Natural Hearing (Aristotle’s Physics) #

A systematic study of Aristotle’s Physics and the foundations of natural philosophy. These lectures examine the progression from confused to distinct knowledge of nature, the four causes, the principles of change and motion, time and place, and the question of whether nature acts for an end.

88 episodes, about 85 hours

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Classes #

Class 1 #

Part 1 of 3 · Aristotle’s Physics: Proemium and the Confused Before the Distinct (Three Kinds of Examples) #

68 min Berquist opens Aristotle’s Physics, working through lectio one of Aquinas’s commentary to argue why confused, general knowledge must come before distinct, particular knowledge.

Part 2 of 3 · Why the Confused Is Known First: Imperfect Before Perfect, and Descartes Versus Aristotle #

58 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics, Book I (with Aquinas’s commentary), on why what is confused and general comes to be known before what is distinct—then sets this against Descartes’ demand for clarity in the Discourse on Method.

Part 3 of 3 · Levels of Universality, the Via Negativa in Theology, and Particular vs. General Equivocation #

50 min Berquist works through the opening chapter of Aristotle’s Physics on moving from the confused to the distinct, then applies it to the via negativa in theology and to common versus private experience.

Class 2 #

Part 1 of 3 · Natural Road, Common vs. Private Experience, and Experimental Science #

54 min Berquist opens with Aquinas on the mystical body from 1 Corinthians, then turns to Aristotle’s Physics I on the “natural road” from confused to distinct knowledge, closing on common versus private experience in Bohr and Heisenberg’s physics.

Part 2 of 3 · Paul VI, Via Negativa, and the Meanings of the Word ‘Nature’ #

42 min Berquist starts from Paul VI’s Mysterium Fidei on why dogmatic formulas endure, then traces the word “nature” back through Aristotle’s Physics to its root sense of birth.

Part 3 of 3 · Aristotle Defines Nature: Five Parts, Nature vs. Art, and Experimental Science #

52 min Berquist opens Book II of Aristotle’s Physics, working out the five-part definition of nature—cause of motion and rest, in the thing itself, primarily, per se—against things made by art.

Class 3 #

Part 1 of 2 · Nature vs. Art, Rhetoric, Experimental Science, and Mathematics vs. Natural Science (Physics II, Readings 2–3) #

68 min Berquist works through Physics II, distinguishing “nature,” “having a nature,” and “being by nature”—a tree’s growth versus the tree itself—while weighing where rhetoric and mathematics fit around natural science.

Part 2 of 2 · The Central Question of Philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, and Whether the Way We Know Is the Way Things Are #

52 min Berquist asks whether truth requires that the way we know a thing be identical to the way it actually is, testing the question against Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Aristotle’s own text on separating mathematicals from matter.

Class 4 #

Part 1 of 3 · Thales and Anaximander: Reasonable Guesses About the First Matter #

67 min Berquist opens the pre-Socratics with Thales, reading the Diels-Kranz fragments as “reasonable guesses” and asking why reason first looks for a single, formless matter rather than a maker.

Part 2 of 3 · Simplicity, Pantheism and Digressions: Einstein, Hegel, Shakespeare, and Reflections on Reason #

68 min Berquist works through Anaximander’s fragments on the apeiron as the source of all things, then digresses into Boethius, Hegel, Einstein, and Shakespeare along the way.

Part 3 of 3 · Anaximenes, Pythagoras and Heraclitus: Air, Form, and the Problem of Change #

68 min Berquist traces the Presocratics’ search for nature’s first principle—from Mother Earth through Thales’ water and Anaximander’s “unlimited” to Anaximenes’ air—then turns to Pythagoras on form and ratio and opens Heraclitus on universal flux.

Class 5 #

Part 1 of 2 · Heraclitus: Contradiction, Hidden Harmony, Strife and Fire #

71 min Berquist sets Parmenides’ ban on contradiction against Heraclitus’ fragments on hidden harmony, war, and fire, reading through the “Natural Fragments” handout and Aquinas’s Physics I commentary to ask whether change itself is contradictory.

Part 2 of 2 · Reason’s Inclination to Unity and Simplicity: From the Greeks to Einstein and Aquinas on God #

66 min Berquist traces the mind’s pull toward unity and simplicity from the early Greek search for a single first principle through Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and Heisenberg, then to Aquinas on the divine attributes.

