Why Truth Belongs to the Wise Man: Wisdom, Truth, and the Balance of Hope and Fear (Metaphysics II, Reading 2)

Orientation #

He opens by recalling the first reading of Book II, on how man is toward knowing truth: truth is in some ways difficult, in others easy. Today he takes up the first half of the second reading, where Aristotle shows that the consideration of truth belongs most of all to the wise man, and then explains the plan of readings two through four. The previous class covered that first reading, on the ease and difficulty of truth (prev. lecture).

The class, in order #

1. Recap: the three ways truth is easy (“you can’t go through life… without bumping into some truth”) #

• (a) Whatever your occupation, you hit on some truth, however small: making hamburgers, keeping a pet cat. The truths differ by what each is exposed to.
• (b) A large amount of truth is easy through the efforts of many — “many hands make light work” (his mother).
• (c) The subtlest: some truth everyone sees and cannot avoid seeing. Cardinal Newman (he could not find the text; heard it from Jack Newman at TAC) on Aristotle’s Ethics: Aristotle clarifies thoughts everybody already has indistinctly and confusedly.
  • Example, the categories: ask a man in the street whether what a man is and the size of a man are the same thing — he says no; likewise a dog. So people already have substance and quantity, the first two categories.
• Aside: therefore “Aristotle’s philosophy is not Aristotle’s philosophy; it is philosophy, period.” With the moderns it is often their philosophy — something they have imagined, and it explodes from there.

2. Recap: two different causes of difficulty (“the cause of difficulty is in them”) #

• Natural philosophy and wisdom are both harder than geometry, but not for the same reason.
• Natural philosophy: the cause is in the things studied, which hardly exist. Motion, time: the past is not now, the future is not yet, and no amount of time can be present, since then before and after would be together. Augustine, Confessions: if nobody asks me what time is, I know; if someone asks, I don’t.
• Wisdom: the cause is not in the thing — these are the most illuminating things, but dwell in light inaccessible to us, because of the weakness of our mind. Since the cause illuminates the effect, the first cause is the most enlightening thing there is, yet most obscure and hidden to us — Thomas, Adoro te devote: “latens deitas”.
• He also recalls the end of the first reading: one man helps another, including those we disagree with and must refute. Example: Physics I on Parmenides and Melissus, who deny multiplicity and change — absurd positions, yet arguing against them develops our understanding.

3. Why “philosophy” names wisdom (“it is right to call philosophy the reasoned-out knowledge of the truth”) #

• Aristotle states what he will show. Note he calls wisdom simply philosophy.
• Etymology is not the whole story: in Plato and Aristotle “philosopher” means a lover of wisdom — that is the meaning, not merely the etymology; but “philosophy” names the knowledge the philosopher seeks and gets if he is good.
• Mark’s question answered: what knowledge would a lover of wisdom pursue? Wisdom. Hence wisdom most of all has a right to the name; Aristotle sometimes calls it first philosophy (first in dignity), sometimes simply philosophy.
• Plan of the proof: (i) truth belongs more to looking knowledge than to practical; (ii) among the looking sciences, wisdom most of all.

4. Truth belongs to looking knowledge, not practical (“the end of looking philosophy is truth itself”) #

He translates Greek theoretikē / Latin speculativa as “looking” knowledge, since “theoretical” and “speculative” carry other English senses (speculation = the stock market); but looking means trying to understand.

1. The end or goal is what is most important in anything.
2. The end of looking knowledge is truth itself; the end of practical knowledge is some doing or making. Example: the art of cooking may possess truths about food, but its end is to prepare dinner — “not to eat dinner” — not to know the truth about food.
3. Therefore truth much more pertains to looking knowledge.

• Second reason: men of action, even when they consider how things are, consider not the eternal but the relative and present. Example: the British Prime Minister — England has no permanent friends, only permanent interests. France is England’s enemy in the Napoleonic wars, its ally in both World Wars; we were allied with Saddam Hussein against Iran and later his enemy. Such truths are true sometimes and not others; the triangle’s angles equal two right angles always. What is always true is more true. (Practical corollary: be friends bearing in mind you may someday be enemies, and don’t oppose enemies too far — someday you may need each other.)

