Metaphysics Book 6, Part 1: Wisdom's Subject, and How the Making, Doing and Looking Sciences Are Divided

Orientation #

He situates the class as continuing Book Six of what he prefers to call the fourteen books of wisdom (or first philosophy), where Aristotle finishes stating in general what the subject of wisdom is and separates it from all other reasoned-out knowledge. He refers back to the proemium of Book One and to the opening of Book Four as things already seen.

The previous class closed by turning to the opening of Book Six, and the next takes up the threefold division of speculative philosophy.

The class, in order #

1. Opening aside on Lumen Ecclesiae (“it’s called the Lumen Ecclesiae”) #

After the prayer, he asks whether they have seen Paul VI’s apostolic letter Lumen Ecclesiae, written for the 700th anniversary of Thomas’s death (1274 / 1974). The title recalls what was said when Thomas died: the light of the Church has been extinguished. It is on the Vatican website under the last seven or eight popes, by category; some categories are still empty. “Pretty strong there about Thomas in the beginning.”

He also cringes at seeing “metaphysics” in bookstores next to occult readings — hence his preference for “the books of wisdom.”

2. Recalling the proemium: experience vs. art or science (“art or science tells you why it is so”) #

The point: Aristotle will use a truth from Book One to separate wisdom from the rest.

Order of knowing along the natural road from sense into reason: sensing, then memory of what is sensed, then experience (a collection of many memories of the same thing), then knowledge of the universal, when reason separates out what is common — this last being art or science in a broad sense.

• In doing, the man of experience may succeed better, because experience is knowledge of the singular and doing is always about the singular: you do not cure man, you cure this individual man.
• In knowing, art or science is superior: experience tells only that it is so; art or science tells why, i.e. the cause.

So every art or science, greatest and least, is about causes in some way — and a distinction among causes will divide them.

3. First paragraph: “the beginnings and causes of beings, as beings” #

Two things carried by this sentence.

(a) From Book Four: wisdom aims at the very first causes, and the more universal the cause, the more universal the subject of the science about it. Example: a science of the king and a science of the general — the king’s causality reaches all citizens, the general’s all soldiers; every soldier is a citizen, not every citizen a soldier, so “citizen” is said of more. Likewise the president against the head of one department. Hence wisdom, aiming at the cause whose causality extends to everything, has for subject what is said of all — being, i.e. whatever is in any way whatsoever, even what is only in the mind.

(b) “As beings”: all reasoned-out knowledge is of what belongs to a subject through itself (per se, “as such”), not of what happens to it. Geometry treats triangle as rectilineal plane figure contained by three straight lines, divides it by the lengths of its sides (equilateral, isosceles, scalene), and shows that its interior angles equal two right angles (Euclid I.32) — but never that a triangle is red, green or blue, though a triangle may happen to be so.

He notes the Greek behind “through itself” as kath’ hauto [transcript: “katholou” — ASR; he glosses it as “through itself, per se, as such”].

Then Aristotle exemplifies: there are causes of health and vigour (medicine), and beginnings, elements and causes of mathematical things (the geometer shows why opposite angles of intersecting straight lines are equal). Every science “partaking of understanding” is about causes and beginnings, some more precisely or certainly, some more superficially. For “science” he prefers the phrase reasoned-out knowledge or reasoned-out understanding.

4. Second paragraph: two differences between wisdom and every other science (“they single out some particular subject”) #

The other sciences draw a line around some particular subject, and are not about being simply nor as being, nor do they give an account of the what-it-is.

Two differences, on the example of arithmetic (Greek sense: its subject is numbers):

1. Wisdom’s subject is completely universal, being as being; arithmetic’s is much more particular.
2. Even that particular subject is considered in a particular way: the mathematician considers numbers as numbers, not as beings. To consider what kind of being numbers have would belong to wisdom.

