Goods of the Soul, Body and Exterior: Socrates vs. the Athenians, and the Scope of Practical Philosophy

Orientation #

He picks up from “what I did last time”: the contrast of inside goods with outside goods, shown better by induction and syllogism, and the disagreement between Socrates and the Athenians about which goods are best (prev. lecture). He announces for next time the division of human virtue into moral virtues and virtues of reason, with some text from Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics. A text-matching system finds the handout “A Note on Practical Philosophy”, p. 9, read in this class (about three minutes). The previous class reached man’s end as “the act with reason, done well, throughout life” and introduced the threefold division of goods; the next surveys the structure of the Ethics and the division of virtue.

The class, in order #

1. Why the philosopher talks about all the goods of man (“early to bed, early to rise”) #

Point: the philosopher talks about all the goods of man in general, not in particular; the carpenter (chair), cook (dinner), coach (athletic ability), doctor (health) each treat one good.

• Childhood saying “early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”: even a child is made aware of the three kinds — health (preeminent good of the body), wealth (excellence of exterior goods), wisdom (greatest good of the soul).
• Thomas’s application to the articles on the humanity of Christ in the order of the Te Deum: descent into hell gives the patriarchs the vision (good of the soul); resurrection gets back the body; ascension goes to a good place (exterior good). “A very impressive example.”
• Why the moral/political philosopher, and not the carpenter, gives this division and asks which is better:
  1. What is most fundamental in practical philosophy is the end or purpose of human life.
  2. All these goods contribute to and are necessary for that end.
  3. So the one who treats the end of a whole human life treats all its goods in general (though not in particular); the chair and health are not the end of a whole life.
• Likeness to wisdom: wisdom is chiefly about the first cause, and since the first cause’s causality extends to all things, wisdom alone talks about all things in general. Practical philosophy is about the “first good”, the end of human life, true happiness — hence about all goods and their order.
• Socrates turned philosophers’ attention toward ethics (not the first, but the emphasis is on him; Plato’s dialogues are mainly practical philosophy), so it is fitting he emphasized this division in his defense.

2. The false solution to the disagreement (“something is not sweet because it’s white”) #

Point: the disagreement between Socrates and the Athenians is about all the goods and hence the purpose of life; the relativist escape is excluded.

• False solution: “these goods are better for Socrates because he wants them more; those are better for most men.”
• Excluded by an if-then syllogism from the study of the good: if things are not good because we desire them (shown before), then they are not better because we want them more.
• Comparison where nobody disagrees: something is not sweet because it is white, so not sweeter because whiter; whoever says the latter is forced into the former absurdity.
• Signs that things are not good because wanted: the last drink at the party that made you sick; the kid driving 100 mph down the winding road into the tree.
• Consequence: once this is seen, one must give a reason for “good” and for “better” — and the Athenians cannot; all the reasons are on Socrates’ side.

3. Review: inside goods better than outside goods (“feet for the sake of your shoes”) #

Point: the bronze medal goes to exterior goods.

1. The end is always better than what is for its sake (basic statement about the better).
2. Outside goods are for the sake of inside goods — by induction: feet vs. shoes, eyes vs. glasses, car for transporting my body (and mind) to the monastery, notes for the sake of your mind. Otherwise you would be a mannequin in a department store displaying the clothing.
3. Conclusion: inside goods are better.

• Objection: some inside goods (art of carpentry) seem to be for outside goods (chairs, doors). Reply: those in turn are for the body — the chair holds you up, you are not there to keep it from being stolen; the mattress is for your sleep, not you for guarding the money under it. Medicine is for health, not health for medicine.

4. Goods of the soul better than goods of the body (“the gold medal”) #

Point: the soul takes gold, the body silver; Socrates is correct.

• Three arguments: (a) the soul is the end of the body — true but hard to see; (b) if man is better than a beast, the goods that place him above the beast are better than those he shares with it; likewise if God is better than man, the more divine goods are better; (c) “perhaps the strongest argument”: since the end of man is the act with reason according to human virtue, the goods of the soul are closer to — involved in — the very end, and the end is always better.
• Aside: no wonder they wanted to kill Socrates — he was showing them their life was based on a mistake.

5. The Athenians’ best argument: breathe or philosophize? (“to breathe is before to philosophize”) #

Point: the argument that breathing is better because nothing else is done without it confuses two senses of “before”.

• Students all answer “to breathe” is better; their reason: without breathing you do nothing else. He grants it — this shows breathing is before in being (can be without the other, not vice versa), the second sense.
• The four senses of before (Aristotle, Categories ch. 12): (1) in time — today before tomorrow; (2) in being — one before two; wood before a wooden chair; (3) in the discourse of reason, in our knowledge; (4) “the strangest”, in goodness — better.
• Chaucer before Shakespeare, therefore better; I am older than you, therefore better: everyone recognizes the mistake. What is before in time may be better or lesser. The students’ inference from sense 2 to sense 4 is the fallacy of equivocation, “the most common kind of fallacy in thinking”.
• Breathing is not the purpose of life: the sisters in grade school asked “do you live to eat or eat to live?” — some are mixed up about eating, nobody thinks he lives to breathe. You breathe so as to play football, eat, philosophize; so these are better though breathing is more necessary.
• Aristotle on wisdom: every other knowledge is more necessary, none is better.