5. The principle: “that because of which a thing is such is itself more so” (“Propter quod unumquodque tale, et illud magis”) #

• His fuller statement: if the same belongs to two things, but to one of them because of the other, it belongs more to that other, the cause. (He notes the brief Latin formula and quips, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”)
• Simple examples: fire and the air around it are hot, the air because of the fire — the fire is hotter. Water and cloth are wet — the water is wetter. Sugar and coffee are sweet — the sugar is sweeter.
• Its earlier uses, recalled: in ethics, good is said of the end and of what is for the end, but of the latter because of the former — so health is better than taking medicine (also showable by induction, but this is the reason). In logic, premises and conclusion are known, but the conclusion because of the premises — the premises are more known; confirmation: otherwise why use them to prove? In geometry the unknown becomes known through the already known, which is therefore even more known. In mover and moved: with boxing gloves on, glove and boxer both knock you out, but the glove because of the boxer — so the boxer more so; put the world champion’s gloves on your hands and you’ll find the gloves are not the main cause of winning (unless there are weights in them).

6. Application: the first cause is most true (“it is necessary that the beginnings of the things that always are be most true”) #

1. True is said of the cause and of the effect, but of the effect because of the cause; so the cause is more true.
2. If that cause has a cause, the higher is more true; so the first cause is most true.
3. Wisdom is about the first causes (from the proemium); therefore wisdom is not merely about truth, like the other looking sciences, but about what is most true.

• Aristotle’s own wording as he reads it: “each thing by which the like in meaning belongs to others is itself the same most of all”, as fire is hottest and cause of heat in others; hence the cause of the effect’s being true is most true; “for they are neither just sometimes true, nor is there some cause of their being, but they [are cause] to others.”
• On “the beginnings of things that always are”: Aristotle seems to mean things like the angels, which always are and yet have God as cause of their necessity — a hint that he knows about creation, as Thomas would say.
• Corollary: “as each thing is toward being, so also is it toward truth.” Interesting: in the Old Testament God says “I am who am” — first in being; in the New, “I am the truth”. Aristotle as philosopher shows primacy in being and in truth both belong to the first cause.
• Conclusion to the original question: it is appropriate for the wise man to treat how man is toward truth, because the consideration of truth belongs most of all to him.

7. Why readings two through four prove there are first causes (“that assumes that there are first causes to be known”) #

• The argument just given presupposes that there are first causes; Thomas says the rest of the second reading and the third and fourth readings manifest this — “obviously it couldn’t be about the first causes if there is no such animal.” This is Thomas’s reason, and belongs to the main plot.
• His own additional way of looking at it: these middle readings belong to the subplot of the fourteen books of wisdom — a term borrowed from the study of plays (Shakespeare: two somewhat independent storylines with certain connections).
• The subplot began in Book I: after the proemium, Aristotle asks whether he can learn wisdom from his predecessors or must investigate himself, and so recounts what they said and why. But he kills a second bird with that stone: seeing whether they touched on any kind of cause besides the four found in natural philosophy. So Book I yields the positive result that there are only four kinds of cause.
• Book II adds: in each kind of cause there is a first cause. (Thomas in the Summa, proving God’s existence, comes back to Book II as one source for arguments for the first cause.)

8. The parallel with the Nicomachean Ethics (“there are two considerations of happiness”) #

• Ethics I draws a line around happiness (Greek perigraphē) and separates it from everything else: man’s own act according to human virtue throughout life. Books II–VIII (he says “two through eight”) treat the virtues and which are better; Book X returns to say more fully and completely what human happiness is.
• Likewise here: Books I–II reach the first causes, but imperfectly and without a clear understanding of what they are; Books III through X treat other things, being and one and so on, enabling a much fuller knowledge of the first cause in the last books.
• Contrast: Thomas in the Prima Secundae gives one rather full consideration of happiness and then the virtues; likewise Summa contra Gentiles III — no double treatment. Aristotle’s order is peculiar and interesting.
• So in the subplot “we’re not left rotating the wind” [unclear in recording — his own phrase, left as spoken]; we make real progress toward the first causes.