Digression on “being” and “thing.” Both are completely universal and convertible — outside something there is only nothing — but they are not synonyms: being is taken from to be, thing from what it is. Compare the divine names: God’s wisdom and God’s justice are one and the same reality in the altogether simple God, yet “wise” and “just” are not synonyms; he notes this case is “a little different,” but something like it. In logic a definition is speech making known what a thing is. In God being and what-it-is will be the same; in creatures they are not — “but this part we don’t have to worry about.”

The what-it-is as a mark of wisdom. Book Seven is very much about what-it-is, and whether a thing and what it is are the same — “questions that nobody but the wise man asks.” (Aside: he was once assigned Book Seven for a TAC course; it is the last book he would choose and he never does it.) Euclid never asks whether a triangle and what a triangle is are the same; the biologist does not ask it of the dog. The wise man says that in material things a thing and what it is are not entirely the same, and that is why there can be many material things of one kind — two circles of exactly the same size, one here and one there, which involves the continuous, part outside of part. In immaterial things, which are not continuous, the what-it-is is not multiplied.

He adds that the other sciences take for granted that their subject exists, whether known by the senses, by our experience of human life, or by the imagination.

5. The three groups of reasoned-out knowledge, distinguished by end (“those are really the Greek and Latin words for what looking”) #

Before Aristotle’s new division, he recalls the division by end or purpose already used in Book One.

• Looking sciences — “speculative” (Latin) and “theoretical” (Greek) both mean looking; he prefers English, since “speculative” now carries stock-market and guessing connotations. Looking means trying to see, i.e. to understand; the end is just to understand what and why, with no end beyond the understanding itself.
• Doing sciences — ethics, domestics, political philosophy (Thomas distinguishes the three in his proemium to Aristotle’s Ethics; he offers to give them his translation). The end is not to know but to do what is good or better: for oneself (Shakespeare tonight rather than a comic book), for the family (when his children were growing up they judged it better to have no TV in the house, the father reading to them instead, so they get attached to words and reading), for the city or nation.
• Making sciences — the end is a product: a chair, table, glass, briefcase, pair of glasses, dinner, a car, a blackboard.

How the proemium showed wisdom to be a looking knowledge: philosophy began in wonder (Socrates in the Theaetetus), and wonder is simply the desire to know. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are” — you can do nothing about the star. Had it begun in hunger, thirst, the desire for health or warmth, it would have given rise to something practical — farming, fishing, digging wells. Because it arose from wonder about what things are and why, its end had to be wisdom, knowledge of the first cause. Hence also: liberal knowledge, not a human possession but a divine one, the best and most honourable because the most divine.

6. Aristotle’s new division: nature, choice, art (“he’s going to do something kind of tricky here”) #

The point: Aristotle divides by the cause aimed at — nature, choice, and art (art meaning right reason about making: carpentry, cooking, with definite rules and steps, not “art” in the artsy sense).

The puzzle he raises: nature is the cause of things studied in one looking science only, not of mathematics nor of wisdom, whose cause is ultimately God. How then does separating nature from choice and art separate the looking sciences as a group?

Answer by a fortiori. Homely comparison: is New England part of Canada? Maine and Vermont are the states that touch Canada (Vermont = “green mountains”; Maine, he thinks, a province of France the British contended over in the Hundred Years’ War). He checks with the class whether New Hampshire borders Canada and concludes it does not — to reach Canada he must go up through Maine or Vermont. So if even Maine and Vermont are not part of Canada, a fortiori Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island are not.

Applied: nature is the beginning and cause of motion and rest in that in which it is first, as such and not by happening. Motion or change resembles choice, action and making. Mathematical things are defined without matter and without change: the geometrical sphere is not made of glass or marble; the geometrical cube has no melting or freezing point, though an ice cube does. Wisdom is about things that do not depend on matter for existence and ultimately have no matter in them — indeed, “natural philosophy would be wisdom if there were no immaterial things.” So natural philosophy is the looking science closest to doing and making; if even it is separate from them, mathematics and wisdom are more so. Aristotle can then turn round and distinguish mathematics and first philosophy from natural philosophy.

