Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado) #

A course on Aristotle’s Metaphysics given in Colorado in 2006: what wisdom is and why “metaphysics” is the wrong name for it, the division of the fourteen books, Book IX on ability and act, and the questions with which the science begins.

57 episodes, about 51 hours

Listen #

• Podcast feed

Classes #

Class 1 #

Part 1 of 3 · Why ‘Metaphysics’ Is the Wrong Name: Wisdom, Reason and Shakespeare’s Definition of Reason #

52 min Berquist argues the traditional name “Metaphysics” obscures what Aristotle actually calls this science, then turns to Hamlet’s soliloquy to define reason itself as “large discourse, looking before and after.”

Part 2 of 3 · Looking Before and After: The Senses of Order, Distinction and Error, and Two Ways of Dividing a Book #

52 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s several senses of “before and after”—temporal, in being, in reason, in goodness, and cause before effect—then distinguishes editorial from logical division of a text before locating the proemium of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

Part 3 of 3 · Custom as Tyrant, Method and Matter, and the Logical Division of the Fourteen Books of Wisdom #

47 min Berquist maps the fourteen books of Aristotle’s Metaphysics into proemium and tractatus, then turns to Physics II and his handout “Note for Word Cause” to warn against letting one method become a tyrant over the mind.

Class 2 #

Part 1 of 2 · Metaphysics Book Nine, Reading 1: Distinguishing Kinds and Senses, and the Meanings of Ability #

67 min Berquist opens Book Nine of Aristotle’s Metaphysics with Aquinas’s commentary, tracing why potency must be studied after substance and how Aristotle divides potency into active, passive, and resistive senses.

Part 2 of 2 · Ability and Beginning: Mover and Matter, and Thomas’s Texts on Power (with Shakespeare and Mozart Asides) #

47 min Berquist returns to the division of “ability” in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, linking active and passive power to mover and matter, then tests it against the Physics’ account of “beginning”—before wandering into Shakespeare and Mozart.

Class 3 #

Part 1 of 3 · Metaphysics IX, Lectio 2: Natural vs. Rational Ability, and Nature vs. Will #

62 min Berquist works through lectio 2 of Book Nine of Aquinas’s Metaphysics commentary, tracing Aristotle’s line between natural abilities fixed on one effect and rational powers that reach to contraries.

Part 2 of 3 · Reason and Will as Natures: Thomas’s Two Solutions and the Man/Animal Analogy #

66 min Berquist asks how “nature” can be distinguished from reason and will, given that reason and will are themselves natures—working chiefly through De Veritate q. 22, a. 5 and the man/animal analogy.

Part 3 of 3 · Names Equivocal by Reason: Six Kinds and the Senses of ‘Nature’ #

40 min Berquist lays out six kinds of “equivocal by reason” naming from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, then applies the scheme to trace how “nature” shifts from birth to intrinsic source of motion to form.

Class 4 #

Part 1 of 3 · Metaphysics IX: Refuting the Megarians on Ability and Act #

45 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX with Aquinas’s commentary, laying out the four arguments against the Megarians’ claim that potency exists only when actually exercised.

Part 2 of 3 · Metaphysics IX: Motion as the Most Known Act, and Heraclitus and Hegel #

49 min Berquist reads Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX on potency and act, asking why “act” takes its name from motion even though motion is the least fully actual kind of act—then sets Heraclitus and Hegel against Aristotle on becoming versus being.

Part 3 of 3 · Metaphysics IX: The Second Error, ‘Everything Is Possible’, and the Definition of the Possible #

46 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX (with Aquinas’s commentary, lectio 3) on two opposite errors about possibility: that everything is necessary, and that everything is possible—even an incommensurable diagonal becoming commensurable.

Class 5 #

Part 1 of 2 · Metaphysics IX: How Rational and Non-Rational Powers Pass into Act (Choice as Lord) #

45 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX on how powers pass into act, contrasting non-rational powers that act automatically with rational powers that require choice to determine between contraries.

Part 2 of 2 · Shakespeare’s Definition of Reason, the Exhortation to Use Reason, and Wisdom #

61 min Berquist reads Hamlet’s “godlike reason” speech as a real definition—reason as discourse, knowing one thing through another—and unpacks Shakespeare’s five-part case for why reason must be used.

Class 6 #

Part 1 of 3 · Native Words vs. Imported Words, and Aristotle’s Examples of Act (Metaphysics IX) #

63 min Berquist explains why he favors native English words like “before” and “ability” over imported terms like “prior” and “potency,” then turns to Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX on how act is known only through examples, not definition.

