Coming into Philosophy through Reason: Shakespeare's Exhortation and the Ability for Discourse

Orientation #

He closes the treatment of the natural beginnings of philosophy (“now we’ve seen a little bit of what the natural beginnings of philosophy are”) and passes to “the second part of how we should come into philosophy”: from natural beginnings through the use of reason, using Shakespeare’s exhortation. He says he gave the class “the page and the senses of before” earlier and will hand out a list of questions for the exhortation to be studied for next time; the verified handout is “Beginnings of Philosophy in the Senses and Reason”, p. 3. The previous class argued for beginning from shared natural starting points; the next works term by term through Shakespeare’s definition of reason.

The class, in order #

1. Dispositions of will needed beyond the natural desires (“humility is necessary in the philosopher”) #

Point: studying the natural desires (wonder, the desire to live well) introduces the wider question of which dispositions of will and emotion a philosopher needs.

• Opening aside (mid-sentence): some things are explained by the economic mode of production, some by sexual drives, “but maybe having seen a part of the truth, they boast that they see the whole” – hence humility is necessary in the philosopher.
• Phaedo: the discussion of whether the soul is immortal is very difficult; it is not enough to want to know. One easily gets discouraged and even despairs of finding the truth, so one needs hope of finding it and perseverance, “that strength of will to persist.”
• Socrates (more in other dialogues) also shows the need for fear of being mistaken. His teacher Monsignor Dionne “said to me, his principal passion is fear”: when Berquist proposed the idea that carried his doctoral thesis, Dionne’s first reaction was to reject it (“review evidence”); very rigorous, and a help later, though “when first starting out” such a man would have terrified him – so he himself tries to be encouraging.
• List of dispositions: hope/perseverance, fear of mistake, love of wisdom, humility (“pride is the chief cause of deception on the part of the will”), mildness – people in discussion get angry, anger clouds vision; the next day, calmed down, you see the other man’s point.
• Wonder itself is rare in students: “our civilization tends to kill wonder”; de Tocqueville says the great customs of the modern world are opposed to wonder and to pursuit of knowledge for its own sake; Heisenberg says modern science is opposed to wonder. Even the student who has wonder may be discouraged by the disagreement among philosophers or by the difficulty.

2. Other roads and other self-evident statements (“the statements known to themselves by all men”) #

Point: each natural beginning opens onto a general kind: roads, and statements known through themselves.

• Roads: the natural road raises the question of other roads – three: the natural road of our knowledge; the road of reason as reason, “from reasonable guesses to reasoned-out knowledge,” the common road of reasoned-out knowledge; and the road proper to each reasoned-out knowledge.
• Boethius’ distinction: statements known to themselves (per se nota) by all men vs. by those “wise in some science” (per se notum sapientibus – “not sapientibus in the full sense of being wise,” but learned in some science).
• Example, “a perfect number is a composite number”: a perfect number equals the sum of everything that measures it; six is the first (1+2+3; not measured by 4 or 5), four is not (1+2 ≠ 4). Since a perfect number must be measured by something besides one (one times anything only adds up to it), it is obviously composite – but only to one who knows what a perfect number is. Everyone knows whole and part (“you can’t eat or drink without experiencing whole and part”), so “the whole is more than a part” is known to itself by all men; one can go through life without learning what a perfect number is.
• So studying the axioms leads into the general consideration of statements known through themselves, “because they’re the foundation of all reasoned out knowledge.”

3. Student’s observation: private interpretation and the common way (“the word heretic comes to the word chosen”) #

A student draws the analogy to the early church and the Reformation: problems arose when people went off with their private understanding rather than the common sense of the people. Berquist: heretic means “chosen”; the heretic chooses what he will believe rather than following the common faith. There is always a common way, and “each of you guys goes off in his private way” – private interpretation, private thought.

4. The second part: use of reason, and the exhortation’s verse form (“unrhymed iambic pentameter”) #

Point: we come into philosophy from natural beginnings through the use of reason – reason as reason, not reason insofar as it already knows something (that belongs to the natural beginnings). He uses Shakespeare’s exhortation, today “in kind of a general way.”

• Blank verse = unrhymed iambic pentameter (Shakespeare makes fun of the term). Iamb: two syllables, accent on the second; the most common meter, closest to daily speech.
• His mnemonic for the four meters, the word “at”: two-syllable meters (iambic, trochaic) like a two-letter word; three-syllable (anapestic, dactylic). Remember the iamb and the rest follow: trochee accent on first of two; dactyl accent on first of three; anapest the reverse.
• Iambic in speeches: “Four score and seven years ago”; Roosevelt’s “nothing to fear but fear itself.”
• Shakespeare uses trochaic for witches and fairies (“Fair is foul, and foul is fair / Hover through the fog…”) – “something very mysterious”; Thomas’ Adoro te devote “seems to use the trochaic a bit.”
• Pentameter: five iambs, ten syllables, accents on 2,4,6,8,10, with variation to avoid monotony. Sonnets: same meter but rhymed (three quatrains, lines 1/3 and 2/4, then a couplet); blank verse is more like daily speech.
• The exhortation: seven lines, beginning on the seventh syllable and ending on the sixth – the equivalent of six lines, but it must stay in seven.
• Number-play, flagged by him as “pretty accidental”: begins on seven (symbol of wisdom), ends on six (a perfect number), seven lines, forty-nine words (7×7); “for the Pythagoreans among us, for the Straussians [ASR: ‘Straussens’] among us.”
• Aside: Shakespeare’s vocabulary is enormous, with a feel for words.

