Metaphysics I.2: The Six Marks of the Wise Man; Wisdom as Knowledge of What Is Said of All

Orientation #

He opens by recalling the division of the proemium: part one (readings one and two) is the end or goal of wisdom — chiefly that it is about the first causes, which he says has been shown up to this point (prev. lecture); part two, the kind of knowledge wisdom is, comes in the third reading. Today is the second reading: the six things commonly thought about the wise man, and the reasoning from the first three.

The class, in order #

1. The division of the proemium (“the second part of the first part”) #

Second reading = second half of part one: it goes further, to the very first cause, and also develops wisdom’s being about the most universal, “what is said of all.” The third reading is part two. He notes Aristotle’s “perhaps” here as what Thomas calls philosophical modesty. The “we” in “the thoughts we have about the wise men” is not the editorial we, nor “we Greek philosophers,” but men in general. He stresses that wise man and wisdom are interchangeable: if wisdom is knowledge of all things, the wise man knows all things, and vice versa.

2. Overview of the plan (“a six-part description”) #

A six-part description of the wise man, gathered from common opinion; from the first three Aristotle reasons to wisdom as knowledge of the most universal, what is said of all; from the last three, to knowledge of the first cause or causes.

3. First mark: he knows all things (“knows all things so far as possible”) #

Not in particular — no man could — but in some general way. Examples: the “wise guy” in the pejorative sense pretends to know it all; “he’s got it all together” = he sees the whole of life, no chunks left out; Einstein wanting the universe as a whole, details not interesting (the book Lincoln, the Universe and Doctor Einstein); Homer or Shakespeare understanding human life as a whole, against the carpenter who knows wood and the tailor who knows cloth while the rest of his life may be a mess.

4. Second and third marks: difficult to know, and more certain (“draw a little line between”) #

Second: he knows things difficult and not easy for man to know — what is common to all the senses is easy and nothing wise. We honour and look up to a man for knowing what is hard: nobody admires him for counting eight people at the table. Third: he is more sure of what he says. Test: when uncertain you go to someone wiser to confirm or reject — the general practitioner sending you to a specialist (his wife’s carotid condition: the local ophthalmologist knew, but sent her to Boston); his own drives to Quebec to check worked-out answers with Monsignor Dionne, the one man he could really trust, who usually agreed but occasionally saw something he hadn’t.

The little paradox between the second and third: if he knows what is most difficult, you’d expect him to be less sure. His suggestion: where the wise man knows what is most difficult and where he is more sure may not be exactly the same place; the mystery comes up later. Parallel from the three books On the Soul: we are very sure we have a soul, not sure what it is. Descartes missed this — sure he is thinking, but is he sure what thought is? His question to students: can you think without words; do you know exactly what you are thinking before you can say it?

5. Fourth mark: more able to teach (“the wise man is more able to teach”) #

He suggests it reads more easily if one leaves out “the causes,” since Aristotle will reason from this to the first causes. Examples: his first teacher Kasuriks, when unsure, phoned Father Baumgartner or sent him over; and when Charles De Koninck came to the Twin Cities, Kasuriks told him to put his questions to De Koninck, who explained clearly what Kasuriks couldn’t handle — De Koninck’s superiority as teacher was manifest, though those who had never studied under him found the respect hard to understand. Kasuriks had given up philosophy, went to Laval old, and warned De Koninck he’d walk out if taught the American way; De Koninck was not annoyed. The incident of Kasuriks running up on stage to fix De Koninck’s microphone. Niels Bohr in the United States — “get rid of the reporters” — then explaining the possibility of the atom bomb to the American scientists; Heisenberg’s lectures on quantum theory to American physicists, and Heisenberg’s account of the “Bohr Festival” in Germany, Bohr then reputed to know the atom better than anyone.