Part 2 of 3 · Act Cannot Be Defined: Induction by Proportion, Descartes and Locke, and the Love of Wisdom #

54 min Berquist tackles why “act” cannot be simply defined, reading from handouts on man’s end and on dividing Shakespeare’s plays to show how proportional likeness carries the term across motion, form, and happiness in Aristotle’s Ethics.

Part 3 of 3 · Defining Motion by Act: Imperfect Abstraction and Two Kinds of Distinction #

51 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s definition of motion as “the act of what is able, insofar as it is able to be,” using the handout Note on the Eight Books of Natural Hearing to ask what kind of word “act” is.

Class 7 #

Part 1 of 2 · Act as Form and Act as Operation: Metaphysics IX, Perfect vs. Imperfect Act, and Happiness #

61 min Berquist works through Metaphysics IX on the analogical senses of “act,” then draws the key distinction between imperfect act (motion, like walking home) and perfect act (operation, like seeing)—and asks why happiness must be the latter.

Part 2 of 2 · Thomas on Operation, Motion and Doing: Immanent vs. Transitive Action #

59 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s threefold division of act in Summa Contra Gentiles III.22, separating transitive action on another thing from the immanent operation—understanding, sensing, willing—that perfects the agent itself.

Class 8 · Prior and Posterior: The Order of Thomas’s Proofs, and Aristotle’s Physics on Reason’s Look Before and After #

62 min Berquist compares the orders of Thomas’s Summa Theologiae and Summa Contra Gentiles, then turns to Aristotle’s Physics on “prior and posterior,” illustrating reason’s look before and after with examples from geometry, Lincoln, and Plato’s Apology.

Class 9 #

Part 1 of 3 · Substantial vs. Accidental Form, Existence as Act, and the Transcendentals #

38 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Physics I (via Aquinas’s commentary, lectio 13) and a course handout to distinguish substantial from accidental form, then extends that distinction to existence and essence themselves.

Part 2 of 3 · When Is a Thing Truly in Ability? Proximate Matter and ‘One Step Away’ #

38 min Berquist works through Metaphysics IX, chapter 7, asking when matter counts as truly “in potency” to a form rather than merely remotely disposed toward it, with examples from medicine, geometry, and house-building.

Part 3 of 3 · Denominative Speech, Nature’s Steps, and the Order of the Acts of Reason #

70 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Metaphysics on why things coming from matter are named after their proximate matter—“wooden,” not “earthy”—then turns to Aquinas’s ordering of the three acts of reason.

Class 10 · Metaphysics IX, Lectio Seven: Actuality is Prior to Potency in Definition, Time, and Substance #

21 min Berquist works through lectio seven of Book Nine of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, tracing the proof that actuality is prior to potency in definition, in time, and in substance.

Class 11 #

Part 1 of 2 · Act Before Ability: The First Cause as Pure Act and the Sophistical Objection (Metaphysics IX) #

49 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s argument in Metaphysics IX that act is prior to potency, extending it—via Aquinas’s Summa Contra Gentiles I.16-17—into the case for God as pure act and first cause.

Part 2 of 2 · Before and After in the Acts of Reason: Guessing, Thinking Out, and Discourse #

57 min Berquist traces the orderings hidden inside reasoning itself: guessing before knowing, thinking about before thinking out, discourse before seeing a “before and after”—working through Aristotle and Plato’s Meno, Phaedo, Euthyphro, and Symposium.

Class 12 #

Part 1 of 3 · Act Before Ability in Perfection: Metaphysics IX, Readings 8-9 #

65 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Metaphysics IX (readings 8-9) with Aquinas’s commentary to show why act is prior to potency in perfection, tracing the argument from form and end to the case of incorruptible versus corruptible beings.

Part 2 of 3 · Good, Bad and Privation: Why Act Is Better than Ability #

51 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book Theta to show why actuality outranks potency—a power for health is inseparably also a power for sickness, but the actuality itself is not so mixed—and from this builds Aristotle’s account of evil as privation rather than positive being.

Part 3 of 3 · Bad as Non-Being, Faith and the Road to Knowing #

49 min Berquist reads the third division of Book Nine of Aristotle’s Metaphysics to argue that evil is privation, not being—then turns to Plato’s Protagoras and the “road” metaphor to explain how trust in a guide yields real knowledge.

