Custom as Tyrant, Method and Matter, and the Logical Division of the Fourteen Books of Wisdom

Orientation #

The recording begins mid-sentence in the morning session; he refers back to “the second book there” (Metaphysics II) on custom and method and to Romeo and Juliet’s prologue as the model of proemium-plus-work (prev. lecture). He announces “now it’s time for lunch” and the afternoon session resumes with the “logical and understandable division of the fourteen books of wisdom.” The verified-source system matched 46 minutes to his handout “Note for Word Cause” and Metaphysics V (Aquinas lectio 3); the transcript itself, however, treats Books I–III of the Metaphysics and never mentions Book V, so the notes follow the transcript. The previous class set up the proemium and structure of the Metaphysics; the next opens Book Nine.

The class, in order #

1. One method as tyrant: private good against the common good of the mind (“pursuing the private good rather than the common good”) #

Point: insisting on one method everywhere rules the mind for the private good of one discipline rather than for the common good of reason as a whole.

1. A method suitable for some things may not be suitable for others; if you insist on it everywhere you are cut off from knowing other things the way they should be known — the whole life of the mind is harmed for the good of one part.
2. Aristotle on the Pythagoreans “in the third book on the universe” [ed.: De Caelo]: they wanted to proceed everywhere as in mathematics, so they wanted beginnings that justify their consequences, not hypotheses; Aristotle: not suitable here — here you need a beginning justified by its consequences.
3. Huygens, beginning of his treatise on light: nice contrast between principles that justify their conclusions and principles justified by their conclusions.
4. We are in the reverse position: immersed in the customs of experimental science, we think every beginning is a hypothesis to be tested by its consequences, and so are cut off from any knowledge that does not proceed that way.

• The dominant method “feeds itself” and “takes away all the other life of the mind” — it is “enthralling”; “beautiful the way he says that.”
• Same with an error become customary: what follows from the false thing is taken as true, and true things against it are denied.

2. Titles as custom: Natural Hearing, Places, Wisdom (“Custom is a tyrant there”) #

Point: customary titles impede rather than illuminate the works.

• “Physics”: today means one experimental science, so “Aristotle’s physics vs. Newton’s physics” is an absurd comparison (compare rather the book “on the universe” with Newton, a little). The English word does not even show “nature”; the Greek says “Natural Hearing” — the eight books of Natural Hearing: you hear about nature, from nature as teacher; hearing is the act of learning from another; what you hear is very close to what you naturally know. That title illuminates the whole work.
• Albert the Great on the title of the “Dialectica”/Topics: from topos, place; “about places” — “if you understand the title of the work about places, it illuminates the whole work.” Does “Topics”? No; but at a conference people would not know what you mean.
• So he prefers “the fourteen books of Wisdom” to “Metaphysics”: most people don’t know what “metaphysics” means; Kant’s metaphysics, Aristotle’s, someone else’s, taught as one course — “the name is tyrannizing over them.”
• Shakespeare “hit the nail on the head”: custom the tyrant — not necessarily, but often. “Why do you do it that way?” — “We’ve always done it that way.”
• Student: Thomas also praises custom strongly at times. Reply: yes; Shakespeare too — Hamlet to his mother about the uncle’s bed, but there custom is toward virtue. Student: are there good intellectual customs? Reply: reading Thomas and Aristotle, asking “what does Aristotle say about this?” — you can’t avoid custom; but most intellectual customs are bad.
• Novalis: the more poetic the truer. Max Born: deceived as a young man by the clarity of mathematics, later saw it was a mistake; Heisenberg saw it too. Natural, because mathematics is the first thing you can really do, and its clarity and certitude are one — so one fails to distinguish.
• Why a liberal education: to be introduced to many matters with different ways of proceeding, so the mind is not enslaved to one. Aside: college committees, each professor proceeding as in his own discipline; businessmen far more orderly in meetings than professors.

3. Method must fit the matter: the craftsman’s tools (“the tools and the way of working have to fit the matter”) #

Point (answering a student: is there a method for choosing the method?): it is in Book Two — the method has to fit the matter; Boethius adds the relation of our mind to the matter.

• Aristotle’s likeness in the Nicomachean Ethics to the mechanical/servile arts: his wife making a dress does not take hammer and saw; his brother-in-law making a table does not sew boards; the glassblower; his father’s forge shop heats metal to bend it, the woodshop does not. Wood, metal, glass, cloth require different tools and ways of working — so a separate art for each.

4. Each kind of work has its own pleasure (“you shouldn’t seek the same kind of pleasure”) #

Point: as in the imitative arts, each kind of work yields its proper pleasure, which one must be taught to seek — analogous to Aristotle on the sciences.

