aristotle). Either reading fits the second sentence, “a sign from the senses”: sensing is a kind of knowing; or, there is a likeness between seeing and understanding (we carry “see” over to understanding; Gregory the Great: reason is the eye of the soul, “anger disturbs the eye of the soul”).
• Meaning. “All men”: not men vs. women or vs. boys, but the common sense. “By nature”: physis / Latin natura first means birth; the desire is inborn, not from custom or fashion; nature is always something within, as the baby comes from within the woman. “Desire”: we all know it. “Know”: either broad sense or understanding.
• Truth. Aristotle takes his sign not from experiments, historical research or philosophizing, but from what is common to all: the love of the senses. Everyone sometimes uses his eyes not to make or do something but just to see (a sunset, the mountains; a reproduction of a painting on the living-room wall, not the table of weights and measures, which would be more practical). Especially the eyes: clarity, and knowing at a distance (sun, moon, stars lost without them). A second sign, not given here but touched on in the book about the poetic art: everyone enjoys stories. Little Red Riding Hood: you wanted to know what happens at grandmother’s house, not to make or do anything, but “your wonder has been aroused.” Practical people stay up past bedtime for a mystery or a movie though it won’t help them on the job. Cousin Don’s very practical wife, “no time for philosophy,” picked up his Russian spy novel and was mad because she couldn’t put it down and neglected her gardening. Baseball: people leave in the ninth inning if the game is decided, not if it’s in doubt, though leaving is the practical thing (beating the parking lot). So the statement is true.
• Why begin here. That something is desired is a sign it is good, though not a necessary sign (people desire the merely apparent good); but a natural desire (food, water, sleep) is a very good sign the thing is really good. So the natural desire to know is preparing the way to see wisdom as the end of all our knowledge. “Another kind of subtle thing” from Thomas’s commentary: nature does nothing superfluous (the common rule of all natural philosophers, Greeks through Newton and Einstein); if nature gives a desire, it is for something needed and in some way attainable. You may starve or die of thirst, but why would nature give us thirst if there were nothing to drink? So the desire to know is a sign that knowing is in some way possible, against those who think pursuing wisdom foolish because man can’t know: “like saying it’s foolish to look for food.”
• Aside (with a student): so-called modern philosophers deny that we know things; the Holy Father has developed this against the modern crisis; people used to overemphasize knowledge, now deny it. Part of the reason: we don’t follow nature. Heraclitus: “Wisdom is to speak the truth and to act according to nature” (to return at “the fourth thing in the introduction to philosophy”); in the natural desire we are already listening to nature.

4. The first road is the natural road, from the senses into reason (“the first road in our knowledge”) #

The point: the second paragraph begins the first road, and he proves that it is the natural one and runs from sense to reason.

1. Minor: the first road is the natural road, because nature (in the common meaning, what a thing is) is what is first to a thing; a thing must be what it is before it can be anything else.
2. Major: the natural road of human knowledge is from the senses into reason, because man by nature is an animal with reason; animal is defined by having senses; and the general develops before the particular (the fertilized egg first looks like a plant, cell division, growth, then use of the senses, last of all reason).

• Why talk about this road and its direction? To glimpse what wisdom is aiming at. Freshmen asked whether wisdom comes at the beginning, middle or end of our knowledge all spontaneously answer “at the end”; unless you see where the road is going you can’t see its goal.
• Aristotle will treat what comes first, second, third along the road: four basic kinds of knowledge (more distinctions later), and at each step everyone recognizes a move toward wisdom.

5. Sensation and memory (“in one ear and out the other”) #

• Animals are born having sensation by nature; compared with a stone or a tree (cut a limb, it doesn’t know), the animal aware of its surroundings seems wiser.
• “From this, memory does not arise in some of them, but does in others”: he takes Aristotle (who did marine biology after Plato’s death) to be thinking of animals fixed to the ocean floor that react when poked but have no memory; what they need comes to them through the currents. All higher animals, and man, have memory of what has been sensed.
• Who seems wiser? Without memory everything is “in one ear and out the other,” a sieve; you’d be no wiser than someone “born yesterday” (the expression a woman used on salesmen), no wiser than the newborn baby downtown. So memory is a great advance. The family cat that burned its paw jumping at the stove and never tried again: “a wiser cat than I,” but not without memory.
• Aside, not to be dwelt on: the text contrasts hearing with sight. Sight is the sense of discovery by yourself; hearing the sense of learning from a teacher, which is why Thomas always quotes Paul, fides ex auditu, faith is from hearing (how can they hear unless someone is sent to preach?).

6. Experience (“a gathering together of many memories”) #

• Experience here is not “that was quite an experience” (still a sensation and its memory) but a collection of many memories of the same sort of thing.
• Signs it is wiser: one date vs. many; one political campaign vs. twenty; the wine expert who has drunk hundreds of wines and holds those memories gathered together. So: the animal with memory seems wiser than the one with only sensation, and the man of experience wiser than the man of one memory, confirmation that this is the way to go.
• Third paragraph: the other animals live by images and memories and share little of experience; experience already has something of reason, since it compares and brings things together, “that’s what reason does”; men live by art and reason. Experience comes from memory as memory from sensation: many memories of the same sort perfect the power of one experience.