6. Strengthening their argument: the better is the opposite of the worse (“worse to stop philosophizing or stop breathing”) #

Point: the proposition “the better is the opposite of the worse” is highly probable but has one important exception.

• Argument he builds for them: to stop breathing is worse for Mr. Burpless in the next hour than to stop philosophizing; the better is the opposite of the worse; therefore breathing is better. “Now it’s got some probability.”
• Exception: when one thing is before another in being, its loss is worse even though it is not better, because losing it loses the other too.
  • Water vs. a plant: water is for the plant, so the plant is better; but water can be without life, not vice versa (they look for water on Mars), so the loss of water is worse.
  • Bricks vs. brick wall: the wall is better (you pay more for it), but “no bricks” is worse than “no brick wall”.
• Result: only defective arguments remain on the Athenian side; Socrates is correct.

7. Why everyone is mistaken: the lesser goods are more known (“Why did Romeo love Rosalind”) #

Point: if good causes desire, the greater good should be wanted more; the lesser goods are wanted more because they are more known — and this explanation works only if Socrates is right.

• Parallel to the earlier problem of why bad things are desired: something comes between the good and us, sense or reason.
• Goods of the body and exterior goods are more known; the goods of the soul are at first unknown. Socrates was a boy before a man and knew bodily goods first; the baby cries at a pin, not from ignorance or lack of virtue.
• Our Lord teaches the greater goods under the likeness of the more known: treasure found in a field; “you will eat and drink at my table” (Thomas in the Summa Contra Gentiles on heretics who misread such texts); Thomas calls communion o sacrum convivium, the ineffable banquet.
• Aristotle, Natural Hearing IV, on defining place: a definition should say what the thing is, explain what we say about it, solve the difficulties, and make clearer why people thought otherwise. So the Socratic position should explain the common error — and it does.
• Romeo loved Rosalind more than Juliet, though Juliet was more beautiful: he knew Rosalind and had never met Juliet (he went to the Capulets’ to glimpse Rosalind).
• His own childhood: impatience for the presents on Christmas Eve while the aunt talked; wanting candy at the store as reward, whereas “a little wisdom at the end of the day” would have meant nothing. He now loves wisdom more than candy — but not because wisdom is more known to him. “So that’s a sign again that Socrates is correct.”
• If the Athenians were right, there is no explanation of why Socrates “gets all mixed up”.

8. What practical philosophy is about (“distinction and order of all the goods”) #

Point: practical philosophy is chiefly about the end of man; hence about all goods in general (their distinction and order) and, in ethics, about the goods of the soul in particular.

• Order has as many senses as before: they treated the order of these goods in goodness (gold, silver, bronze), in being, and in our knowledge.
• Ethics treats the goods of the soul in particular because of their proximity to the end — the virtues of reason and of what partakes of reason (moral virtues).
• Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew: the student of “that part of philosophy that treats of happiness, by virtue especially to be achieved”; health and wealth contribute too, but more remotely.
• Aristotle in Ethics I draws a line around happiness — perigraphe, “around-draws” — then after all the virtues, in Book X says more precisely that happiness consists mainly in the act according to the virtue of wisdom, and we must not follow those who advise us to think only of human things; so he must talk about the divine.
• Next time: the division of human virtue, the moral virtues, the virtues of reason, with key texts from Book I (the definition of the good in the proemium, the better, the line drawn around the end).

9. Digression: natural philosophy as anticipation of wisdom (“whatever is must be somewhere”) #

Point: the other parts of philosophy show a likeness to wisdom and lead up to it.

• Natural Hearing, eight books, leads in VII-VIII to the dependence of motion on a mover and of moved movers on an unmoved mover; it treats all natural things in a general way (nature, motion, place, time).
• Physics IV: the common opinion before Aristotle was that whatever is must be somewhere; but to be in place is a property of bodies, so they could not get beyond bodies. Only with Anaxagoras, and more with Plato and Aristotle, is there reason to say something besides bodies exists — an unmoved mover that is not a body, a human soul that can exist and operate without the body. Hence “metaphysics”: meta ta phusika, after the natural books.
• Beginning of natural philosophy: “the things that are, some are by nature, some by other causes” — at first the only other cause is art (the room is mostly by art, the woods by nature; chance is more obscure). Wisdom studies natural rather than artificial things, because nature is before and causes art; the first causes of natural things are the first causes of all.
• It took the Greeks 200 years of reasoning; without the Church one is “left with just reason”.
• Asides: Russian astronauts finding no God up there; the seminarian asking whether angels really exist (“they’re more real than you are”); cousin Donald arguing with his mother that God has no body; Boethius on the Trinity: to imagine God, who is not imaginable, yields a false imagination.

10. Digression: the order of the Summa and the order of the Gospels (“I am the way, the truth, and the life”) #

Point: Scripture ascends from Christ’s human nature to his divine nature; the Summa descends, as John’s prologue does.

