Wonder, Liberal Knowledge, the Divine Science, and How the Philosopher Must Love Wisdom

Orientation #

He is continuing through the attributes of wisdom in the proemium: “now he comes to the fourth and the crowning attribute,” the third having pointed to knowledge more divine than human. At the end he says “next time” he will treat the second question, what philosophy is, without a text, then the chief kinds and parts of philosophy, and hands out texts for later. The previous class built the description of wisdom from the opinions about the wise man and began the proemium’s second part; the next takes up the kinds and parts of philosophy and how one enters it.

The class, in order #

1. The fourth attribute: wisdom is the most divine knowledge (“two ways you could call knowledge divine”) #

The point: wisdom is the most honorable knowledge because it is the most divine, and it is divine in both senses of the word.

• Two ways knowledge is called divine, parallel to two ways it is called human: (a) the knowledge that God has, (b) knowledge about God. The word “humanities” (“this terrible word”) is meant to be human in both senses: human beings have it, and it is about human things, whereas chemistry is human only in the first sense.
• Main syllogism: (1) wisdom is the most divine knowledge; (2) the most divine is the most honorable (taken as obvious); therefore wisdom is the most honorable knowledge.
• Proof of the minor, sense (b): wisdom is about the first causes; God “seems to all to be among the first causes”; therefore wisdom is about God. He notes Aristotle here relies on the common, reasonable opinion of the great philosophers; the proof itself belongs to book 12 (“you’ve got to put that in book 12, this is book 1”).
• Proof of the minor, sense (a): from the common opinion of Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato: either God alone is wise, or God is wise most of all and man in some imperfect way. So such knowledge “God alone, or most of all, would have”; we have it in some degree.

2. All other knowledge more necessary, none better (“which is better, to breathe or to philosophize”) #

The point: wisdom is not only the most honorable but the best knowledge, though every other knowledge is more necessary.

• Criteria for one knowledge being better than another (De Anima, beginning): more certain, or about a better thing. In the Parts of Animals the second criterion is said to be more important, with the famous line that a glimpse of those we love is more to us than a leisurely view of those we don’t care for. His example: seeing the boss clearly all day versus running three blocks to glimpse your girlfriend through a window.
• Necessary vs. better: students say breathing is better than philosophizing; he replies that this shows breathing is more necessary. Do you live for the sake of breathing, or breathe for the sake of other things? What you breathe for is better: “the end is always better.” So carpentry, cooking, etc., are more necessary; wisdom is best.
• Summary of the attributes so far: looking knowledge, not practical; liberal, not servile; not a human possession; most honorable and best because most divine.

3. Wonder at the beginning, its opposite at the end (“all begin from wondering”) #

The point: the possession of wisdom ends in the opposite of what the search begins from; it begins in wonder, ends in knowledge.

• Things that arouse wonder, in Aristotle’s order: chance events that happen wonderfully (the philomythos too, reading Oedipus or Shakespeare’s tragedies); the turnings of the sun, higher and lower in the sky through the year; the diagonal and side of the square being incommensurable, contrary to what the Greeks expected.
• Chance example from the Poetics: an unsolved murder of a great citizen; a statue is set up to him; during a festival it falls and kills — the murderer. Romeo and Juliet: two feuding houses lose their only son and only daughter to the children’s love; the duke says heaven found means to punish their hate. “Seems to be something hidden there.”
• Thomas’s gloss: things whose cause we don’t know do not arouse wonder if familiar; what is contrary to expectation makes us ask the cause. A glass let go and breaking causes no wonder (though Einstein admits he does not know why things fall); a glass that rose would. Einstein’s own account of wonder: the magnet his father brought home moved something without contact, against all his experience of bodies moving bodies by contact.
• So at the end of philosophy “we have something better than wondering, we have knowledge.”

4. The epilogue on page five (“what is the nature of the knowledge sought”) #

The point: Aristotle recaps what the knowledge sought is and what goal the whole inquiry must reach.

• The nature: looking knowledge, liberal or free, not a human possession, most honorable and best, most divine.
• The goal: the first cause. Aristotle does not arrive at knowledge of the first causes until the second half of book 12. This knowledge is what the philosopher is a lover of.

5. How the philosopher must love wisdom: four or five things (“love wisdom for its own sake”) #

The point: to have a right to the name “philosopher” one must love wisdom in a definite way.