Class 13 #

Part 1 of 3 · Act Before Ability: Knowability, Truth and the End of Book IX #

55 min Berquist finishes Book IX of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, arguing through Lectio 10 and 11 that act is more knowable and more true than potency, using badness as privation and simple geometrical examples.

Part 2 of 3 · First Cause, First Being, and the Order of the Books of Wisdom #

66 min Berquist traces how Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Aquinas’s Summa Contra Gentiles I.16 both link a “first being” to a “first cause,” and asks what “before” and “necessary” must mean for that link to hold.

Part 3 of 3 · Can Objections Undo Faith or the Axioms? Introducing Book II and How Man Knows Truth #

37 min Berquist asks whether an unanswerable objection can justify abandoning a matter of faith or a self-evident axiom, then opens Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book II on whether truth is easy or hard for man to know.

Class 14 #

Part 1 of 2 · Dispositions of the Will for the Philosopher, and Hope and Fear in Pursuing Truth (Metaphysics II intro) #

67 min Berquist opens Metaphysics Book Two by asking what dispositions of will a person needs to pursue truth—love of wisdom, hope, fear, docility, humility—drawing on Plato’s Phaedo along the way.

Part 2 of 2 · Is Truth Easy or Difficult? Metaphysics II: Three Ways It Is Easy, Two Causes of Difficulty, and Gratitude to Predecessors #

72 min Berquist reads the opening of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book II, asking why the pursuit of truth is both easy and difficult—and why we owe gratitude even to predecessors who erred.

Class 15 #

Part 1 of 3 · Truth and the Cause: Why Wisdom Most Considers Truth, and the Beginning of the First-Cause Argument #

53 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s commentary on Metaphysics Book Two, showing why wisdom is most concerned with truth, then opens Book Two’s third reading on the search for a first cause in each kind of cause.

Part 2 of 3 · No Infinite Regress in the Causes: The Middle, the Moved Mover, and Matter’s Downward Direction #

47 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s argument against infinite regress in the causes, Metaphysics Book II, chapter 2, using the images of a train of pulled cars and a chain of desired means, with Aquinas’s commentary as guide.

Part 3 of 3 · Roads of Reasoned-Out Knowledge, the Unmoved Mover as Good Itself, and Q&A on God’s Operations #

57 min Berquist reads Aristotle’s Physics VIII with Aquinas’s commentary on whether the chain of material causes can regress infinitely, then fields questions linking the unmoved mover to God as the Good itself.

Class 16 #

Part 1 of 2 · Metaphysics II, Reading 4: Why There Must Be a First End and a First Form #

61 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s commentary on Metaphysics II, following the four arguments proving that final causes and formal causes cannot regress infinitely, with help from Porphyry’s Isagoge.

Part 2 of 2 · Metaphysics II, Reading 5: The Roads in Our Knowledge and the Natural Road #

69 min Berquist finishes Aristotle’s case against infinite regress among causes and opens Metaphysics II’s discussion of the “roads” by which human knowing moves from sense to wisdom.

Class 17 #

Part 1 of 3 · The Three Roads of Knowledge: Natural, Common and Private Ways of Proceeding #

63 min Berquist works through the three “roads” of speculative knowledge, reading his handout on Physics I and Aquinas’s commentary, with Euclid’s Elements as the model of reason’s common path.

Part 2 of 3 · Custom and Method: Aristotle on Fitting the Way of Proceeding to the Matter, and Modern Certitude #

46 min Berquist closes Book II with Aristotle on why custom, not nature, makes people demand mathematical proof, sensible examples, or poetic authority even where the subject matter won’t bear it.

Part 3 of 3 · Likenesses for Method: Tools, Senses, Food and Fiction; Learning One Word at a Time #

49 min Berquist shows that method, certitude, and enjoyment must fit their proper matter—illustrated by a craftsman’s tools, the senses, and cultivated taste in wine, food, and fiction—then applies the principle to how Aristotle’s Metaphysics locates its own proper method.

Class 18 #

Part 1 of 3 · Custom, the Modern World, and the Mercantile City, Mathematical Science and Democracy as Its Sources #

54 min Berquist opens on custom’s grip on thought before laying out three roots of the modern world: the mercantile city, mathematical science, and democratic equality — drawing on Aquinas, McNeill, Aristotle’s Physics, Heisenberg, and Tocqueville.

Part 2 of 3 · Tocqueville, Democratic Customs, and the Influence of Science on Descartes, Kant and Marx #

53 min Berquist traces how Tocqueville’s account of democratic customs shapes fiction and religion, then follows the same currents into science fiction, Adam Smith and Marx’s economics, and Kant’s second preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, closing with Heraclitus’s “Royal Fragment.”