7. Experience against art or science, first difference: singular vs. universal (“The doctor does not cure man”) #

• Experience seems very like art and science, which come through experience. The first difference in the fourth paragraph: experience, like sensing and memory, is knowledge of many singulars; art or science begins when, seeing many of the same sort, you separate out what is common. Aspirin: many memories of headaches going away become “aspirin is good for headaches.” Polus (a character in one of Plato’s dialogues): experience makes art, inexperience chance, “beginner’s luck.” Art comes to be when one universal understanding about like things arises from the many things kept in mind by experience; the example is from the medical art (Aristotle’s father was court physician to Philip of Macedon; Aristotle later taught the future Alexander).
• He stresses the nuance: Aristotle does not simply say art is superior to experience as experience is to memory. On this first difference he reasons to a certain superiority of the experienced man in doing: all doings and makings are about singulars; the doctor cures not man but Callias or Socrates, who happens to be a man; the one with reason but without experience many times errs in treatment. Examples: his wife, given the standard dose of Demerol after the first baby, got violent headaches; for the second she asked for half, “just right for her”: a better treater of herself than the nurse or doctor who gives everyone the same. His freshman psychology professor, who worked afternoons at the mental hospital: too few psychologists to know patients individually, so patients were classified and given the standard treatment for the universal ailment, and in many cases got worse. A friend or parent who knows the depressed individual may know exactly what to suggest better than the expert in classic cases. The congressman of twenty years gets legislation through better than the political scientist who knows comparative government, since you don’t get a bill through government in general but through the US Congress (“as LBJ would say”). American students in Quebec teaching conversational English couldn’t answer grammar questions but had the experience of English and might speak it better than one who knows the rules. His wife’s “i before e” rule: he recognized the misspelling at once from reading, but couldn’t produce the universal rule, which is the beginning of the art or science of grammar. Latin puts the adjective after the noun, English before: you may never formulate the rule and just do it from experience.

8. Second difference: the man of art knows why (“who knows why it is so”) #

The point (first complete paragraph of page two): nevertheless the man of art or science is more knowing and wiser, because he knows the cause; the experienced know that it is so but not why. Wisdom follows knowledge, more a matter of knowing than doing.

• Wine bottles stored on their side: many know it is done, not why (standing up, the cork dries, air gets in and spoils the wine; on its side the cork expands and seals). Tea steeped past seven minutes tastes bad: your first thought is “too strong,” but that’s not it (you’d just dilute it); the chemist knows that different, disagreeable chemicals are released after that time, so he knows why what I know is so, and seems wiser. We think ourselves wiser than the ancients because we know why there is day and night (the earth turns on its axis); everyone knows that there is day and night.
• His standard question to students: who is wiser, the man who knows the way things are or the one who doesn’t? Obvious. Among those who know the way things are, the one who knows why or the one who doesn’t? Aristotle’s answer: the one who knows why.
• “So important a point”: on the first difference Aristotle resists asserting superiority, on the second he asserts it. This introduces the idea that the wise man knows causes; Aristotle stops to manifest it in the next three paragraphs in two ways.

9. Two manifestations: chief artist over handicraftsman, and the teacher (“chief artists… are more honorable”) #

• Chief artist vs. subordinate. We think the chief artists know more, are wiser and more honorable than the handicraftsmen because they know the causes of what is made; the latter are like inanimate things, which make but don’t know what they make, as fire burns. Doctor and pharmacist: the doctor is wiser, sign of it that he commands by prescription; the pharmacist as pharmacist need not know why you need the medication (if he does, he has a bit of medical art), only how to make or select it. Napoleon and the head of cavalry under orders not to charge until the trumpet: the cavalry head knows how to lead the charge, Napoleon’s battle plan knows why this is the time, not too early or too late; the Charge of the Light Brigade, “not to question why.” His brother Mark at the factory: “you’re not paid to think, you’re just paid to do it,” and that’s true. Grade-school printing: the chief teacher tells the untrained assistant to make the children form C from the top; it makes no difference for printing the C, but when you come to write the word “cat” in cursive, starting from the bottom leaves a break; she knows the reason why, the assistant doesn’t.
• The ability to teach. We think the teacher wiser than those he teaches. Can one teach fully without knowing why? “You’ll see when you’re my age” asks for belief, not teaching in the full sense. At St. Mary’s in California a student living immorally drove the priests crazy asking what’s wrong with fornication and the rest; they knew these things bad but weren’t good at the reasons, so he came to Berquist, who gave the reasons, and regarded him as wiser. Parents know things from experience and should be listened to, but seem less wise than the teacher who can explain why this is good and that bad.

10. The either-or argument: otherwise sensation would be wisdom (“Then sensation would be wisdom”) #

The point (fourth complete paragraph of page two): a different argument, put as an either-or.