9. Hope and fear in the teacher and the learner (“I never admired Socrates more than at this time”) #

• Plato’s Phaedo: discussing the immortality of the soul, Socrates’ friends fall into despair and distrust of arguments; Phaedo says he never admired Socrates more. Socrates leads them out of despair and gives hope of finding truth by reasoning; then, when they grow overconfident, he says “whoa, whoa, whoa” — don’t be so bold, have some fear.
• It belongs to the teacher to strike a balance between hope and fear: without hope you give up; without fear you become overconfident and make stupid mistakes.
• Story: Kasurik asked Monsignor Dion a question in his office and found him talking far less confidently than in class; Dion answered, “it’s the business of the teacher to encourage the student” — but here was a man who did not need encouraging.
• The same balance elsewhere: a candidate for public office needs hope of election and fear of losing — the many-times-elected man is complacent while the challenger works the district, and comes back from Washington late to find the inroads made.
• Christian life: Thomas’s commentary on the Psalms, where hope of divine mercy and fear of divine justice are both mentioned — with only hope you say “he’s a good guy, he’ll see me through”; with only fear you despair. A spiritual advisor must judge which the soul needs; a woman who has had an abortion is inclined to despair and needs the mercy of God emphasized — whereas in church nowadays mercy and love are stressed and not justice.
• His own three teachers, in the order they came to dominate his thinking: Kasurik encouraged him most to think and work on things; De Koninck more caution than Kasurik; Dion more than De Koninck — a friend joked that Dion’s “principle of passion is fear”, and that his first reaction to a new idea was to reject it, so you really had to defend it. Good — but not for a beginner; had Dion been his first teacher he would have been overwhelmed by the difficulty and danger.
• Applied to Book I: seeing all one’s predecessors fail could lead to despair, but the positive result — four kinds of cause — gives hope; and now Book II gives good reasons for first causes in each kind. So Aristotle’s very pairing of truth’s difficulty and easiness serves this balance.
• Max Born (the physicist, Einstein’s correspondent in Berlin, later of the Copenhagen interpretation, who suggested to Heisenberg the mathematics for quantum mechanics and explained the meaning of the waves): in an autobiographical sketch he recalls that as a student his impression of philosophy classes was how great the questions were and how little progress had been made — so he turned to science. “Clear-minded Max Born” gave up because he thought no progress could be made.
• Augustine, On the Trinity: nowhere is it more fruitful to discover something, nowhere more dangerous to make a mistake.
• Closing aside: he brought his doctoral thesis outline to Monsignor Dion, who asked a few nice questions and proposed a small change of order; he saw at once it was better — so good that he could then write the thesis by himself — and agreed immediately. Dion replied, “No evidence.”

His words #

• “looking” knowledge / looking philosophy — his translation of Greek theōrētikē and Latin speculativa; knowledge whose end is just to understand. [ed.: theoretical / speculative]
• “Natural Hearing” — his title for the Physics.
• premium / proemium — the opening of Book I where what wisdom is, is set out.
• “Propter quod unumquodque tale, et illud magis” — if the same belongs to two things, but to one because of the other, it belongs more to that other.
• “Brevity is the soul of wit” — his aside on the brief Latin formula.
• perigraphē — drawing a line around something (Aristotle on happiness in Ethics I).
• subplot — his borrowed term for the thread on the causes running through Books I–II.
• latens deitas — hidden godhead (Thomas’s hymn), for the first cause’s obscurity to us.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics II, reading two, first half — the passage that philosophy is rightly called the reasoned-out knowledge of truth, down to “as each thing is toward being, so also toward truth” (Aquinas, Commentary, lectio 2).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I (proemium; the review of predecessors and the four causes); Books III–X and the last books.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I, II–VIII, X.
• Aristotle, Physics I (Parmenides, Melissus).
• Plato, Phaedo.
• Augustine, Confessions (on time); On the Trinity.
• Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote; Summa theologiae Ia (proofs of the first cause) and Ia-IIae (happiness); Summa contra Gentiles III; Commentary on the Psalms.
• Newman, The Idea of a University (inferred) — text not located by him.
• Max Born, autobiographical sketch; the Einstein–Born correspondence.

His questions #

• Why does wisdom have more right to the name “philosophy” than geometry, ethics or natural philosophy? Because its claim on truth is far greater; it is the knowledge the lover of wisdom seeks.
• What knowledge would a lover of wisdom pursue? (Mark’s question) Wisdom.
• Does time really exist? Hardly: the past is gone, the future is not yet, and no amount of time can be present.
• If the same belongs to two things, but to one because of the other, to which does it belong more? To the cause — fire hotter, water wetter, sugar sweeter.
• Which is better, health or taking medicine? Health, the end, since medicine is good because health is good.
• Which is more known, premises or conclusion? The premises, since the conclusion is known through them.
• Was it the glove or the boxer who knocked you out? Both, but more the boxer, since the glove acts because of him.
• If true is said of cause and effect, but of the effect because of the cause, what is most true? The first cause — hence the beginnings of things that always are are most true.
• Why is it appropriate for the wise man to discuss how man is toward truth? Because the consideration of truth belongs most of all to the wise man (Thomas: to justify what he did in the previous reading).
• What belongs to the teacher in the face of a difficult pursuit? To strike a balance between hope of reaching truth and fear of error.