6. Fifth and sixth marks: for its own sake, and ruling (“the one ruling is more wisdom”) #

Fifth: knowledge for itself and for the sake of knowing is more wisdom than knowledge for its results or for doing or making — harder to see in “our democratic practical age,” but the Nobel Prize goes rather to the theoretical physicist than to the man who builds the bomb, and Einstein is admired more. Sixth: from our thinking the chief artist wiser than the one who obeys — the wise man ought not receive orders but give them, not be persuaded by another but persuade the less wise. Latin tag: sapientis est ordinare; and Wisdom “ordering all things sweetly.”

7. Digression: which part of philosophy looks most like wisdom? (“logic, or ethics and political philosophy, or natural philosophy?”) #

An exercise he sets students. (a) The logician seems to direct all: in the Phaedo, on the last day, Socrates argues for the soul’s survival, Simmias and Cebes object, and Socrates says we need an art about arguments — to his knowledge the first such statement, and logic is ultimately an art about arguments; whether you argue about the triangle, the soul, or courage, the logician tells you whether you argue correctly. (b) But the political philosopher decides whether Berquist practises logic or the military art, where he best serves the common good; the political art directs all arts — medicine needs state certification, driving a licence (re-checked when you’re old), and the president of Assumption College confers degrees “in virtue of the authority invested [ed.: vested] by the state of Massachusetts.” If ethics and politics are about the end of man, the one knowing the end directs all to it. (c) But in terms of knowing causes the natural philosopher: Thomas in his proemium to logic recalls what Aristotle taught in the third book On the Soul, and whether nature acts for an end is the natural philosopher’s. Buckley submitting Eleanor Roosevelt’s faulty reasoning to James Brennan; De Koninck getting Monsignor Dionne to give a logical analysis — there De Koninck is directed by Dionne. Conclusion: the different parts of philosophy each have a likeness to wisdom, in some of the six items more than others.

8. Universal in predicating vs. universal in causing (“what is said of all, and what is a cause of all”) #

The central distinction, after the break. Thomas’s Latin: universale in praedicando vs. universale in causando. The modern philosophers always confuse the two.

• The army (Aristotle in Book XII compares the order of the universe to an army, with God as the general — he takes the army, not the city, because the city is too disordered): “soldier” is said of everyone in the army; the commander-in-chief, MacArthur, causes the whole army to move but is said of no one else — when a man replaced him in Korea and was asked how it felt to step into his shoes, he said nobody fills his shoes. Likewise Bush is not said of everybody in the army, but is a cause of the army’s moving.
• Hegel (his “favourite whipping boy”), anticipated by Spinoza, takes the being said of all things and tries to generate everything out of it; in his Logic he identifies that being explicitly with “I am who am.” This yields a pantheistic God, a part of everything, since what is said of all is in everything. “Quite an interesting mistake, but a terrible mistake.”
• Marx’s joke at Hegel’s expense: apple, orange, banana, pineapple — separate out what they have in common, fruit, then try to make fruit give rise to the fruits.
• The equivocation in “universal” and “general”: “soldier” is general (said of each soldier); Douglas MacArthur is “the general,” but not general in the way soldier is. Shakespeare puns better than Hegel: in Troilus and Cressida, Cressida in the Greek camp is kissed by Agamemnon, and Ulysses says she has been kissed by the general but not kissed in general — the Elizabethans always punning on the meanings of words.
• Heraclitus: those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common to all — but common to all can mean said of all or cause of all.
• Goods (recalled from ethics): goods of the soul, of the body, exterior goods — “good of man” is common to all as said of all; happiness is common to all of them in the other sense, as that for whose sake they are taken.
• Scope of the Metaphysics: books six through ten mainly on what is said of all, eleven through fourteen on the cause of all. And in politics: “citizen” is something very general (said of all), the government and the common good are cause of all. Victory (“in war there’s no substitute for victory”) is a cause as end; the general commanding is universal cause as mover or maker. Aside: Schwarzkopf, asked a question in the first Gulf War, interrupted the reporter’s “generally speaking” with “generals always speak generally.”

Why Aristotle splits the six rather than reasoning from any of them to both conclusions: he wants you to keep those distinct in your mind — not to be like Hegel and confuse them. And three is enough.

