Why Philosophy Requires Reason: Review, Error and Mistake, and Better vs. More Necessary

Orientation #

He begins by recalling “where we are”: the best way of coming into philosophy is from its natural beginnings through the use of reason; the natural beginnings and “what reason is” have been treated, and “one more question” remains, why one must come into philosophy through the use of reason. He says the definition of a thing “we’ll be taking up in logic”, that the two if-then arguments will be exemplified later, and that Thomas’s proemium on logic directs reason “orderly, easily, and without error”. The previous class drew Aristotle’s senses of “before” out of Shakespeare’s definition of reason; the next reads Aquinas’s proemia to the Peri Hermeneias and Posterior Analytics on the nature and division of logic.

The class, in order #

1. Why one must come into philosophy through the use of reason (“philosophy is knowledge over a road”) #

Point: every account of philosophy already given requires looking before and after.

1. Philosophy is knowledge over a road; a road is a before and after, and you cannot follow a road you do not know.
2. Philosophy is reasoned-out knowledge; it cannot be acquired without using reason.
3. Philosophy begins in wonder, the desire to know the cause, so one must look before and after at least in the “crowning” (causal) sense.
4. Its end is wisdom, knowledge of first causes; cause is before effect, and “first” is defined by “before”.
5. The wise man’s discourse is the largest discourse (most universal, greatest things, God and the cosmos, widest limits, from what is furthest apart); every part of philosophy has larger discourse than other knowledge: logic needs before and after in the discourse of reason, ethics in the sense of better, natural philosophy in the before and after of motion.
6. One must come in from the natural beginnings, but a beginning is what is before everything else, and nature is what is first in a thing, so the beginnings cannot even be recognized as beginnings without looking before and after. Conclusion: before anything else one must understand the word “before”; one cannot even understand the words in use (“looking”, “to see”) without seeing the order of their meanings.

2. Order, beginning, middle, end, first, second (“crisscross two contradictory things”) #

Point: the handout’s words “before” and “after” define order, beginning/middle/end, and first/second/last.

• Beginning: before something but not after. End: after but not before. Middle: both before something and after something (a student’s “neither” is corrected). A fourth member, neither before nor after anything, is impossible because it would have no connection with the rest, so the crisscross of two contradictories yields only three real possibilities.
• Parallel he draws: the same crisscross used for the Trinity, proceeds from someone / does not, has someone proceeding from him / does not. Son: both; Father: has one proceeding but does not proceed; Holy Spirit: proceeds but none proceeds from him. No fourth, since one neither proceeding nor proceeded from could not be distinguished from anyone else.
• First: before all the rest. Second: before all the rest except the first. Last: after all. He notes first and last resemble beginning and end, but second and middle are “not exactly the same”.
• The central senses of before are recalled in order: in time, in being, in the discourse of reason, in goodness (better); one meaning of a word comes before another in one of these senses, and order, beginning, middle, end, first, second, last have many meanings because all are defined by “before”.

3. Working through the definition of reason (“running from statement to statement”) #

Point: the review questions on the parts of Shakespeare’s definition.

• A definition is not one word but speech (a combination of words) signifying what a thing is; the genus of reason is “ability”, the words that complete it state what it is an ability for and the utmost of that.
• Discourse comes from running; the discourse of reason is running from statement to statement, more broadly coming to know one thing through knowing others; reasoning (coming to know or guess a statement from other statements because of them) is the most characteristic discourse. Other discourses: defining, counting, calculating.
• Discourse is the act of reason most known to us because it is most like motion: “things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs.”
• “Large”: about the great or the universal, a large limit (from many to one or one to many), long through many steps, or between things far apart. Reason is defined by large, not small, discourse because a thing is defined by its utmost: the small is contained in the large, not the reverse.
• Looking is trying to see; seeing here means understanding. Reason looks before and after in all the central senses; the crowning (causal) sense perfects the others.
• Looking before and after must be added to “large discourse” to manifest its end, what one is trying to do; otherwise it would be motion for the sake of motion.

4. Looking before and after presupposes distinguishing (“Nothing is before or after itself”) #

Point: “this is important” — the ability to look before and after includes the ability to distinguish, because nothing is before or after itself (an axiom), so what is before and what is after must be distinct.

• One can distinguish without seeing which is before, but cannot see before and after without distinguishing.
• Example: wine judging in California begins with a blind tasting; one who cannot tell Cabernet Sauvignon from Pinot Noir or Zinfandel is not in a position to judge which is better. Among those who can distinguish there is still disagreement, “but not the same amount.”
• Aside: anyone who has talked about reason has seen its connection with order; Heisenberg says the world first appears an infinite variety and to understand we must introduce some order.

5. In what way reason is godlike (“There’s no discourse in God”) #

Point: reason is godlike in its ability to understand, and more so when it actually understands; not godlike as discourse, since there is no motion, no discourse, no search in God, who understands discourse without having it; “everything is open and naked to his eyes.”