Class 6 #

Part 1 of 3 · Empedocles: The Four Elements, Numerical Ratios, and Change as Change of Place #

63 min Berquist reads Empedocles’ fragments on the four roots—earth, air, fire, water—and his claim that nothing truly comes to be or perishes, only mixes and separates.

Part 2 of 3 · Empedocles’ Love and Hate, Chance vs. Mind, and Anaxagoras on Matter and the Continuous #

67 min Berquist reads Empedocles’ fragments on Love and Strife as rival causes of mixture, his tale of chance-formed creatures winnowed by survival, and his blood-based theory of thought—set against Anaxagoras’ argument for a cosmic ordering Mind.

Part 3 of 3 · Anaxagoras: Everything in Everything, All Things Forever Equal, and Q&A on Good and Evil #

56 min Berquist reads Anaxagoras’s fragments on mixture, quantity, and Mind, showing why “everything is in everything” and “all things are forever equal” reject real coming-to-be in favor of mere mixing and separating.

Class 7 #

Part 1 of 4 · Anaxagoras on the Mind: Unlimited, Self-Ruling, and Separate #

59 min Berquist works through Anaxagoras’s fragment on Nous—unlimited, self-ruling, unmixed, the thinnest and purest of things—asking how a mind that rules can also be separate from what it rules.

Part 2 of 4 · Heraclitus to the Moderns, Determinism, and Democritus’s Atoms #

63 min Berquist traces “the mover” from Heraclitus’s fire and war of opposites through Empedocles’s love and hate to Anaxagoras’s mind, then turns to Leucippus and Democritus on necessity and the unreality of sensible qualities, reading from the Natural Fragments handout.

Part 3 of 4 · Despair, Boldness, and Finding What Is Common Among Disagreeing Philosophers #

37 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics I (lectio 2), mapping the disagreements among Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus, and Anaxagoras on the beginning of things—then asks how a philosopher should face such conflicting opinions without despairing.

Part 4 of 4 · The Common Basis of the Life of the Mind, Pride and Humility, and Pantheism Q&A #

42 min Berquist takes up Heraclitus’s fragment that understanding requires grounding in what is common to all, and traces it through Aristotle’s survey of earlier philosophers into a wide-ranging discussion of pride, humility, and pantheism.

Class 8 #

Part 1 of 4 · Anaxagoras’ Mind, Hope and Fear, and Heraclitus’ Common Ways Forward #

63 min Berquist weighs Anaxagoras’s “mind” against Empedocles’ love and hate, then turns to Aristotle’s Physics I on the Presocratics’ disputes—and to Heraclitus on finding what disputants share.

Part 2 of 4 · Change by Contraries: Aristotle Becomes Strong in the Common Basis #

49 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s commentary on Physics I, lectio 10, on why natural philosophers everywhere land on contraries as the first principles of change—reaching from the I Ching to Einstein along the way.

Part 3 of 4 · Three Kinds of Beginnings, Custom, and the Role of Contradiction #

48 min Berquist continues his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics I, working through Aquinas’s tenth and eleventh readings, on why the ancient philosophers settled on contrary principles and why Aristotle insists a third element beyond the two contraries is needed.

Part 4 of 4 · Modern Physics, Knowing by Making, and the Closed Circle of Man #

50 min Picking up from Aristotle’s Physics I, Berquist and his students weigh Bohr’s claim that science “extends the range of experience and reduces it to order” against Aquinas on substance and nature’s own order.

Class 9 #

Part 1 of 3 · Aristotle’s Physics I.11: Why Two Contraries Need a Third Thing #

53 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s commentary on Physics I, lectio 11, showing why Aristotle rules out two contraries alone as first principles: hardness cannot itself become softness without contradiction, so a third underlying subject is required.

Part 2 of 3 · Contradiction and the Progress of Knowledge: Heraclitus, Aristotle and the Untying of Knots #

62 min Berquist traces contradiction as the motor of discovery, from Heraclitus’s fragments and Aristotle’s Physics Book I on change through Metaphysics Book III’s “tying and untying” of difficulties, into modern physics and Aquinas on divine simplicity.

Part 3 of 3 · Contradiction in Science and Theology: Planck, Bohr, Einstein, Augustine and Thomas, plus Q&A #

69 min Berquist traces how contradictions in physics—Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, Einstein on quantum theory and particle-wave duality—forced deeper explanations, then turns to Christ’s questioning of the Pharisees in Matthew, Augustine on heresy, and Aquinas’s dialectical method praised by Vatican II.

