The Senses of Before and After, Order, and the Exhortation's Five Reasons to Use Reason

Orientation #

He continues the word-by-word analysis of Shakespeare’s definition of reason, having reached “looking before and after” (“Shakespeare adds then the word looking”); the connection of reason and order was already in view (prev. lecture). He refers to “the text of Aristotle there” he gave them (the Categories senses of before) and to the Thomas text on the proemium to the Ethics “that we gave you”. The previous class analysed the earlier terms of the definition (ability, discourse, large, looking); the next continues with before/after, order, and priority in being vs. goodness.

The class, in order #

1. Before and after define order; “before” is equivocal by reason (“look under, right? And before and after”) #

Point: before and after are the definition of order, and everyone who has spoken of reason has connected reason with order; “before” is a word equivocal by reason whose meanings come in an order that follows the order of our knowing.

• Heisenberg’s Gifford lectures: to understand the world we look for some order; we couple “law and order”; no sense can be made of what has no order.
• Aristotle in the Categories distinguishes four central senses of before and adds a fifth later; he thinks the fifth is not fifth in order but resembles the second.
• “Before”, like “to see”, is equivocal by reason. Aristotle discovered that the most common words (used everywhere in science, especially in wisdom, and in the axioms) are all equivocal by reason; to understand them you must see the underlying meanings and their order, which follows the order in our knowing (as with the three meanings of “to see”).
• Aristotle distinguishes only central senses; other senses are led back to one of them by likeness. Example, Thomas on “beginning” in Metaphysics V: the first meaning is beginning of a magnitude (the beginning of the desk); to it are led back beginning of the motion along the desk and beginning of the time the motion takes — not explicit in Aristotle, but reducible.

2. First sense: before in time (“So the first sense is before in time”) #

Point: the first meaning of before is before in time, to which before in motion and before in magnitude are reduced; it is first because it is most sensible.

• In natural philosophy time is defined as the number of the before and after in motion, so before and after are more explicit in time than in place or motion. Daily-life use: today is before tomorrow, after yesterday.
• Why first: (1) we name things as we know them, so the order in naming follows the order in knowing; (2) the first order in our knowing is the road from the senses into reason; (3) so the first meaning tends to be the most sensible. Troilus and Cressida: “Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs.” Examples of what this shows: waving to be seen at the airport; ambulance and police lights and sirens; performers jumping about the stage “because they have nothing really nice”; the chase in almost every movie. Time is tied up with before and after in motion (usually the sun’s motion). “Has to be the first sense.”

3. Second sense: before in being (“this can be without that, but not vice versa”) #

Point: A is before B in being when A can be without B but not vice versa; this is really distinct from before in time, though often coincident.

• Aristotle’s example is mathematical (one before two) precisely because there is no motion in math, to show the sense differs from the first. But it occurs in the sensible world too: bricks before a brick wall.
• Often coincident with time: writing “cat”, the letter C is before the word both in time and in being (C can remain if the rest is erased; the word cannot be without C). Boundary case: a stamp printing “cat” all at once — C is no longer before in time but still before in being. One child before two — usually also in time, but twins go from zero to two at once. Slicing a loaf: one slice before two in both senses; a loaf bought already sliced: before in being only.
• God: not before us in time (Christ’s puzzling “before Abraham was, I am” — he is in eternity, not time) but before all creatures in the second sense: he can be without them, they cannot be without him. But we are not thinking of God when we first see this sense; we think of C and cat, one and two, bricks and wall, hydrogen and water (H2O).

4. Third sense: before in the discourse of reason (“before in the discourse of reason”) #

Point: the third sense is before in the discourse of reason (in both senses of discourse), to which any before in our knowing is led back; it is placed third because it is more inward and less sensible.