1. For its own sake, not for money, power, or the honor of being thought wise. Example: the man who admits “I love you for your money” — she knows he does not love her. If I love wisdom for honor I am a lover of honor; for power, a lover of power.
2. More than anything else loved for its own sake. If I love candy for its own sake and more than wisdom, I am a lover of candy. Boyhood story: he thought his father foolish for not filling the refrigerator with orange and grape soda from the one-armed man’s corner store; allowances of ten, five and two cents; two cents buys penny candy, or you save up for a soda. Likewise one who loves Mozart’s music more than wisdom is a lover of Mozart.
3. As the very end or goal of life — this follows from 1 and 2, since the end is what is desired for its own sake and more than anything else.
4. As a common good. Wisdom is the common good of reason (it perfects the whole of our knowledge; not a particular good) and in some sense the common good of mankind. A common good is not necessarily shared by all but is able to be shared by many and should be. Augustine in the Confessions: if I love a truth because I discovered it, I love my own honor, not truth; I should love the truth you discovered as much as mine, especially if yours is greater. Contrast: the devil in John (chapter seven, as he cites it) speaks “from himself,” privately; each modern philosopher has “his own private philosophy.”

• Aside: the horrors arising from Marx’s philosophy are at bottom a rejection of “looking knowledge” [ed.: theoretical knowledge]; “that’s where it begins.”

6. The equivocal use of “philosopher” (“Bacon is always emphasizing that knowledge is power”) #

The point: many so-called modern philosophers are lovers of something other than wisdom, so the word is used equivocally, almost by chance.

• Bacon: knowledge is power — a lover of power. Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations — a lover of wealth. Hegel: the end of history is freedom; Sartre: the absolute good is freedom, what counts is what you freely do — lovers of freedom, or almost of license. Nietzsche (from students’ seminar papers): irrational; but how can one love wisdom and not reason?
• Argument: wisdom is the highest perfection of reason; one cannot love the perfection without loving what it perfects, nor the thing without its perfection — health and the body, 20/20 vision and the eyes. So to love wisdom is to love reason. Thomas in the proemium to the Ethics: it belongs to the wise to order, because wisdom is the highest perfection of reason and it belongs to reason to order; hence love of wisdom, of reason and of order go together.
• Greeks vs. moderns: the Greeks, not exposed to prophets or apostles, still said either God alone is wise or God most of all; so from their own principles a lover of wisdom must love the wisdom of God more than man’s, and would count God speaking to us as wisdom in a fuller sense. The moderns’ polemic against Christianity: Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity (the link between Hegel and Marx) turns the incarnation into “man himself is God,” humility into an occasion of pride. If they give up the wisdom of God, can they even keep the wisdom of man? The Greeks never rejected revelation (Aristotle died 322 B.C., “more than two hundred years before Christ” as he puts it); the moderns lack something they should have and seek a substitute.
• Heraclitus fragment: as the child is to the man, so man is to God; the child learns first by imitation (Poetics), then by words; the Greek philosophers learned from God by imitation through his works, nature — presupposed to learning from his words (parables: seed on ground, vine and branches).
• Asides: a recent Lenin biography (Lenin awful, not merely spoiled by Stalin); communists calling Lenin “the great prophet and apostle,” whereas Aristotle’s praise of Plato was only that he first showed by word and deed that the happy life is the virtuous life. Sartre: “we are not atheistic in the sense of exhausting ourselves proving God does not exist, but in the sense that it makes no difference” — contrasted with the honest doubter writing to C. S. Lewis for help to believe. Marx’s doctoral thesis takes Prometheus as first hero of philosophy: bold against Zeus, not denying him.

7. Student’s recap and why Greek philosophy matters for us (“how far natural reason can get”) #

The point: a student lists the four questions (what is a philosopher; what is philosophy or wisdom; the distinction and order of its kinds and parts; the best way to come into it); he confirms the first is finished, with the equivocal use added because today the word “means just about anything.”

• Analogy from the church fathers: providence used the non-conversion of many Jews, whose hostility made them witnesses to the antiquity and authenticity of the Old Testament books from which Christians argued. Likewise Greek philosophy, developed before and independently of revelation, shows how far natural reason can get.
• Examples: Aristotle in the Ethics takes adultery as the stock case of an act already extreme by definition (no right amount). In the Topics some things are excluded from dialectical question: one who doubts snow is white needs sense, not argument; one who doubts he should honor father and mother needs punishment, not argument. The Hippocratic Oath, made by a pagan Greek, opposed abortion and euthanasia; so the church is not the only basis for opposing them (some enter the church because it alone stayed firm). Hence Plato and Aristotle were called the chief philosophers by Albert, Thomas, Alfarabi.

8. Handouts and preview of the next questions (“philosophy doesn’t name a kind of love”) #

The point: he distributes texts and says what the second and third questions will be.