Part 3 of 3 · Freedom, Equality and the Moderns: Nature as Measure, Self-Rule of the Mind, and Discussion #

44 min Berquist traces how the modern loves of equality and freedom—in Locke, Rousseau, Hegel, and Sartre—replaced nature as the ground of thought, then tests the “think for yourself” ethos against Anaxagoras’s fragment on Mind.

Class 19 #

Part 1 of 2 · Philosophy of Looking and Doing, and the Proemium to Wisdom: Wonder, Natural Desire to Know, and the Road from Sense to Experience #

66 min Berquist opens Aristotle’s Metaphysics with Aquinas’s commentary, tracing “all men by nature desire to know” from sensation and memory up to wisdom, comparing its prologue to that of the Nicomachean Ethics.

Part 2 of 2 · From Experience to Art and Science: Knowing Why, Architectonic Arts, and the Aim of Wisdom (Metaphysics I, 1) #

72 min Berquist opens Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book Alpha, chapter 1, tracing the climb from sensation and memory through experience to art and science, and asking why we call the man of art wiser than the man of mere experience.

Class 20 #

Part 1 of 2 · The Six Marks of the Wise Man and the Universal ‘Said of All’ vs. Cause of All (Hegel, Plato) #

64 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s six marks of the wise man in Metaphysics I, showing how three point to wisdom as knowledge “said of all” and three to wisdom as knowledge of “the cause of all.”

Part 2 of 2 · Certitude, the First Causes, and Which Philosophy Is Most Like Wisdom (Logic, Nature, Politics) #

46 min Berquist continues his commentary on the proemium of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, arguing wisdom must be the most certain science, then tests logic, natural philosophy, and political philosophy against the six marks of the wise man.

Class 21 · Doubting Well Before Understanding Well: Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Anaxagoras’s Nous, and Heraclitus’s Strife #

30 min Berquist opens Aristotle’s third reading on the Metaphysics, arguing that one must doubt well before understanding well—tracing the point through Anaxagoras’s fragment on nous and Heraclitus on strife.

Class 22 #

Part 1 of 3 · Metaphysics Book Three: The Fourteen Questions Around Plato’s Position #

64 min Berquist works through the fourteen dialectical questions opening Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book III, tracing how they’re arranged around Plato’s views on separated universals and mathematical objects.

Part 2 of 3 · Books Two to Four: Truth, Dialectic, Being as Being and the Axioms #

53 min Berquist works through Metaphysics Books II–IV: the fourteen dialectical questions of Book III narrowing to the status of mathematical objects, wisdom’s claim on truth in Book II, and being qua being’s need to defend the axiom of non-contradiction in Book IV.

Part 3 of 3 · The Great Turnaround, the Order of the Sciences and Preview of Book Nine #

52 min Berquist traces the “great turnaround” in Aristotle’s Metaphysics—how the order of wisdom’s three objects set out in the proemium and Book Four gets reversed by the time they’re actually treated in Books Four through Fourteen.

Class 23 #

Part 1 of 3 · Aristotle’s Proemium: Wonder, Liberal Knowledge, and the Most Divine Wisdom #

61 min Berquist works through the proemium of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, showing why wisdom must be speculative, liberal, humanly unattainable in full, and the most divine of the sciences.

Part 2 of 3 · Wonder, Curiosity, and the Proemium: Q&A on Providence, Free Will, and the Central Question #

50 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s teaching that philosophy begins in wonder, then opens the floor for a wide-ranging Q&A touching providence, chance, free will, and Aristotle’s Categories, chapter 4.

Part 3 of 3 · Poetry, Scripture, and Wonder: Philomuthos vs. Philosopher, and the Historian’s View #

47 min Berquist separates Aristotle’s philomythos from the philosopher, and both from the poet as “maker,” working through Metaphysics Alpha and Lambda, the Poetics, and Aquinas’s Summa I, q.1.

Class 24 #

Part 1 of 2 · Why Dialectic Comes First: Contradiction, Right Questions and Universal Doubt in Aristotle’s Wisdom, Book III #

45 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book III, asking why wisdom must begin with dialectic—a full survey of contradictions—before it can proceed at all.

Part 2 of 2 · The Nine Questions on What Wisdom Is About: Causes, Axioms, Material and Immaterial Substances, Accidents #

43 min Berquist works through Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book III, tracking the puzzles wisdom must resolve — whether one science covers all four causes, the axioms of demonstration, and material versus immaterial substance.