1. Wisdom consists either in knowledge of the singular and that it is so, or of the universal and why it is so.
2. If the former, sensation would be wisdom, since nothing is more authoritative about singulars than the senses: I may misremember your eye colour but trust my eyes when I look; you go back and the thing differs from your memory; experience rests on memory, which is less authoritative than sense. That you are sitting: you can have all kinds of theories, but nothing is more certain than the senses.
3. But nobody thinks sensation is wisdom. So wisdom is of the universal and the why.

11. Kinds of arts and sciences; the conclusion of the first reading (“wisdom is about beginnings and causes”) #

• Aristotle next distinguishes arts or sciences (a threefold distinction he asks the class for; student answer not audible). Which seems wiser, carpenter or Shakespeare? “Art” and “science” are used here roughly for any knowledge of the universal and why it is so; the precise distinctions are in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics.
• Recap in the text: the experienced wiser than those with sensation, the artist than the experienced, the chief artist than the handicraftsman, and the looking science more than the making. Harder to see in our practical age, yet Time magazine made Einstein man of the century for his knowing, not doing or making; popular books (Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein) admire him for seeming to understand the whole universe; “I’m not concerned with details, I want to see the whole universe.” So looking knowledge has more the character of wisdom.
• “Thus it is clear that wisdom is about beginnings and causes.” The text says “first causes,” going a little further than he wants to go here; the second reading will push it: wisdom aims not at any causes (every art or science aims at some) but at the very first, and at the most universal; so wisdom is about what is said of all, but most of all about what is a cause of all, and its nobility comes from the first causes, not from what is said of all.
• Student question on the natural desire: it is spoken of briefly at the start, and almost the whole rest is in terms of the natural road; “the chief conclusion is that wisdom is about causes”: the man who knows why, the chief artist, the teacher, is wiser. The recording cuts off as he begins the second reading.

His words #

• philosopher; lover of wisdom (philo- / sophia), with the humility of Pythagoras’ reply built in
• proemium; Greek, “paving the way,” shorter than an introduction
• eidenai; “to know,” or more particularly “to understand,” which it usually means in Aristotle
• by nature; physis, natura, first means birth; “inborn,” a source within
• natural desire; sign of what is really good and in some way attainable
• nature does nothing superfluous; the common rule of all natural philosophers (from Thomas’s commentary)
• first road / natural road; the road from the senses into reason
• sensing, memory, experience, art or science; the four basic kinds of knowledge along the road
• experience; a gathering of many memories of the same sort, not “quite an experience”
• that it is so / why it is so; what experience knows vs. what art or science knows
• chief artist vs. handicraftsman; the one who knows the causes of what is made vs. the one who makes without knowing, like fire burning
• looking science; the knowledge that is more wisdom than the making [ed.: theoretical / speculative]
• said of all vs. cause of all; two senses of “most universal,” the second giving wisdom its nobility [ed.: universal in predication vs. in causing]
• fides ex auditu; faith is from hearing, hearing as the sense of learning from a teacher
• Homo sapiens; “the wise ape”

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, proemium (Metaphysics I.1, inferred), from the handout “Distinction of the Roads in Our Knowledge,” page one and page two: first sentence and sign from the senses; the road from sensation through memory, experience, art or science; chief artist and handicraftsman; the teacher; sensation would be wisdom; “wisdom is about beginnings and causes”
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on this proemium (nature does nothing superfluous), locus not stated

Mentioned

• Aristotle, book about the poetic art (everybody enjoys stories)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VI (precise distinctions of art and science)
• Plato, Apology; Laws (God the measure, against Protagoras); a dialogue with Polus
• Heraclitus, the two proportions; “wisdom is to speak the truth and act according to nature”
• Gregory the Great, reason as the eye of the soul
• St. Paul, fides ex auditu; Sophocles, Oedipus Rex prologue; Vatican II, Dei Verbum; Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade; Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein

His questions #

• What does “all men by nature desire to know” mean, is it true, and why does he begin with it? Inborn desire common to all; true, by the sign of the senses and of stories; because a natural desire shows knowing is really good and possible.
• Does anybody not sometimes use his eyes just to see something? No; everyone looks at a sunset or hangs a painting, not a table of weights.
• Does wisdom come at the beginning, the middle, or the end of our knowledge? Freshmen answer spontaneously: at the end; so one must see where the road goes.
• Who seems wiser, the animal with sensing but no memory, or the one with memory? The one with memory; the other is a sieve, “born yesterday.”
• What is the first difference in the fourth paragraph between experience and art or science? Experience knows singulars, art or science the universal.
• Who is wiser, the man who knows the way things are or not; and among those who know, the one who knows why? The one who knows the way things are; then, with Aristotle, the one who knows why.
• Why did the teacher insist the children form the C from the top? Because in writing “cat” starting from the bottom leaves a break; she knows the reason why.
• Can one teach fully if you don’t know why? No; “you’ll see when you’re my age” asks for belief.
• If wisdom were knowledge of the singular and that it is so, what would follow? Sensation would be wisdom, and nobody thinks that.
• What threefold distinction does he make among arts and sciences; which seems wiser, carpenter or Shakespeare? Student answer not audible; he notes the precise distinctions belong to Nicomachean Ethics VI and moves on: left open.