Class 10 #

Part 1 of 4 · Substance, Accident and Dialectical Probability: Resolving the Apparent Contradiction in Physics I #

66 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s second and third arguments for why change needs a third underlying thing beyond two contraries, then resolves an apparent contradiction about contrariety in substance using Aquinas’s commentary on Physics I.

Part 2 of 4 · Three Is Enough: The Number Three in Logic, Rhetoric, Music, Physics and Theology #

62 min Berquist reads Aristotle’s Physics I on whether the principles of change are two or three, then traces the recurring pattern of “three” through rhetoric, poetics, music, and modern physics.

Part 3 of 4 · Becoming, the General Before the Particular, and Why the End Is Better Than the Means #

44 min Berquist previews Physics I, lectiones 12–13 on “becoming,” then digresses into why the general must be known before the particular—illustrated through “change” versus “becoming” and the good.

Part 4 of 4 · Heisenberg on Natural Language, Number and One, and Student Questions on Nature and Motion #

41 min Berquist reads Heisenberg on Descartes’ mind-body split and the stability of ordinary language, then turns to Physics I (lectio 12) on nature and the analogous senses of number and one, closing with Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet on virtue.

Class 11 #

Part 1 of 3 · Reading 12: Common Understanding of Becoming: Three Things in Every Becoming #

44 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics I (Aquinas’s commentary, reading 12) on “becoming,” using everyday phrases like “the young man becomes old” to show why every case of becoming requires three things.

Part 2 of 3 · Reading 13: Only Two Causes, and Lack versus Contrary (Virtue, Vice, Ignorance, Error) #

33 min Berquist works through lectio 13 of Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Physics I, showing why only matter and form are true causes, and why change requires merely lacking a form rather than possessing its contrary.

Part 3 of 3 · Reading 13: First Matter Known by Proportion, Ability, and the Soul as Substantial Form #

53 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s commentary on Physics I, Reading 13, on why prime matter can only be known by proportion, then applies that difficulty to the Platonic dispute over the soul.

Class 12 #

Part 1 of 3 · Anaxagoras Refuted: Fewness, Infinity and the Limits of Natural Quantity (Part 1) #

65 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics I (lectio 13) to refute Anaxagoras’s claim that “everything is in everything,” using prime matter, the clay-sphere-cube example, and the letters-in-“cat” analogy.

Part 2 of 3 · Smallest Pieces and Modern Physics: Arguments 2-7 Against Anaxagoras, Locke and Ability #

65 min Berquist walks through Aristotle’s second, third, and fourth arguments in Physics I.4 against Anaxagoras, showing why natural bodies—unlike mathematical quantities—have limits to how small their parts can get.

Part 3 of 3 · Aristotle, Plato and the Good Student: Preparing for Matter and Lack of Form #

60 min Berquist prepares Physics I on Aristotle’s critique of Plato for collapsing matter and privation into one, then pauses over what makes a good student—using Aquinas on humility, discretion, and fruitfulness.

Class 13 #

Part 1 of 3 · Matter vs. Lack of Form: Heisenberg, Plato’s Confusion, and Augustine against the Manichaeans #

54 min Berquist opens with Heisenberg on elementary particles and energy-as-potentiality before turning to Aristotle’s Physics I, lectio 15, where matter is distinguished from privation as something godlike and desirable rather than mere non-being.

Part 2 of 3 · Ability and Lack: Sartre’s Freedom, the Meaning of Bad, Fallacies, and the Perfection of Man #

58 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Physics I (lectio 15) on matter and privation, then uses the distinction to unmask a fallacy running from Plato through Sartre’s account of freedom as nothingness.

Part 3 of 3 · First Matter, the Five Attributes of God, and the Four Kinds of Cause (Reading Five) #

43 min Berquist closes Book I of Aristotle’s Physics, working through Aquinas’s commentary (lectio 15) on prime matter’s strange status as neither generated nor destroyed, then opens the four causes at the start of Book II.

Class 14 #

Part 1 of 3 · The Four Kinds of Causes: Matter, Form, Mover, End #

62 min Berquist works through Reading 5 of Aristotle’s Physics, Book II, tracing matter, form, mover, and end—and why Aristotle picks the examples he does, from Pythagoras’s musical ratio to the case for the father over the mother as cause.

Part 2 of 3 · Aristotle’s Three Corollaries on Causes and Nature as Form #

44 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s three corollaries on the four causes in Physics II—how several causes can belong to one thing, how two things can cause each other, and how one thing can cause contraries—then follows Aristotle’s closing paragraph tying cause to end and good.