• Instances: premises before conclusion in an argument; genus before differences in a definition; proemium before the body of a treatise; the prologue before the play in Romeo and Juliet. The before and after of the natural road is led back to this sense — not the same, but similar.
• What is before in discourse may also be before in being, but usually not. Square before cube: before in being (a cube is contained by six squares) and before in knowledge (plane geometry, Books One to Four, before solid geometry in the last books). Circle before sphere: Euclid generates the sphere by rotating a circle about its diameter; likewise cylinder from a rectangle rotated about a side, and a right-angled figure rotated about a side adjacent to the right angle to give the cone [ed.: the transcript’s “cold” is unclear; cone is the likelier reading].
• Not always: God is before all things in being but not in our knowledge (sensible, material things are known first). Hydrogen before water in being, but after in knowledge — a sign: hydrogen is named from water (“generates water”) because water was more known; discovered by Lavoisier. Proton: “first” is defined by before, so first (and order) has as many meanings as before; the proton is before hydrogen in being but after in knowledge. So the order in discourse is water, hydrogen, proton; the order in being is proton, hydrogen, water. Something can be before in more than one sense, but not always: the senses are really distinct.
• Likeness that carries the word over: as this can be without that but not vice versa, so this can be known without that but not vice versa (quadrilateral can be known without rhombus, not vice versa). There is even a likeness to the first sense, since in the discourse of reason there is something like motion.
• Aside: “they never attack the French Revolution” — the Church did not chop off Galileo’s head; the Revolution chopped off Lavoisier’s.

5. Fourth sense: before as better (“the fourth sense is better”) #

Point: the fourth sense, much more unlike the first three, is before in goodness — in one word, better.

• Chaucer comes before Shakespeare in time (14th vs. 16th century), but the critics put Shakespeare before Chaucer: better. Homer comes before almost all Greek poets (Hesiod in question) and is also better than all.
• John the Baptist on Christ, “he who comes after me is before me”: after in time as man, before as better.

6. The fifth, “crowning” sense: cause before effect (“a distant cousin of this before and being”) #

Point: Aristotle’s fifth sense, cause before effect, is not fifth in order but a distant cousin of before in being; he calls it the crowning sense, especially for the philosopher.

• Likeness: the effect depends on the cause, as what is after in being depends on what is before. Difference: strictly there is no cause without an effect — they are together — whereas in the second sense one can be without the other. Aristotle’s example: your sitting is the cause of the statement “you are sitting” being true, yet there is no time lapse and neither can be without the other.
• Applied to God: it is important to see God is before creatures both in being and as cause before effect. Spinoza compares God’s causality to what follows naturally from a nature (as from two); then the production of creatures would be out of God’s control, “just falls out”. Even if God had always created something he would still be before in being (like the stamped “cat”); and it is very clear given creatures had a beginning.
• Why “crowning”: philosophy begins in wonder, and wonder is an actual desire to know the cause; the philosopher most of all wants to look before and after as cause and effect; of the other senses one can ask why this is better, why this is before in knowledge.

7. The tongue-twister question, and Shakespeare’s pun (“In what sense of before, right?”) #

Point: one sense of before comes before another in the third sense, because naming follows knowing; Shakespeare shows awareness of the senses by punning on them.

• Q: in what sense of before does one meaning of before come before another? Students: the second, then the third. Answer: the third — we name things as we become aware of them, so the order in naming follows the order in knowing; any before in naming is reduced to the third sense.
• Did Shakespeare know the senses? In All’s Well That Ends Well he puns on before in place (attached to the first sense) and before as better: Helena, forced to confess by the Countess, says that before her and next to heaven she loves the Countess’s son — heaven, the son, then the mother. Thomas notes even common people say “you come first to me” for what they love more. We tend to pun on first and last senses (“I see,” said the blind man). As in Romeo and Juliet he makes “one is not a number” a love poem: a precision serving no poetic purpose, which “kind of gives him away”.

8. Reason looks before and after in all the senses; order and the division of sciences (“does reason look before and after? All of them”) #

Point: reason looks before and after in every sense (as many senses of after as of before), the crowning one being cause and effect; this is why wisdom orders and why the kinds of knowledge are divided by the order they consider.