Second illustration of the same procedure: the animals attached to the ocean floor that look like plants but are classed as animals because, stuck with a pen, they seem to feel pain — if even they are not plants, a fortiori the dog, cat and horse are not.

7. Third paragraph: nature is within, art and choice are outside (“nature loves to hide”) #

Natural science is about a particular kind of being, such substance as has in itself a beginning of motion and rest (as in the eight books of natural hearing [ed.: Physics]). Artificial things have no source of motion as artificial: the wooden bench burns and the stone statue does not, not because the one is a bench and the other a statue — that is by art — but because of the natural material. The inner cause may be active, as in the growing of the tree, or passive, as in the burning of the tree.

Hence Heraclitus: nature loves to hide — the first reason being that it is within, and what is within is hidden. (Aside: a science book in the bookshop titled Nature Loves to Hide; he looked to see whether the author acknowledged Heraclitus, and he did not — the line has become common coin.)

By contrast: the carpenter’s art is not inside the chairs and doors he makes, it is an extrinsic cause; and my choices are not inside my actions. So nature is a cause distinct from choice and from art.

Choice is the basic cause of what ethics, domestics and politics study — “election” comes from the Latin for choice. He defines marriage as the stable union of a man and woman by mutual choice for the sake of children; Aristotle defines moral virtue as a habit with choice, in the middle towards us, as determined by right reason — so a habit of choosing, and vice likewise. Temperance: habitually choosing to eat moderately and what is appropriate in the circumstances; by choosing so many times one acquires the habit. One could say practical philosophy is about things by custom too, but customs arise from choices.

8. How the making sciences are subdivided (“by the matter in which or out of which they make”) #

He notes Aristotle does not subdivide the doing sciences here, since it is not relevant to his purpose; but it is helpful to recall how each group is divided — and “it’s kind of a subtle thing,” the ways are quite different.

He puts the question to the class (“do you distinguish them by what they make?”) and corrects the answer: not first by what is made but by the matter in which or out of which they make. Evidence:

• Two chairs, one wooden and one metal: the complete carpenter makes the wooden chair, the wooden table, a wooden bed, even a wooden house; the metal worker makes the metal chair. (He once had an office with a wooden desk on one side and a metal desk on the other — a nice setup for the example.)
• Not every difference of matter makes a different art: the carpenter works different kinds of wood. The difference must be one requiring different tools and a different way of working the matter.
• His brother-in-law the carpenter uses hammer and saw; his wife and daughter making a dress use scissors and needle. Neither cuts wood with scissors nor nails a dress together.
• His father’s company: in the forge shop they heat and bend metal; you do not heat and bend wood that way. You weld metal, but glue, screw or nail wood. The glass blower’s tools are different again. Cooking: you roll out dough; roll out a steel bar and “it ain’t going to work.”

Same holds for the fine arts. It is not one art that writes comedies and paints happy faces and another that writes tragedies and paints sad faces: one art works in line and colour and can do both, one art of fiction works in words and if perfect can do both tragedy and comedy. In the opening of the Poetics Aristotle distinguishes the imitative arts first by that in which they imitate — the painter in line and colour, the musician in sound — and only more particularly by what they imitate.

Reason why this is fitting: in a making science you are trying to get an idea out of your mind into matter. So the matter divides.

9. How the doing sciences are subdivided (“distinguished ultimately by the whose good”) #

Not by matter but by the end — ultimately by whose good, since choice is choice of means to an end already had in mind (as at a restaurant: you go there to be fed, then choose from the menu).