Part 3 of 3 · Dividing the Causes, Applications, and Preface to End in Nature #

38 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s four causes—matter, form, mover, end—as laid out in the Physics and Metaphysics, showing why they pair off differently depending on what’s being explained, before turning to the question of final causality in nature.

Class 15 #

Part 1 of 3 · The Importance of the Question of Final Causality: Natural Philosophy and Ethics #

68 min Berquist lays out what’s at stake in Aristotle’s claim that nature acts for an end, then works through the causes—per se, accidental, and the “removing” cause—that make chance and luck intelligible.

Part 2 of 3 · Misunderstandings, Custom, and the Modern World’s Mathematical Habit of Mind #

70 min Berquist finishes the question of whether nature acts for an end, then asks why custom, not argument, shapes most belief—tracing three roots of the modern mathematical mind through Tocqueville and McNeill.

Part 3 of 3 · Aristotle’s Arguments for Nature Acting for an End, and the Objections #

66 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s arguments in Physics II that nature acts for an end, testing them against spider webs, parasitic wasps, and bee navigation before turning to the objections.

Class 16 #

Part 1 of 3 · Nature Acts for an End: Replies to the Objections and the Infinity of Mind #

62 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics on whether nature acts for an end, answering three objections to teleology—mind-dependence, natural failures, and Empedocles’ chance—with examples from thermostats to buckshot and scattered seeds.

Part 2 of 3 · Natural Hearing III: Why Motion, Place and Time Come First #

66 min Berquist finishes the case for final causality in Aristotle’s Physics Book Two, then opens Book Three by explaining why nature must first be heard, not judged, and why motion has to be defined before anything else.

Part 3 of 3 · Defining Motion: Descartes, Locke and Aristotle’s Act of the Able #

64 min Berquist opens Book Three of Aristotle’s Physics, testing why motion resists Descartes’ and Locke’s claim that it can’t be defined, working toward Aristotle’s definition through walking, heating water, and entering a doorway.

Class 17 #

Part 1 of 3 · Motion, the Continuous, and the Discrete: Why the Continuous Dominates Our Naming #

49 min Berquist opens with Shakespeare’s “Come, bitter conduct” before turning to Aristotle’s Physics, Book Three, on motion and the puzzle of why continuous quantity dominates how we name even discrete and abstract things.

Part 2 of 3 · Can Motion Be Defined? Why Descartes and Locke Say No, and Aristotle’s Approach to Definition #

55 min Berquist opens Aristotle’s Physics Book III, asking why place, the void, and time all follow upon motion—and why, unlike Descartes and Locke, Aristotle thinks motion itself admits of definition.

Part 3 of 3 · Act and Ability: Being versus Becoming and Aristotle’s Definition of Motion #

68 min Berquist works through Physics Book III, unpacking Aristotle’s definition of motion as “the act of what is able to be, as such,” with examples from clay, a doorway, and water on a stove.

Class 18 #

Part 1 of 3 · Motion as the Act of the Able, and Place: The First Senses of ‘In’ #

66 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s definition of motion in Physics III—“the act of what is potential insofar as it is potential”—then opens Physics IV’s account of place as the inner surface of a containing body.

Part 2 of 3 · The Eight Senses of ‘In’, Equivocation and the Axioms #

46 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s eight senses of “in” from the Physics, ending with the sense of being “in” what one loves — and why the primary sense is spatial.

Part 3 of 3 · Beginning the Study of Time: Puzzles About the Now #

51 min Berquist opens Aquinas’s commentary on Physics IV to ask whether time can exist at all, since its parts—past and future—do not, and the “now” seems no more a part of time than a point is of a line.

Class 19 #

Part 1 of 3 · Aristotle’s Physics IV: Time Is Not Motion, but Something of Motion #

66 min Berquist works through lectiones sixteen and seventeen of Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Physics IV, refuting the view that time is the heavens’ motion and arguing instead that time is “something of” motion.

Part 2 of 3 · Time as the Number of Motion, and the Problem of the Now #

50 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s lectio 17 on Physics IV, tracing “before and after” from place to magnitude to motion, and arriving at time as “the number of motion according to before and after.”

Part 3 of 3 · The Now, the Thing in Motion, and the Causes of Before and After #

66 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics on the “now” and time, using a thrown ball, a car trip, and a sleeper waking to show how the now, like a moving body, stays the same yet is always other.