5. First part of the exhortation: reasoning from a proportion (“a is to b as x is to y”) #

Point: “What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more” rests on a likeness of ratios, and Shakespeare reasons from it as a mathematician does.

1. A mathematician who sees a : b :: x : y can conclude: if a = b then x = y; if a > b, x > y; if less, less. Shakespeare argues the same way in terms of “better/more.”
2. The underlying proportion: chief good of man : man :: chief good of beast : beast. That the hearer can supply the fourth term shows one sees the proportion. “To sleep and feed” replaces “chief good of the beast,” which would be “too pedantic, like me” (the house cat Moppet sleeps and feeds, purring at both).
3. Alternate the proportion (as 2:3 :: 4:6 gives 2:4 :: 3:6): chief good of man : sleep and feed :: man : beast. Then, with “the rigor of math”: if the chief good of man is no more than sleep and feed, man is no more than a beast.
4. Which is more known to us? That man is more than a beast – since there are men who live for nothing more than sleep, feed and sexual pleasure, yet would protest if caged or treated like an animal. So one may reason either way: man is more than beast, therefore his chief good is more; or if his chief good were no more, man would be no more – but he is, so it cannot be.
5. What is seen: a necessary connection between what man is and what his chief good is; the chief good is determined by the nature of the thing.

• “Chief good” (greatest good) is identified with “market of his time”: market = end or goal – Shakespeare sees what Aristotle saw, that the good and the end are basically the same. Aside: the Mark Hopkins hotel band “the Marksmen”; the marksman aims at the target, as Aristotle speaks of the end of man as a target.
• “Time” is a metonym for man’s life (metonym: name of the container for the contained or vice versa; life is contained/measured by time). Profound, because man lives in time more than any other thing in this world, always looking before and after, planning day, week, life; Aristotle, third book on the soul: man is the animal that has a sense of time – hence history and biography; amnesia ruins a life.
• The second part will say what man has more than the beast, reason, so one can guess his chief good will involve reason; but “it’s in ethics that we see what use of reason is needed” for our chief good.

6. The natures of things are like numbers (“What is a three if it be half of four”) #

Point: the strength of the argument, shown by a numerical parallel.

• “What is a three if it be half of four? A two, no more.” Half of four : two :: half of six : three; chief good of man : man :: half of six : three, chief good of beast : beast :: half of four : two. It is absurd to say three is no more than half of four.
• Body + life = plant; + sense = animal; + reason = man. Subtract reason from man and you get nothing but an animal; subtract sensation, a plant; subtract life, a body. So natures are like numbers: add or subtract one and you have a different number; add or subtract a difference and you have another kind of thing. A beast is “just an animal”; three is not just two but two plus one, and gets a new name. (A student asks whether this is what he meant earlier by natures being like numbers – yes, it comes out in “no more,” since numbers are said to be more or less.)
• Even the man who takes the beast’s good as his chief good thinks he is more than a beast and would be indignant if you offered to save the dog’s life rather than his by a coin toss.

7. Second part: the elements of a definition of reason (“reason is the ability for large discourse”) #

Point: Shakespeare’s words contain a definition of reason.

• Which word is most basic for the definition? Students offer discourse, looking, before and after – no: capability, which he shortens to “ability.” “Large discourse” and “looking before and after” are names of acts; reason is an ability for an act, and one defines such an ability by saying “ability” and stating the act. Hence: reason is the ability for large discourse, looking before and after – “the first definition really of reason as reason.”
• Reason vs. nature, again like two and three: reason has something of what nature has (things it actually knows, a road it follows) but is not just nature; defining reason as reason means what reason has in addition to nature, as three has two in it plus one, and “half of six” in addition.
• He refers the class to the page on the senses of “before” already distributed.

8. An ability is known and distinguished by its act (“Burcus goes down to the employment agency”) #

Point: abilities are always distinguished by what they are for; “an ability is never known by itself.”

• Employment-agency example: “I got an ability” – the agent must ask “ability for what?” (piano → pianist; typing 100 words a minute → typist).
• You do not see my ability to walk, you see what I do through it; likewise the pianist, the pitcher striking people out.
• Are the ability to walk and to see the same? Only if walking were a form of seeing or vice versa; since they are independent, the abilities are distinct – confirmed by the blind man who walks and the paralysed man who sees; but even before that, one recognises seeing is not a kind of walking, hearing not a kind of seeing.
• Order: know the existence of an ability, distinguish it from others, then define it by what it is an ability for. Ability is the genus; the act completes the definition.