• The Gospels emphasizing the humanity come before John. Peter’s confession, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”, goes from the anointed human nature to the divine; “I am the way, the truth, and the life” — as man the way, as God the end — has the same order; John ends his gospel with the same confession (“that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God”).
• Summa: existence of God, divine nature, Trinity in the prima pars; incarnation in the tertia pars — the reverse, though anticipated by John’s prologue (the Word was God … the Word was made flesh), which is the last gospel for a reason.
• The councils (Chalcedon), against heresies: “true God and true man” — a student answers the order.
• Link back: we are led to the divine through the sensible, as philosophy begins from nature and art and only later comes to God as cause.

11. Digression: the three senses of “perfect” (“Fletcher was but a limb of Shakespeare”) #

Point: recalling the senses of perfect and the distinction between the creature’s perfection and God’s.

• Thomas’s commentary on Aristotle’s chapter on perfection: the creature is perfect when it lacks nothing belonging to its kind; God is perfect in lacking nothing whatever, “universally perfect” — “I will show you every good … that is myself.” Homer is a perfect poet, not a perfect cook.
• Three senses: (1) what has all its parts (complete); (2) what has the whole ability of its kind — Dryden on Shakespeare: Fletcher “but a limb of Shakespeare”; Shakespeare has the whole power of the poet (plots, characters, words); (3) what has reached its end.
• Simplified: the perfect is the whole or the end; the end is more fundamental, since the whole is the end of the part. Concrete form most agree with: the whole is better than the part (whole car, dinner, ballpoint pen, glasses); more subtle: the end better than what is for its sake (the philosopher perfect on reaching wisdom).
• Aristotle a perfect philosopher in sense (2): practical and “looking” philosopher, father of logic, Politics V on revolutions from 150 city states, anatomy — “a complete and balanced mind”, unlike Plato; he brings together natural philosophy/geometry and the Socratic turn to ethics. Likewise Mozart the perfect musician (every form and instrument; Beethoven “didn’t know how to write for the human voice”).
• Cut off while citing Pius XII: one cannot know Thomas without his commentary on John, not only the two Summae. [recording ends mid-sentence]

His words #

• inside goods / outside goods; goods of the soul, of the body, exterior goods — the threefold division
• “the end is always better than what is for the sake of it” — the basic statement about the better
• if-then syllogism [ed.: hypothetical syllogism]
• “before” in four senses: in time, in being, in the discourse of reason (our knowledge), in goodness (better)
• fallacy of equivocation — mixing up different senses of the same word
• “more necessary” vs. “better” — Aristotle on wisdom
• first good — the end of human life, as analogue to the first cause
• perigraphe — “draws a line around” happiness (Ethics I)
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]
• meta ta phusika — “after the natural books”, the origin of “metaphysics”
• looking philosopher [ed.: speculative/theoretical]
• perfect: (1) has all its parts, (2) has the whole ability of its kind, (3) has reached its end
• universally perfect — God, lacking nothing; the creature perfect in its kind
• o sacrum convivium — Thomas’s name for communion

Texts #

Read in class

• Berquist, handout “A Note on Practical Philosophy”, p. 9 (verified source; the passage on what practical philosophy is about)
• Aristotle, Categories ch. 12, the four senses of before (recalled, not read verbatim)

Mentioned

• Plato, Apology; the Socratic dialogues generally
• Aristotle, Physics IV (place; “whatever is must be somewhere”), VII-VIII (unmoved mover), opening (by nature vs. by other causes)
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I (proemium; line around happiness) and X (happiness in the act of wisdom)
• Aristotle, Politics V (revolutions)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (heretics on eating and drinking in the kingdom); Summa Theologiae, prima and tertia pars; commentary on the chapter on the perfection of God; commentary on John
• Te Deum; Gospels (Peter’s confession; John’s prologue and ending); Council of Chalcedon
• Boethius, On the Trinity
• Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew; Romeo and Juliet; Dryden on Fletcher and Shakespeare

His questions #

• Is there a reason why the moral or political philosopher gives this division of all the goods explicitly and asks which is better? Because practical philosophy is chiefly about the end of man, and all these goods are necessary for that end.
• What kind of syllogism excluded the false solution that goods are better for whoever wants them more? An if-then syllogism: if not good because desired, then not better because desired more.
• Are your feet for the sake of your shoes, or your shoes for the sake of your feet? Shoes for feet: the outside is for the sake of the inside.
• Which is better, to breathe or to philosophize? Students say breathe; he shows breathing is only before in being, so philosophizing is better.
• In what sense is to breathe before to philosophize? In being (second sense), not in goodness (fourth).
• Which is worse, to stop philosophizing or to stop breathing? To stop breathing — but as the exception: the loss of what is before in being is worse without its being better.
• Which is better, bricks or a brick wall? And which is worse, no wall or no bricks? The wall is better; no bricks is worse.
• Why did Romeo love Rosalind more than Juliet? He knew Rosalind and never met Juliet — the more known is more loved.
• What was the third meaning of perfect again? What has reached its end (after: has all its parts; has the whole ability of its kind).
• Did the councils say divine or human? True God and true man.