9. First argument: knowing all things → knowing the most universal (“in the way possible to man”) #

Objection: no one can know all things, since things to be known are infinite. Reply by example: you know what an odd number is and what an even number is, and that no odd number is even — and that statement is about an infinity of things, though you can never run through the odd numbers one by one. So to know a universal is to know in some way everything placed under it. Hence the wise man, knowing all things in the way possible for man, knows what is said of all. He notes the consequence: God alone is wise without qualification, because to know all things simply is to know them in detail and in particular; man knows all things only in this imperfect way.

10. Second argument: difficult to know (“for they are furthest from the senses”) #

Aristotle says perhaps the most universal are most difficult to know, with the reason: they are furthest from the senses, and knowledge starts from the senses, which know the singular. He stresses the “perhaps”: Aristotle could have argued from the difficult to the first causes (everybody admits those are most difficult, maybe impossible), but he refuses, keeping the two lines separate.

• Difficulty noted: isn’t it easier to know this is a liquid than that it is water? He grants there is a question there, no problem raised.
• Confirmation from experience: students say philosophy is hard because it is “so abstract” — meaning very general, not particular and concrete like history or botany. The supermarket checkout magazines: all about the singular — Prince Charles, Princess Diana, actors and actresses — people have a hard time considering man or woman as such.
• The special problem, “just a little hint”: in some way the universal seems easier. In Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics] IV Aristotle quotes the common opinion of the Greek philosophers that whatever is must be somewhere, and what is nowhere does not exist — a property really of bodies, not of what is. Hence “where is God?” — the Soviet cosmonauts reporting there is no God up here; and Christians who think the same way. His own case: convinced the soul is immortal by philosophy and faith, yet he pictures the separated soul as air-like, body-shaped, as Dante’s souls whom he tries to embrace. If everything that is were a body or in a body, natural philosophy would be wisdom; only when you have reason to think something exists that is not a body do you realize being is more universal than body.
• The three places in natural philosophy where reason reaches something apart from body: Natural Hearing VII–VIII, from motion to the dependence of moved movers on an unmoved mover, which is not a body since a body does not move without being moved; On the Soul III, where Aristotle perfects Plato and reasons to the immortality of the human soul; and perhaps third, the greater mind behind the material world, not mixed with matter — Anaxagoras first began to see this, and had a good reason for it, to be seen later. Hence the science is called metaphysics, after the books on natural philosophy.
• Thomas in the Super Boethium De Trinitate, following Boethius: you cannot judge these things by the imagination; since we never think without images, and images are tied to bodies, we are inclined to think whatever is must be a body. His cousin who teaches philosophy at Laval, and his pious mother who could not understand that God has no body in his divine nature — you can’t transcend the imagination. So the most universal is difficult not only because removed from the senses but because you must transcend judging by imagination.

11. Third argument: the most universal is most certain (“those from fewer things are more certain”) #

The principle is from the Posterior Analytics: sciences from fewer things are more certain than those from addition, as arithmetic than geometry.

• Arithmetic vs. geometry: the point (Euclid: has no parts) is one and indivisible but adds position; compare three ones with three points, where you must ask where the third point falls — on the line between two, or off it. Confirmed by the geometers’ practice: in proving a theorem one must distinguish cases because lines fall in different positions; Heath’s notes and Proclus’ commentary on Book I remark that some commentators distinguish more cases than necessary, and that Euclid usually gives the hardest case and leaves the simpler to “us dumbskulls.” In arithmetic he never has that worry.
• The ladder: geometry → natural philosophy (the sphere or circle in matter: the earth flattened at the poles, the tyre flattened at the bottom under the car’s weight — geometry needn’t worry about these) → political philosophy (from what man is by nature — two-footed animal, like Aristotle and Plato — to what the American man is by custom, choice and chance). More things to take into account, less sure.
• Simple example: he can count this class surely; nobody can be sure of the number at the Super Bowl, the inauguration or the pro-life march; the number in Petersham is easier than in Worcester or New York.
• The application: descending from body → living body → animal → dog, you add things; ascending, you drop them. So the one who considers the most universal has the fewest things to take into account, even though it is said of all things, and is therefore most certain. He is more sure the whole is greater than one of its parts than that water is H2O — which he takes on human faith and has not yet succeeded in knowing. “Kind of subtle, right?” This will be reflected when the wise man defends the axioms.
• Further example: 28 is a number, and a perfect number — a number equal to the sum of everything that measures it evenly: 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14. But to know it is perfect you must also check that is all that measures it; so one is less sure of the perfect than of the number.