Class 20 #

Part 1 of 2 · Time, Metaphor and Boethius: Measuring Time and the Numbering Soul #

60 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics on time and the puzzle of the numbering soul, then digresses through Aquinas on scriptural metaphor and Boethius’s Consolation before setting up eternity.

Part 2 of 2 · Eternity Defined: Boethius’s ‘Tota simul et perfecta possessio’, the Now of Time, and Future Contingents #

60 min Berquist unpacks Boethius’s definition of eternity as “the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of unending life” through Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, then turns to Adam and Eve’s desire for God-like foreknowledge.

Class 21 #

Part 1 of 3 · Why the Philosophy of the Continuous Matters: Motion, Time, Zeno and the Limits of Imagination #

70 min Berquist opens Aristotle’s Physics, Book VI—“the philosophy of the continuous”—asking why lines, motion, and time cannot be composed of indivisible points or instants, with Zeno’s paradoxes as the test case.

Part 2 of 3 · Continuous, Touching and Next; Reason and the Brain; One Substance and Immanent Activity #

72 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics on the continuous, the touching, and the next to argue that reasoning cannot be a bodily process, then defends the intellect’s immateriality against brain-based accounts of thought.

Part 3 of 3 · Physics VI: The Continuous Is Not Composed of Indivisibles, and Democritus’ Cone #

62 min Berquist works through the opening of Aristotle’s Physics VI, defining continuous, touching, and “next” to prove that no line can be made of points, then applies this to resolve Democritus’s cone paradox.

Class 22 · Motion and Indivisible Points: Aristotle’s Physics, the Three Senses of “Before,” and a Digression on Mill #

29 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics argument that motion cannot be made of indivisible points, then follows the question out into modern physics, history, and Mill on pleasure.

Class 23 #

Part 1 of 4 · The Continuous and Its Basic Role: Beginning, End, and the Point Without a Limit #

57 min Berquist opens Aristotle’s Physics Book VI on the continuous, arguing why this notion underlies mathematics, natural philosophy, and even the study of the soul, angels, and God.

Part 2 of 4 · Points Cannot Compose a Line: Aristotle’s Arguments in the First Reading #

63 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics VI on the continuum, showing why points cannot touch or compose a line, and traces the underlying axiom—nothing is the beginning, end, or limit of itself—into Metaphysics V and the Posterior Analytics.

Part 3 of 4 · Which Definition Comes First? Circularity in Aristotle’s Reasoning #

58 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics VI on time, distance, and the impossibility of continuity from indivisibles, using it to unpack reciprocal demonstration—reasoning that runs from one truth back to another, as in Euclid and Aquinas’s two Summas.

Part 4 of 4 · Student Questions on the Continuous, Kant, Natural Law, and Shakespeare #

52 min Berquist fields student questions ranging from continuity and motion in Aristotle’s Physics to Kant on the good, natural law, and Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Class 24 #

Part 1 of 3 · Ends and Limits, and the Dependence of Philosophy on the Natural #

54 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Metaphysics V on the several senses of “end” and “limit,” using Aquinas’s commentary and the axiom “nothing is an end of itself” to expose fallacies of equivocation.

Part 2 of 3 · Motion and Time Divisible Forever: Aristotle’s Argument from Faster and Slower #

57 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics, read with Aquinas’s commentary, on why a body cannot at once be moving toward a point and have arrived there—building the case that distance and time divide endlessly together.

Part 3 of 3 · False Imagination, Wonder, and Learning from Nature: Student or Judge #

63 min Berquist tracks “false imagination”—the mind’s habit of picturing what can’t be pictured—through Homer, Dante, and Plato’s Parmenides, then into Aristotle’s Physics, where even geometry can mislead the imagining mind.

Class 25 #

Part 1 of 3 · Zeno, Parmenides and the Continuous: Why Nothing Continuous Is Indivisible #

58 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics VI on why time, magnitude, and motion can’t be built from indivisible points, using Zeno’s paradox and the case of a faster body overtaking a slower one.

Part 2 of 3 · The Now as Indivisible Limit of Past and Future #

61 min Berquist closes his treatment of the continuous and opens Reading 5 of Book VI of Aristotle’s Physics, arguing the “now” is indivisible and that nothing moves in it—drawing on Aquinas’s commentary and Metaphysics V.

Part 3 of 3 · No Motion or Rest in the Now, the Divisibility of What Moves, and Boredom and Loneliness #

64 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics, Book VI, with Aquinas’s commentary, proving that nothing can move or rest in an indivisible “now” and that whatever changes must be divisible.