• C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: a form of fiction we are not accustomed to, longer-lived than the novel, which we have to be taught to approach; his Preface to Paradise Lost, on how to read that poem. Fielding’s preface to Joseph Andrews explains the kind of work so the reader will not expect a pleasure other than the one intended.
• Novel vs. lyric vs. epic: different pleasures. His own experience: could not get into Homer (Lattimore) the first time; years later, “after a night or two, I couldn’t put it down.”
• Sherlock Holmes vs. the Iliad: regardless of which pleasure is greater, they are different kinds. Tragedy vs. comedy: Aristotle on those who want tragedy to end happily; 18th-century King Lear with Cordelia surviving and marrying Edgar.
• Advice column: the boy who wants strawberry-flavored lipstick — “buy a lollipop”: he is seeking the pleasure of a lollipop. Ice cream on filet mignon: you miss the pleasure appropriate to the filet.
• Wanting to visualize music (Fantasia): the pleasure of music is in the ear; ear to a painting is equally ridiculous. Wine drunk like root beer or cranberry juice: you must be taught how to drink wine.
• Chefs arranging the plate: it helps a little, but the pleasure of food is not primarily in how it looks. Aside: Warren’s Indian restaurant vs. his preferred Thai (Thai drew on Chinese and Indian). “Now it’s time for lunch.”

5. Proemium and tractatus; why the rest of Book One comes first (“the logical and understandable division of the fourteen books”) #

Point: the fourteen books divide into proemium (first part of Book One) and tractatus, “the drawing out of the work” (rest of Book One to Book Fourteen); understanding the division shows the reason for the order, as prologue before play in Romeo and Juliet.

• The tractatus divides into the rest of Book One vs. Books Two to Fourteen: in the rest of Book One he examines what predecessors said about causes, especially first causes, to see if it was sufficient; it was not, so he must investigate — “not without their help.” Argument for the order:

1. By the end of the proemium you know wisdom aims at the very first causes and is the best, most honorable, most desirable knowledge.
2. There are two ways to acquire knowledge you lack: learn it from one who has it, or discover it yourself.
3. It is more reasonable (easier, quicker — student’s answer) to learn from one who already knows, if there is such a person.
4. To try to discover it yourself when someone already knows it would show not a desire to know but a desire for the glory of discovering — “a bit sophistical.”

• Same procedure in the other wisdom, political philosophy: Politics Book Two examines the praised Greek governments (Sparta) and those proposed in words (Socrates in the Republic), and shows their real defects before saying something on his own — lest he seem sophistical, showing off. Modern philosophers don’t usually do this; it shows Aristotle’s humility. This is why Aristotle wrote no geometry: he could learn it from the Greeks “even before our friend Euclid.”
• The rest of Book One itself divides: (a) narration of predecessors’ opinions and their reasons; (b) examination of their sufficiency — conclusion: not sufficient; they did not even understand the four kinds of cause well, let alone reach the first causes.
• The “second bird” killed by the narration: a test whether any cause was touched on beyond the four known from natural philosophy — matter, form, mover, end. Conclusion affirmative: no other kind, though they touched these unclearly.

6. From the end of Book One to Book Three; is Book Two an interjection? (“put yourself in Aristotle’s shoes”) #

Point: the transition end-of-One to start-of-Three is so neat (if you cannot learn from another, you must discover; Book Three begins with how we discover) that some think Book Two — “Alpha the Lesser,” he prefers “the Second Book of Wisdom” — an interjection; he does not think so.

• Approach from a distance: knowing from the proemium how great, divine and desirable wisdom is, and how difficult, and from Book One that everyone who sought it failed — discouraging — would you simply set off on your own? Wouldn’t you first ask “how do you get wisdom?”
• Aristotle sees that question must be answered, but does not answer it in Book Two — not fully “maybe until book six,” not even Book Three.

7. The more general question: how to determine the road in any science (“how do you read a map”) #

Point: something comes before “how do you get wisdom?”, and it belongs to the wise man.

1. One man is wiser than another because he sees a before and after the other does not.
2. Before “how do you get wisdom?” one could ask how you get ethics, natural philosophy, geometry, even logic — similar questions, wisdom’s being perhaps more difficult.
3. A more general question is presupposed to all of these: how do you determine the road to follow, the way to proceed, in any science? Likeness: “how do you find the road from Shrewsbury to Boston?” — look at the map; to Springfield — the map; presupposed: how do you read a map? (Aside: a relative who cannot.)
4. Why it belongs to the wise man: the geometer is directed by knowing how to proceed in geometry, and so on; the man who knows how to find those roads directs everybody. It belongs to the wise man to direct everybody and be directed by nobody — one of his attributes; if directed by another, that other would be the wise man.