• Even the humble historian: arranges events chronologically; sees that this had to be before that; seeks cause and effect; judges one civilization better than another.
• Wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, and the wise man orders (Thomas in the commentary on the proemium to the Nicomachean Ethics, quoting Aristotle’s proemium to the Metaphysics): it is proper to reason to know order.
• Thomas’s division of order in comparison to reason: (1) order reason does not make (natural philosophy, and metaphysics); (2) order reason makes in its own acts — thoughts and the words signifying them (logic); (3) in the acts of the will, and consequently our actions (ethics); (4) in exterior matter, wood or metal (the mechanic or servile arts, carpentry, metalworking). That knowledge is divided by the order it considers is again a sign how tied up order is with what reason is.
• Anyone claiming a better definition of reason must look before in the fourth sense; anyone claiming a definition prior in our knowledge must look before in the third — so using reason as Shakespeare defines it: “kind of an assent” [ed.: transcript “ascent”], already admitting the definition. Shakespeare has the glory of the first definition of reason; and the definition is itself an example of discourse — we come to know reason distinctly through ability, discourse, large, looking, before, stopping at each word.
• Student: did Aristotle or St Thomas give a definition of reason? Not like this. But in the De Anima Aristotle does not first call reason nous (understanding) but the dianoetike ability — knowing one thing through another — the same word used in the Posterior Analytics. Why Shakespeare is so wise he cannot say: a man is not usually both good philosopher and good poet; Shakespeare himself says “the lunatic, the lover and the madman” [ed.: “poet”] are “all compact imagination”. The two main exceptions: Plato (a philosopher with poetic gifts) and Shakespeare (a playwright with philosophical gifts).

9. The exhortation: five reasons for using reason (“about five reasons why we should use our reason”) #

Point: having defined reason one can define man (animal with reason) and beast (animal without); the exhortation (an urging) tells what reason is, what its use is (looking before and after), and gives five reasons for using it, divided by what is above man (God), below man (beast), and man himself — or before man, after man, and man.

• Beast (one reason): if you do not use reason you fall to the level of beast — “a darn good reason”.
• God (two reasons): (a) obeying God’s plan — “he that made us with such large discourse… gave us not that capability and godlike reason to fust in us unused” (fust: rusty, mouldy); (b) becoming godlike. In what way is reason godlike? God has no discourse; he knows all things by knowing himself, at once; so reason is godlike insofar as it is able to understand, and more godlike as it actually understands (never everything, as God does). Also as it orders: Thomas always quotes St Paul, “things which are from God are ordered,” and a text in Judith about God’s arranging things using before and after. Aristotle calls wisdom godlike knowledge in the Metaphysics; in practical philosophy he says it is lovable to help one man be happy, more godlike to help a whole city; Thomas: God intends the good of the whole universe. Plato’s definition of philosophy in the Theaetetus: becoming like God so far as possible for man.
• Man (two reasons, one more explicit): (a) the chief good of man is more than the chief good of the beast (first part of the proemium), so it must involve something the beast lacks, i.e. reason (second part); man’s end requires the use of reason — ethics will be more precise about which use. (b) Suggested by the words “What is a man?”: Polonius, “This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man” — a man is true to himself only if he uses reason.

10. True to oneself: Polonius against Proteus (“to thine own self be true”) #

Point: since choice, which is tied to reason, is more “me” than emotion, being true to oneself means following one’s choice, so Polonius is right and Proteus wrong.

• Two Gentlemen of Verona: Proteus (well named), betrothed to Julia with “twenty soul-confirming oaths” (betrothal then a solemn promise), goes to court where his best friend Valentine loves the Duke’s daughter Sylvia; Proteus, tempted, betrays Valentine’s plan to elope, and says in soliloquy he cannot be true to himself without being false to Julia and Valentine. Who is right, Polonius or Proteus? Proteus has an emotional surge for Sylvia but had chosen Julia and Valentine.
• Q: which is more me, my emotion or my choice? Signs: (1) the alcoholic who after deliberation joins Alcoholics Anonymous is true to himself when he adheres to his choice and calls his buddy, not when he follows the urge into the bar; (2) the courtroom judges premeditated murder more severely than a crime of passion, because the man more chose it (Italian husbands; the California cement-truck man who filled the lover’s convertible, dismissed as justified); (3) hot words in anger can be taken back, a letter cannot, because in writing you are more choosing to break off; (4) “Joe, get control of yourself”: when anger is in control Joe is not in control, when reason is, Joe is — not only philosophers but ordinary men count reason more themselves than emotion; (5) temptation to adultery: the chosen spouse is more me than the feeling; (6) what is done out of a vow is more meritorious than the spontaneous, because more chosen. Students at first identify with their emotions, then think again.
• So Polonius is right: if not true to yourself you cannot be true to spouse or friend; Proteus is not being true to himself.
• Student: Polonius is in Hamlet. Shakespeare puts wise words in the mouth of one who does not exemplify them: Polonius says “brevity is the soul of wit” (true — Aristotle and Scripture say it) while Hamlet calls him a tedious old fool; partly for amusement, partly to avoid being pedantic like a teacher.
• Close: five most excellent reasons; any one sufficient, all five together overwhelming.