Class 26 #

Part 1 of 3 · Nature and Reason: Distinction, Equivocal Names, and Why the Beginning Matters #

54 min Berquist works out why “nature” and “reason” aren’t opposites like virtue and vice, using the image of two contained within three, then tests it against Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Coriolanus.

Part 2 of 3 · Physics Book VI: The Division of Motion, the Three Roads, and First and Last Philosophy #

54 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics VI, lectio 6, on how motion divides according to time and according to the parts of the moved body—and why the moving thing itself grounds that divisibility.

Part 3 of 3 · Physics Book VI: The First in Change, Contradiction, and Relation in the Trinity #

48 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics with Aquinas’s commentary to show why what has first changed must already be at its terminus, then maps out contradiction, privation, contrariety, and relation—tracing “pros” from the Categories into John 1:1.

Class 27 #

Part 1 of 3 · Distinction, Order and the Strange Lack of a First in Motion (Physics Readings 7–8) #

61 min Berquist works through readings seven and eight of the Physics commentary, showing why no motion has a first instant or first part, then closes on how “order” and “before/after” fail, analogically, when applied to the Trinity.

Part 2 of 3 · Moving and Having Moved, Becoming and Contradiction, Eucharist and Idealization in Science #

70 min Berquist works from Aristotle’s account of beauty in the Metaphysics to a close reading of Physics VI, then tackles the puzzle of change between contradictories—becoming a sphere, Eucharistic transubstantiation—using De Koninck’s article on the paradoxes of becoming.

Part 3 of 3 · Q&A: Motion and Rest in the Now, More Known to Us, Purgatory and Baptism #

56 min Berquist takes up whether a body in motion differs really from a body at rest as both coincide in the same “now,” working through Aristotle’s Physics, then turns to questions on purgatory, baptismal grace, and the Summa Contra Gentiles.

Class 28 #

Part 1 of 2 · Zeno’s Paradoxes, the Socratic Method, and the Four Kinds of Conversation #

72 min Berquist works through Zeno’s paradoxes against motion—the dichotomy, Achilles and the tortoise, the arrow, the stadium—as Parmenides’ defense against change, then gives Aristotle’s answer from Physics Book Six.

Part 2 of 2 · Wisely and Slow: Friar Lawrence, Shakespeare, and Seven Places Where the Wise Man Proceeds Slowly #

68 min Berquist reads Friar Lawrence’s line “wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast” from Romeo and Juliet to distinguish true wisdom’s deliberateness from mere hesitation or dullness.

Class 29 #

Part 1 of 3 · Shakespeare’s ‘Stumbling on Abuse’: Nature, Bad as Privation, and Equivocal Words #

65 min Berquist reads Friar Lawrence’s speech on plants from Romeo and Juliet — “stumbling on abuse” — to open Aristotle and Aquinas on nature, natural ends, and bad as privation, closing with equivocal versus analogous words like “virtue” and “political.”

Part 2 of 3 · Can a Philosopher Deny God? Humility, Wisdom and Likeness to God #

60 min Berquist asks whether a philosopher can deny God, drawing on Aristotle, Plato’s Theaetetus, and Shakespeare, then compares Aquinas’s arguments from motion in the Summa Contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologiae.

Part 3 of 3 · The Argument from Motion in the Summa Contra Gentiles: Everything Moved Is Moved by Another #

59 min Berquist works through chapter thirteen of Aquinas’s Summa Contra Gentiles, laying out Aristotle’s proof from motion for an unmoved mover, drawn from the Physics.

Class 30 #

Part 1 of 3 · Shakespeare Introductions and Aquinas’s First Way: The Infinite Regress of Moved Movers #

42 min Berquist detours through Shakespeare’s old editors before turning to Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s proof of a first, unmoved mover, working through three arguments against an infinite regress of moved movers.

Part 2 of 3 · The Second Way: Per Se and Per Accidens, and the Principle That What Is Through Itself Comes First #

61 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s second way—the argument from efficient causality—comparing its full statement in the Summa Contra Gentiles to the compressed version in the Summa Theologiae, with a long detour into what “per se” and “per accidens” mean.

Part 3 of 3 · The Self-Moving First Mover, the Eternity of the World, and the Meanings of Spirit #

60 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics Book VIII on the self-mover’s unmoved part, then follows the argument into Metaphysics Book XII to the wholly immobile first mover identified with God.