• This is what Aristotle takes up in the last part of Book Two — Thomas’s editorial division, lectio 5, the last chapter of the reference division: how the road should and should not be determined in any particular kind of knowledge.

8. Before that: how man is toward knowing the truth (“in one way it’s difficult, in another way it’s easy”) #

Point: since the end of Book Two treats the road, something must come before — an even more general question: how is man toward knowing truth? That is the beginning of Book Two.

• Aristotle never asks “can man know truth?” as a modern would; he assumes it and asks how much, how he stands toward it. Some truths cannot be avoided: his example, “statements exist” — the man who denies it has made a statement.
• Knock on every professor’s door in “the mahogany halls”: is it easy or difficult to know the truth? All: difficult, if not impossible. Last door, Aristotle: in one way difficult, in another easy — “how different.”
• He does not labor to show it is difficult (obvious) but why; the difficulty, as in other things, can be in the thing itself or in us — “a very interesting distinction.”
• Same distinction in loving: difficult to love wisdom, the common good, God — the difficulty is the defect of our heart, not in the thing; difficult to love cancer — the difficulty is in the cancer.
• Simplest example: easiest to understand people just like yourself (breakfast, philosophy, wine). The newspaper’s crazy behavior is hard to understand because the difficulty is in them — little reason for what they do. The saint is hard to understand because the difficulty is in me: he is more reasonable — “you give me twenty dollars, I give you one” looks stupid, but trading a temporal thing for eternity is one to infinity, not one to twenty.
• “And then Aristotle turns to…” — the recording cuts off.

His words #

• private good vs. common good of the mind — one method ruling for its own good rather than for reason as a whole.
• beginning that justifies its consequences vs. beginning justified by its consequences — the Pythagorean/mathematical principle vs. the hypothesis of experimental science.
• enthralling — what a dominant method or customary error does to the mind.
• Natural Hearing — his rendering of the Greek title [ed.: Physics].
• about places — the title of the Topics, from topos.
• the fourteen books of Wisdom — his name for the Metaphysics; “Alpha the Lesser” he calls “the Second Book of Wisdom.”
• custom the tyrant — Shakespeare’s phrase as he uses it.
• proemium (premium) vs. tractatus — “the drawing out of the work.”
• logical and understandable division vs. editorial/reference division — the division yielding understanding vs. Thomas’s lectio numbering / chapter numbering.
• sophistical — seeking the glory of discovering rather than knowledge.
• the four kinds of cause: matter, form, mover, end.
• the road to follow, the way to go forward — method in any reasoned-out knowledge.
• difficulty in the thing itself vs. in us.

Texts #

Read in class (commented on, not quoted verbatim):

• Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I (proemium; narration and examination of predecessors), Book II (beginning: how man stands toward truth; end: how the road is determined, Aquinas lectio 5), beginning of Book III.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book II on custom and method (“the second book there”).

Mentioned:

• Aristotle, “third book on the universe” [ed.: De Caelo III] on the Pythagoreans.
• Huygens, treatise on light, beginning.
• Aristotle, Physics (title); Topics (title, Albert the Great on it).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (likeness to the mechanical arts); Politics, Book II; Plato’s Republic.
• Boethius (on the mind’s relation to the matter).
• Shakespeare: Hamlet (Hamlet and his mother), King Lear (18th-century happy ending), Romeo and Juliet (prologue).
• C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love; A Preface to Paradise Lost. Fielding, Joseph Andrews, preface. Homer, Iliad (Lattimore). Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes. Novalis; Max Born; Heisenberg. Kant’s metaphysics. Euclid.

His questions #

• Is there any method for determining which method to choose for a particular matter? Yes, in Book Two: the method has to fit the matter (Boethius adds our mind’s relation to it), as tools fit wood, metal, glass, cloth.
• Are there intellectual customs that can be good? He supposes so — reading Thomas and Aristotle; but you can’t avoid custom, and most intellectual customs are bad.
• Is it more reasonable to learn wisdom from one who already has it than to discover it yourself? Yes — easier and quicker; to insist on discovering it yourself would be a desire for glory, sophistical.
• Did his predecessors touch on any cause beyond the four? No — only matter, form, mover, end, and those not thoroughly.
• Is Book Two just an interjection between Book One and Book Three? He doesn’t think so; there are questions that must come before “how do you get wisdom?”
• How do you determine the road to follow in any science, and to whom does that belong? To the wise man, who directs everybody and is directed by nobody.
• Is it easy or difficult to know the truth? In one way difficult, in another easy; the difficulty can be in the thing or in us.
• Is the difficulty in understanding people in me or in them? In them when they are less reasonable than I; in me when (as with the saint) they are more reasonable.