His words #

• before and after: “the definition of order”; order and first have as many meanings as before.
• equivocal by reason: common words (used in all sciences and in the axioms) whose meanings come in an order following the order in our knowing.
• central senses: the meanings Aristotle distinguishes; others are “led back” to them by likeness.
• before in time: first sense; before in motion and in magnitude reduced to it.
• before in being: this can be without that, but not vice versa.
• before in the discourse of reason: premises before conclusion, genus before differences, proemium before treatise; any before in our knowing reduced to it.
• before as better: the fourth sense, “before in goodness”.
• crowning sense: his name for Aristotle’s fifth sense, cause before effect, “a distant cousin” of before in being.
• looking: the use of reason, what it is an ability for.
• exhortation: an urging.
• fust: rusty, mouldy, unused.
• dianoetike ability: Aristotle’s name for reason in the De Anima, knowing one thing through another, vs. nous (understanding).
• mechanic arts, servile arts: knowledge of the order reason makes in exterior matter.

Texts #

Read in class

• Shakespeare, Hamlet, the exhortation (“Sure, he that made us with such large discourse…”) — handout pp. 2-5 (verified).
• Aristotle, Categories, the senses of before (his handout text; sitting example).
• Aquinas, commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, proemium (division of order and of the sciences).
• Shakespeare, Hamlet, Polonius: “This above all, to thine own self be true…”
• Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida: “Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs.”

Mentioned

• Aquinas, commentary on Metaphysics V (senses of beginning).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, proemium (wise man orders; wisdom godlike).
• Aristotle, De Anima; Posterior Analytics (dianoetike).
• Aristotle, on happiness of one man vs. a city (practical philosophy; locus not stated).
• Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well (Helena and the Countess); Romeo and Juliet (prologue; “one is not a number”); Two Gentlemen of Verona; A Midsummer Night’s Dream (inferred) (“lunatic, the lover…”).
• Scripture: “Before Abraham was, I am” (John, inferred); John the Baptist, “he that comes after me is before me”; St Paul, “things which are from God are ordered” (Romans, inferred); Judith.
• Plato, Theaetetus (philosophy as becoming like God).
• Spinoza (creatures following naturally from God); Heisenberg, Gifford lectures; Euclid (sphere, cylinder, cone generation).

His questions #

• Why should before in time be the first meaning of before? Because we name as we know, knowing begins from the senses, and the senses are caught by motion, with which time is bound up.
• Is the letter C before the word “cat” when the word is stamped all at once? Not in time, but still in being.
• Is God before us in the first sense, in time? No; he is in eternity; he is before creatures in being and as cause.
• Which is before in being, water or hydrogen? Which is before in our knowledge? Hydrogen in being; water in knowledge (hydrogen is named from water).
• In what sense is the proton first? In being; in knowledge it comes after hydrogen.
• In what sense of before does one sense of before come before another? The third, since naming follows knowing.
• In what sense of before and after does reason look before and after? All of them; the crowning sense is cause and effect.
• Did Aristotle or St Thomas ever give a definition of reason? Not like this; Aristotle calls it the dianoetike ability in the De Anima.
• Which is more me, my emotion or my choice? Choice, which is tied up with reason (courtroom, “get control of yourself”, vows).
• Who is right, Polonius or Proteus? Polonius: one true to oneself is not false to friend or betrothed.