• Anecdote: a Mohammedan student from Saudi Arabia objected to calling reason godlike; he showed him the Fourth Lateran Council text (which Paul VI often cited) that one can never note a likeness between creature and God without a greater unlikeness, while there must be some likeness between cause and effect.

6. Man, beast, chief good, market of his time (“What is a three if it be the half of four”) #

Point: from the definition of reason to man and beast and their chief goods.

• Man and beast are both animals; man has reason in addition; man: an animal with reason, beast: an animal without.
• Chief good: a thing’s greatest, main good, from its end. “Market of his time”: time as metonym for life; man lives in time far more than animals, always at past and future, which ties to the first sense of before; Aristotle, De Anima III, calls man the animal with the sense of time. On “market”: his reading is what one aims at (mark, marksman), though a student’s dictionary cites this line for buying and selling; both readings meet in what one exchanges one’s life for.
• Chief good and mark of his time are the same because good (what all desire) and end (that for the sake of which) are basically the same: what men aim at they take as good. The chief good has a necessary connection with what man is, because of his nature (to be developed in ethics).
• Proportion: as the chief good of man is to man, so the chief good of beast is to beast. Shakespeare reasons like a mathematician: “what is a three if it be the half of four? a two, no more”; so a man whose chief good is but to sleep and feed is a beast, no more. Two forms: (a) if man is more than beast, his chief good is more; man is more; therefore his good is more. (b) Shakespeare’s own, by denial of the consequent: if man’s chief good were no more than the beast’s, man would be no more than a beast; but he is more; so his good is not merely the beast’s. (To be revisited with the two if-then syllogisms.) Without knowing what the chief good is, one sees it must involve reason.
• Five reasons in Shakespeare why man should use reason: below man, one falls to the level of a beast (hence Boethius: names of beasts for men without reason; we call a man a pig; Johnson’s friends called him a bear for his angry outbursts); above man, obeying God’s plan and becoming like God; in man himself, his chief good involves reason, he cannot be true to himself without it, and so cannot be true to his friend.
• Aside: all this in 49 words; “brevity is the soul of wit,” wit in the older sense of wisdom; his standing challenge to philosophers to produce a better exhortation in 50 or even 100 words, never met.

7. Error and mistake: two causes of going wrong (“you wander because you don’t know the scriptures”) #

Point: error is a disordered movement of reason; the two English words point to two causes.

• Error means wandering; Shakespeare: “we wander into illusions.” Knowing the road is needed to avoid error; hence Thomas’s proemium: logic directs reason to proceed orderly, easily, and without error, “well arranged” because seeing the order makes it easier and avoids error.
• Christ to the Sadducees (seven brothers, one wife, whose wife at the resurrection): planaste, you wander, because you do not know the scriptures or the power of God; planai has the root of “planet” (wanderers in the sky) and the same etymology as error; Comedy of Errors carries the sense too.
• Mistake: missing what you would take, taking the false for the true. Shakespeare’s “aim” often means guess; aiming sometimes misses. Cause of the deception: the appearance; “this is very important”: Plato and Aristotle hold likeness the cause of deception; you would not be deceived if the false were not like the true and the bad like the good.
• Imagination is the faculty named from likeness; false imagination is a chief cause of deception. A poet: imagination delights in the likeness of things, reason in their differences; reason is perfected more by seeing difference, helped also by likeness. The dialectician’s third tool is difference, the fourth likeness; Monsignor Dionne would bring in difference when he felt likeness, since likeness without difference invites mistake.

8. Two ways one man is wiser than another (“he sees what’s before water”) #

Point: a wiser man either (A) sees what is before or after what the other sees, or (B) sees both things but sees the order the other does not.

• A: Thales saw water as beginning with nothing before it; Lavoisier saw hydrogen before water. A prudent man sees the consequence of the consequence. His graduate logic professor knew from Thomas’s Metaphysics commentary the private road of each science and the common road (logic) before it; Monsignor Dionne saw the natural road before that.
• B: Dryden as a young man saw more plays of Beaumont and Fletcher than of Shakespeare, saw both, and only over years saw Shakespeare better, Fletcher “a limb of Shakespeare.” Knowing water and hydrogen without knowing water is H2O; seeing him and his son without knowing who is older; a couple whose wife is older than the husband, distinguished but not ordered in time; telling wine from beer without knowing wine is better; recognizing Mozart and Haydn without knowing Mozart is better; ocean and moon without knowing the moon causes tides; quarks before protons (“I don’t know”).
• Applied to meanings: students know “see” as the eye’s act and as understanding (far apart, easily distinguished) but have not ordered the meanings: first the eye, second to imagine, third to understand.
• “Priorities”: prior is Latin for before; establishing priorities is not only ordering by importance, since unimportant but necessary things must be done first.