12. Aside: three is enough (“three seems to be what enough”) #

Peter’s three denials and the threefold “do you love me” that the commentators call fitting punishment; Christ praying three times; three days [in the tomb] — two would not have been enough. Mark Antony: “You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown” — the third refusal is complete. And what he tells the girls in his class: she may say no once, twice, but the third no he takes as final.

13. Close (“next week, now we will meet on Thursday”) #

Next: the reasoning from the last three marks to wisdom as knowledge of the cause of all. Class remains Thursday; his other students are moving from Monday to Wednesday (a conference, and violin lessons). Aside about Matt buying a violin and playing Bach.

His words #

• premium [ed.: proemium] — the opening of the Metaphysics, divided into two parts.
• philosophical modesty — Thomas’s name for Aristotle’s “perhaps.”
• the “we” — not the editorial we, nor Greek philosophers, but men in general.
• said of all / most universal — what is predicated of everything; the universal in predicating.
• cause of all / first cause — the universal in causing.
• universale in praedicando / universale in causando — Thomas’s Latin for the distinction.
• sapientis est ordinare — “it belongs to the wise man to order” (he says it as “sapientis est ordinare ordinare”).
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• three books about the soul [ed.: De Anima].
• perfect number — a number equal to the sum of everything that measures it evenly.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I, proemium, second reading (the six common opinions, and the arguments from the first three) — handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom,” p. 4.
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics, on this passage (the division of the fourth paragraph into two items; the six-part description).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII (universe as army); IV (what is said of all); books VI–X and XI–XIV (scope).
• Aristotle, Physics IV (whatever is must be somewhere); VII–VIII (unmoved mover).
• Aristotle, On the Soul III (immortality of the human soul; recalled in Thomas’s proemium to logic).
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (sciences from fewer things more certain).
• Aristotle, Politics (common good, government, citizen); Ethics (goods of soul, body, exterior; happiness).
• Thomas Aquinas, Super Boethium De Trinitate; proemium to logic [ed.: on the Posterior Analytics] (inferred).
• Plato, Phaedo; Heraclitus; Anaxagoras; Euclid with Heath’s notes and Proclus’ commentary on Book I.
• Hegel’s Logic; Spinoza; Marx’s fruit joke.
• Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida; Julius Caesar (Mark Antony on the Lupercal); Dante; Gospel of Matthew; Book of Wisdom.

His questions #

• Is it a common thought that the wise man knows all things? Yes — “wise guy,” “he’s got it all together,” Einstein, Homer and Shakespeare on human life as a whole.
• Do we think the wiser man is more sure of what he says? Yes — we go to him to confirm or reject what we suspect, as to a specialist.
• Isn’t there a paradox between knowing what is most difficult and being most certain? Yes; perhaps where he knows the most difficult and where he is most sure are not the same place — the mystery comes up later.
• Can you think without words? Do you know exactly what you are thinking before you say it? When you stop to consider, it is not so clear.
• How can anyone know all things, since things are infinite? By knowing a universal: “no odd number is even” is about an infinity of things.
• Which is more like wisdom — logic, ethics and politics, or natural philosophy? Each has a likeness to wisdom under different ones of the six marks; left open.
• What is the difference between what is said of all and what is the cause of all? Soldier is said of every soldier; MacArthur is said of no one but causes the whole army to move — Hegel confuses the two.
• Why does Aristotle say only “perhaps” the most universal are the most difficult? Because the first causes are far more difficult, and he refuses to reason from this mark to both conclusions.
• Why is the most universal knowledge the most certain? Because the fewer things one must take into account, the surer one is, and ascending in universality drops things.