9. Discourse: from running to the movement of the mind (“Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast”) #

Point: the first word of the act is discourse, whose sense is traced from bodily running through action to the mind.

• Discourse is from the Latin for running (course, current, racecourse; “when in the course of human events”; a college “course”). “Run” is carried from the legs to human action and then to the mind (“I’m going to run through this once more”).
• Romeo and Juliet: the wise old Franciscan says to Hamlet – he corrects himself, to Romeo – “Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast” (ten syllables). It looks back to running with the legs (one stumbles running up the stairs) but is applied to a course of action, hasty action. Aside: tragedy is a likeness of a course of action.
• So discourse names an act of reason like a motion, going from one thing to another. But the nearest thing to it is not running with the legs (though we borrow “steps”) nor action, but going from one painting to another in a museum, one movement of a concert to the next: even the eyes go from one thing to another, down a column of figures.

10. The discourse peculiar to reason: knowing one thing through another (“come to know something unknown through things known”) #

Point: a second sense of discourse distinguishes reason from eye, ear and imagination.

• Eyes and imagination can go from one to another; reason can also come to know something through knowing other things. In reasoning (so characteristic of reason it is named from it) one comes to know the conclusion through at least two premises. In defining, one comes to know one thing through others: blank verse through “unrhymed” and “iambic”; iamb through syllable, accent, second. Sense does not do this: I do not see him through seeing you; I do not hear the second movement of a Mozart symphony through hearing the first.
• Perfect number again: students who do not know it know number, measured evenly, equal, sum; put together, “Oh, that’s right.”
• Four kinds of discourse in this sense: defining, reasoning, counting (knowing a number through the one), calculating (knowing a number through numbers already known – the grocery checkout, adding the prices to learn the total). In the Middle Ages discourse was almost a synonym for reasoning.
• Conclusion at 5:20: reason is the ability to come to know one thing through another. He distributes the list of questions on the exhortation for study.

His words #

• natural beginnings: natural desires (wonder, desire to live well), natural road, statements known to themselves by all men
• the three roads: natural road; road of reason as reason (“from reasonable guesses to reasoned-out knowledge”); the road of each reasoned-out knowledge
• statements known to themselves: [ed.: per se nota]; “per se notum sapientibus” = known to itself by the learned in some science
• perfect number: a number equal to the sum of everything that measures it
• composite number: a number measured by some number other than one
• heretic: from “chosen”
• reason as reason: what reason has in addition to nature
• blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter; iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest
• proportion: a likeness of ratios; to alternate a proportion
• chief good = greatest good; market = end, goal; time as metonym for life
• metonym: name of the container for the contained or vice versa
• capability / ability: genus of the definition of reason [ed.: potency]
• discourse: (1) going from one thing to another; (2) coming to know the unknown through the known – reasoning, defining, counting, calculating
• conclusion, premises: the statement known through the at least two statements it is known through

Texts #

Read in class

• Shakespeare, exhortation “What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more” and “capability… large discourse, looking before and after” (Hamlet, inferred)
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, “Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast”
• Shakespeare, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair / Hover through the fog and filthy air” (Macbeth, inferred)
• Handout: Beginnings of Philosophy in the Senses and Reason, p. 3 (verified)

Mentioned

• Plato, Phaedo (immortality of the soul); other Socratic dialogues on fear of mistake
• Boethius, distinction of statements per se nota to all / to the wise
• Aristotle, third book On the Soul: man is the animal with a sense of time
• Aristotle on the good and the end (no locus given)
• de Tocqueville on modern customs; Heisenberg on modern science and wonder
• Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote
• Gettysburg Address; Roosevelt “nothing to fear but fear itself”
• “one of our state documents”: “When in the course of human events” (Declaration of Independence, inferred)
• Shakespeare’s sonnets (form); Mozart symphony (example)

His questions #

• Is a perfect number a composite number? Obviously, once you know what a perfect number is – known to itself by the learned, not by all men.
• Are there other statements known to themselves, other roads, other dispositions of will, besides the natural ones? Yes; the natural beginnings introduce each general kind (Boethius’ distinction; the three roads; hope, fear, humility, mildness).
• What is blank verse? What is an iamb? Unrhymed iambic pentameter; two syllables with the accent on the second.
• What is the proportion underlying Shakespeare’s argument? Chief good of man : man :: chief good of beast (to sleep and feed) : beast.
• Which is more known to us, that man is more than a beast, or that his chief good is more than to sleep and feed? That man is more than a beast; even the man who lives to sleep and feed protests at being caged.
• What is a three if it be half of four? A two, no more – absurd; so with man and beast.
• What is the most basic word pertaining to the definition of reason? Capability (ability), the genus; discourse and looking before and after name the act.
• Are the ability to walk and the ability to see the same ability? No; walking is not a kind of seeing, and abilities are distinguished by their acts (blind man walks, paralysed man sees).
• What discourse distinguishes reason from the eye going from one thing to another? Coming to know one thing through another: reasoning, defining, counting, calculating.