• Thomas’s proemium to the Ethics (seven copies — “a symbol of wisdom”): situates practical philosophy in the whole of knowledge from a Metaphysics quote; divides order in comparison to reason and human knowledge by the order it considers; divides practical philosophy into ethics, domestic and political. Not the main text for the chief kinds of philosophy, which he will give on his own.
• Three main texts on wonder from the Greeks, including Plato’s Theaetetus; a text where Thomas shows order is defined by before and after, with Aristotle’s Categories on “before” (“a very fundamental text”); Shakespeare’s exhortation to use reason with his own proemium and questions.
• Philosophy, for Plato and especially Aristotle, names not the love of wisdom but the knowledge a lover of wisdom pursues. Two chief kinds: speculative (mathematical, natural, first philosophy) and practical (ethics, domestic, political); a third, the tool, logic.
• Shakespeare defines reason as “large discourse, looking before and after” — order is before and after (Thomas), so order defines reason; standing challenge: no one has matched his forty-nine-word exhortation, which says what a man is, what a beast is, and why man should use reason more. He has learned more from Shakespeare than from any modern philosopher; more from Homer than Shakespeare, more from Aristotle than Homer; to learn mainly from Monty Python is to learn mistakes.
• Asides: Monsignor Dionne’s notes in French; Dionne once answered his question with his whole course.

9. Common versus private: Heraclitus and Aristotle’s method (“the idiotic philosophy is a private philosophy”) #

The point: wisdom is common; private philosophy is idiocy in the Greek sense.

• Heraclitus: we should not act and speak like sleepers; the waking share one common world, sleepers each go into his own. Greek idiotes comes from “private”; the devil speaks what is private to himself.
• Aristotle in Physics I: divides his predecessors’ opinions, finds disagreement, then a common understanding within groups and among all, and a common basis among all men about becoming, making it the cornerstone — following Heraclitus: those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common, as a city in its law, and more, since the city’s law is divine.
• Art imitates nature, even in logic: two dogs produce a dog, two cats a cat, two statements a statement, numbers in, numbers out. We learn from God’s works by imitation before his words.

10. What is philosophy; order of acquisition; marriage aside (“after the books of natural philosophy”) #

The point: wisdom most deserves the name philosophy but is the last part acquired.

• “Metaphysics” is meta ta physika, after the books of natural philosophy; those come after the ethics; logic first; ethics before domestic before political.
• Aristotle on marriage (from the Politics, as he indicates): man about 36, woman 18, so both cease generating together — he is thinking primarily of the chief good of marriage, children, not companionship. His father was five years older than his mother, so that became his rule. Friendship is not the main thing: Hamlet is closer to Horatio than to Ophelia but does not marry him in church; the ceremony strengthens the bond for the children’s good. Children of divorce years later still want the parents together. “Two in one flesh” is found more in the child than in the marriage act: divorced parents cannot each take their part out of the child.

His words #

• looking knowledge; theoretical, as opposed to practical [ed.: speculative/theoretical]
• humanities; “this terrible word,” human in both senses
• most divine; about God and had by God
• philomythos; lover of myths, moved to wonder by stories
• looking before and after; Shakespeare’s definition of reason, tied to order as before and after
• idiot; from the Greek for private; private philosophy
• meta ta physika; after the books of natural philosophy
• first philosophy; Aristotle’s name for the fourteen books of wisdom
• two in one flesh; found more in the child than in the marriage act

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I, proemium: the fourth attribute (most divine/most honorable), the paragraph on necessary vs. better, wonder, and the epilogue “on page five”
• Shakespeare, “What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time…” (Hamlet, inferred), quoted from memory

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima (beginning); Parts of Animals (glimpse of those we love); Poetics (statue; imitation); Nicomachean Ethics (adultery; virtue in the mean); Topics (snow is white; honor father and mother); Categories (on “before”); Physics I (predecessors); Politics (marriage ages, inferred); Metaphysics XII (first cause)
• Thomas Aquinas, on wonder in the Metaphysics commentary; proemium to the Nicomachean Ethics; a text defining order by before and after
• Plato, Theaetetus (wonder)
• Augustine, Confessions (loving truth one discovered)
• John, ch. 7 as cited (the devil speaks from himself)
• Heraclitus fragments (child/man/God; sleepers; the common)
• Bacon, Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations), Hegel, Sartre, Nietzsche, Feuerbach (Essence of Christianity), Marx (doctoral thesis, Prometheus); Einstein on wonder; a Lenin biography; C. S. Lewis correspondence; Monsignor Dionne’s notes; Hippocratic Oath

His questions #

• What are the two ways knowledge is called divine? God has it, or it is about God; wisdom is divine in both.
• Which is better, to breathe or to philosophize? Students say breathe; that shows breathing is more necessary, but the end you breathe for is better.
• If a man loves a woman for her money, does he really love the woman? No; likewise loving wisdom for honor or power is loving honor or power.
• If I love candy more than wisdom, would you call me a philosopher? No, a lover of candy.
• How can you be a lover of wisdom and not a lover of reason? You cannot; wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, as health is of the body.
• Why call Bacon, who loves knowledge for power, a lover of wisdom? Only equivocally, almost by chance; he is a lover of power.
• If they give up the wisdom of God, can they even keep the wisdom of man? left open (he suggests the moderns lose it and seek a substitute).
• Two dogs together produce what? Two statements? A dog; a statement — art, even logic, imitates nature.