Three cases in his own name:

• After dinner, Red Sox or the Golden Chain on St. John? — a choice for the good of Duane Berquist as an individual; perhaps he really does need the relaxation. (Thomas calls this part monastic, from monas, one — not “monastic” in the usual sense; we usually call it ethics, from the word for custom. Then domestics, then politics.)
• Reading The Roly-Poly Pudding (Beatrix Potter) aloud is not better for Berquist than Shakespeare or the Golden Chain, but it is appropriate for the children at that age and it is very important that the father read to them — a choice for the good of the family, whose chief good is the children.
• At election time, voting the pro-life rather than the pro-death candidate: here one should not consider what benefits Berquist most, nor even the family, but what is better for the country.

Thomas’s point, added: not every choice a man makes, though he is man, father and citizen, is made as a citizen. Choosing what town or part of town to live in is made with the good of the family in mind, not the country; choosing from the breakfast menu is made simply for the good of eating. The reason: the family, and a fortiori the city or nation, does not have the unity an individual has — my arm has that unity with me, but what I do as an individual I do not always do as father or as citizen.

10. The looking sciences are the reverse of the making (“just the reverse”) #

Closing statement, not yet developed: the making sciences aim to get an idea out of the mind into matter; the looking sciences aim to get something into the mind — and since mind and reason are immaterial (as known from the third book about the soul), in a way to get it out of matter. The class breaks off here.

His words #

• the fourteen books of wisdom — his preferred name for the Metaphysics, also “first philosophy.”
• reasoned-out knowledge / reasoned-out understanding — his phrase in place of “science.”
• through itself, per se, as such — what belongs to a subject as that subject, not by happening.
• looking sciences — [ed.: speculative/theoretical]; “looking” is the plain English of both the Latin and the Greek.
• doing sciences — ethics, domestics, politics; end is to do what is good or better.
• making sciences — [ed.: the productive arts]; also “mechanical” or “servile” arts.
• monastic — Thomas’s name for the first doing science, from monas, one; what we call ethics.
• natural hearing — [ed.: the Physics], “the eight books.”
• art — right reason about making, with definite rules teachable to everybody; not “art in this artsy sense.”

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics VI, paragraphs 1–3 (opening: “the beginning and the causes of beings are sought… as beings”; every science about causes; the other sciences single out a subject; nature as beginning of motion and rest in itself).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I, proemium (sense–memory–experience–universal; wonder; wisdom as looking, liberal, divine knowledge).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IV, opening (the first causes and the universality of the subject).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics VII (whether a thing and what it is are the same).
• Aristotle, Physics (definition of nature) (inferred).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (moral virtue as habit with choice; choice of means) (inferred).
• Aristotle, Poetics, opening (imitative arts divided by that in which they imitate).
• Aristotle, On the Soul III (immateriality of mind) (inferred).
• Thomas Aquinas, proemium to the commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics (monastic, domestics, politics).
• Euclid, Elements I.32; opposite angles of intersecting lines.
• Plato, Theaetetus (philosophy begins in wonder).
• Heraclitus, “nature loves to hide.”
• Paul VI, Lumen Ecclesiae.

His questions #

• Does the causality of the king extend further than that of the general? Yes — and so “citizen” is said of more than “soldier”; hence the science of the more universal cause has the more universal subject.
• Are “being” and “thing” synonyms, since they are convertible? No: being is taken from to be, thing from what it is — as “wise” and “just” are not synonyms though one reality in God.
• Does Euclid ever ask whether a triangle and what a triangle is are the same? No — only the wise man asks that.
• If nature is the cause only of what natural philosophy studies, how does distinguishing nature separate all the looking sciences from doing and making? By a fortiori: natural philosophy is the looking science closest to motion and making; if even it is separate, mathematics and wisdom are more so.
• Is the carpenter’s art inside the chairs he makes? Are my choices inside my actions? No to both — art and choice are extrinsic causes; nature alone is within, which is why nature loves to hide.
• Are the making sciences distinguished by what they make? No — first by the matter in which or out of which they make, when that matter requires its own tools and way of being worked.
• Are ethics, domestics and politics distinguished by a different kind of matter? No — by the end, ultimately by whose good: the individual’s, the family’s, or the city’s or nation’s.