9. Breathing vs. philosophizing: the second and fourth senses of before (“the opposite of the worst is better”) #

Point: a rule and its exception, which cannot be seen without the senses of before.

• His favourite question: which is better, to breathe or to philosophize? Students say breathe, because otherwise you can do nothing else. That reason shows breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense (in being: this can be without that, not vice versa), not the fourth (better); the end (philosophizing) is better, since one breathes to live and lives for other things. The students equivocate.
• Rule (Aristotle’s “corruption of the best is the worst”): the opposite of the worst is better. Killing a man is worse than killing a dog, so man is better; being mistaken about God is worse than about who won the game, so knowledge of God is better. Vices and virtues: injustice worse than stinginess, so justice a greater virtue than liberality; Aristotle’s governments: tyranny worst, monarchy best, democracy least bad, republic least good; blind or deaf: deafness less bad, so sight better, and there is no order in being between them.
• Exception: if A is before B in the second sense, the loss of A is worse than the loss of B even though B is better. Stopping breathing is worse than stopping philosophizing; not living is worse than not living well (“where there’s life there’s hope”), yet living well is better; bricks before a brick wall, but you pay more for the wall. Aristotle: every other knowledge is more necessary than wisdom, but none better; the key is necessity versus the better. The rule holds when there is no second-sense order between the two.
• Theological case: charity is better than faith, but loss of faith is worse, since without faith no hope or charity; hope in between, better than faith, faith more necessary; so Thomas can make infidelity in a sense the worst sin.
• Student: “it would be better for him if he had not been born” seems to make not living better than living. He replies it is because of eternal misery, the opposite of living well; whether it is an exception “I have to think about that a little bit more” — left open. Related aside: Judas despaired of forgiveness, Peter did not; is despair in some sense worse than hatred or envy of God, or pride, since it cuts one off? Left open. The class ends on a housekeeping question about handouts.

His words #

• coming into philosophy from its natural beginnings through the use of reason: the answer to the best way of coming into philosophy
• crowning sense of before: the causal sense, which perfects the others
• largest discourse: the wise man’s, in five or six senses (universal, greatest things, widest limits, furthest apart)
• speech: in logic, the combination of words that a definition is
• ability: the genus of reason [ed.: potency]
• discourse: running; coming to know one thing through others
• looking: trying to see; seeing here means understanding
• market of his time: what one aims at (mark, marksman) or exchanges his life for
• metonym: time for life
• denial of the consequent: Shakespeare’s form of argument
• wit: in the older sense, wisdom
• error: wandering (Greek planai, whence planet)
• mistake: missing what one would take; likeness the cause of deception
• false imagination: a chief cause of deception
• tools of the dialectician: the third, difference; the fourth, likeness
• private road / common road / natural road: the special way of each science, logic, and the natural beginnings before both
• priorities: prior, Latin for before
• second sense of before: this can be without that, not vice versa (before in being)
• fourth sense of before: the better

Texts #

Read in class

• Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, the exhortation on reason (handout review questions)
• Aquinas, proemium on logic: proceed orderly, easily, without error
• Gospel, Christ to the Sadducees on the seven brothers (planaste)
• Aristotle: “every other knowledge is more necessary than wisdom, but none is better”

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima III (man has the sense of time)
• Aquinas, commentary on the Metaphysics (private and common road)
• Fourth Lateran Council on likeness and greater unlikeness
• Shakespeare, Hamlet (Polonius), Comedy of Errors, “we wander into illusions”
• Boethius on names of beasts; Heisenberg on introducing order; Dryden on Fletcher and Shakespeare
• Aristotle on six forms of government (inferred: Politics); Plato and Aristotle on likeness as cause of deception
• Christ: “better for him if he had not been born”

His questions #

• How do before and after define beginning, middle and end? Beginning: before not after; end: after not before; middle: both; no fourth.
• Why does Shakespeare define reason by large rather than small discourse? A thing is defined by its utmost; the small is contained in the large.
• Why does looking before and after presuppose the ability to distinguish? Nothing is before or after itself.
• In what way is reason godlike, and not? In understanding; not in discourse, which God does not have.
• How does Shakespeare reason like a mathematician about the chief good? As three is two if half of four, man is a beast if his good is only to sleep and feed; by denial of the consequent.
• Why should man use his reason (five reasons)? Below: fall to beast; above: God’s plan, likeness to God; in himself: chief good, true to himself, true to his friend.
• Which is better, to breathe or to philosophize, and why do students say breathe? Philosophize; students confuse before in being with better.
• Is the opposite of the worst the best? Yes unless one is before the other in being, when its loss is worse though it is not better.
• Which is worse, loss of faith or loss of charity? Loss of faith, though charity is better.
• Is “better for him not to have been born” an exception? Left open.