Can Objections Undo Faith or the Axioms? Introducing Book II and How Man Knows Truth

Orientation #

He opens with a “theological aside” (a student is giving an “exposition today”), then says “tomorrow should we go back to the book two?” and begins situating Book Two of the Metaphysics, “like we did with the ninth book.” He refers to “the objection I gave you a few minutes ago” against an axiom, and to “what we said before” about mistakes coming from missed distinctions and about the wiser man seeing what is before and after (prev. lecture, not resolved in detail). Verified sources place the handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom” p. 17 and DHB Vol. III p. 466 in this class. The previous class traced how the end of one stage of the Metaphysics is the premise of the next, and the next class continues Book Two on the dispositions of will needed for inquiry.

The class, in order #

1. The rationalist’s case for giving up the faith (“an objection that you can’t untie”) #

Point: an objection to the Trinity, Incarnation or Eucharist that you cannot answer seems, in some way, to make giving up the faith reasonable.

• The rationalist says: reason sees an objection and no solution; to follow reason is to give up the faith.
• He asks whether this is reasonable simply or only in some way. Student: you don’t see the objection is true, you just don’t see how it’s false; you have other reasons.

2. The parallel with the axioms (“objections even to the axioms”) #

Point: the same situation occurs with axioms almost nobody can defend, so the faith case is not special. Argument:

1. There are objections to the axioms (e.g. the whole is more than a part) that almost everybody cannot resolve — Zeno’s argument that you cannot walk out the door: being unable to answer it is no reason to deny you can walk out.
2. If I really know the axiom (naturally known, so I am naturally sure), I know the objection must have a defect somewhere in it.
3. It is unreasonable to give up what I know to be true because of an objection I know, by that certitude, to have a defect. Conclusion: giving it up is reasonable “in some way” (reason does see an objection it cannot answer) but not simply; the man who calls it reasonable confuses the imperfect sense with the whole picture.

• He takes the axiom case first “because it’s more manifest and less controversial.”

3. Application to faith; opinion vs. certitude (“what I’m sure about, the faith”) #

Point: if you truly have the faith you are sure of its articles, and so know the unanswerable objection has a defect; giving up is unreasonable.

• Distinction: opinion vs. certitude. If you only opine something and I give an objection you cannot answer, it may be reasonable to give up the opinion, since you were never sure and do not know the objection is defective. If you are sure — by natural understanding (axioms) or by faith — you know the objection must be defective, whether or not you see the solution. “That’s kind of subtle.”
• Example: is it reasonable to drink a delicious poison? Here and now, yes (it’s delicious); seeing the consequences, hardly — reasonable in some way vs. reasonable on the whole.
• Student: not being able to refute the objection seems to show a lack of true knowledge or true faith. He: it seems to show the thing is false; but then you are using the less known to deny the more known. De Koninck: the history of modern philosophy can be done as the history of the denial of the more known by the less known.
• “That’s what’s happened in the history of human thought”: people reject the faith, or even the axioms, because of an objection they cannot solve.

4. Hegel’s paradox of becoming and the Eucharist (“the paradox du devenir par contradiction”) #

Point: an unanswerable objection against the first axiom, solved by Aristotle in Physics VI, shows how such objections lead to denial of what is more known, in philosophy and in theology.

• De Koninck’s Laval Théologique et Philosophique article (in French), “le paradoxe du devenir par contradiction”; the argument Hegel uses to show something can both be and not be; it ran through the Middle Ages and the theologians could not solve it “until Thomas Aquinas, I guess, just about,” who solved it Aristotle’s way.
• The argument, as he gives it (when what is not a circle becomes a circle):
  1. There is a time in which it is not a circle; that time has an end, and the end of a time is an instant (as the end of a line is a point, not a line).
  2. There is a beginning of its being a circle, also an instant.
  3. If any time lay between the last not-circle instant and the first circle instant, in that time it either is a circle (then it belongs to the circle-time) or is not (then to the not-circle time); so nothing lies between.
  4. So the last instant of not being a circle is the first instant of being one; in that instant it both is and is not a circle — contradiction.
• Theological form: in the Eucharist the substance of bread and wine is changed into the body and blood of our Lord; one time ends, the other begins, no time between, so the last instant of bread is the first instant of the body — “you got heresy right now.”
• Aristotle’s solution (Physics VI): there is no last instant in which what is not a circle is not a circle; when you have become a circle, at that instant you are a circle and not not-a-circle.
• Consequence: Hegel denies the fundamental axiom of being and non-being because of the objection; theologians fall into a “co-presence of the two,” which raises the further difficulty how the body and blood get there if the bread is not changed into it.
• He stresses: “you have to start with easier examples.” A person is scandalized that an article of faith has an objection the average Catholic cannot answer; but an axiom can have one most people cannot answer. “You have to understand the human situation.”

5. Situating Book Two: Thomas’s division (“Dividitur ergo ista pars in partes duas”) #

Point: Thomas divides Books Two through Fourteen into what pertains to the consideration of universal truth and the pursuit of it.

• He reads/translates Thomas: this part is divided into two; first, those things that pertain to the consideration of universal truth; second, he begins to inquire the truth about the first principles and all other things to which this philosophy’s consideration extends.
• He is not sure this fully explains what Book Two is about and why it is there.
• The order within Book Two: the first lectio considers how man is towards knowing truth; only in the second lectio does he show why the wise man should consider this. Why not the reverse? Aristotle proceeds “from the same center” as when showing wisdom is about being as being and the one and many, but off in a different direction, to other matters of wisdom.
• Student: is it necessary to consider how man is towards knowing truth? It gives a limit of what he can and should pursue. He: it has universal importance, “extremely general.”
• Aside: he did not bring his translation, “I didn’t know I was going to be doing anything beyond the ninth book.”

6. The question Aristotle does ask: easy or difficult? (“in one way difficult, in another way easy”) #

Point: the first sentence of Book Two answers a presupposed question — is the consideration of truth easy or difficult for man? — with a distinction.

• Three possible answers: easy; difficult; in one way difficult, in another easy. Only a fool would say simply easy (“no problem”); many, and probably the average college professor, would say difficult and go on from there, missing the distinction.
• He recalls: perhaps every mistake of our mind comes from not seeing some distinction, or from misunderstanding one. Aristotle sees a distinction here, and it matters both to see it and to understand in what way truth is difficult and in what way easy. “Think about that a bit.”

7. The question Aristotle does not ask: can man know truth? (“the guy can’t look before and after”) #

Point: the modern objection is that Aristotle naively assumed man can know truth and skipped the prior question.

• The modern’s argument: the wiser man sees what is before what the other sees; before “is it easy or hard?” comes “can man know truth at all?” Asking ease or difficulty of the impossible is stupid: “is it easy or difficult for man to be God?” — “to make a square circle?”
• Cassirer (neo-Kantian, Germany then Yale): the Greeks “naively assumed” we could know the exterior world. Kant’s “scandal” that philosophers cannot prove the existence of the external world; his comment: the scandal is that they tried, “because obviously the senses and so on.” (Knowing the external world is a different question from knowing truth.)
• Aside on Cassirer: at the start of the De Anima course he quoted the seven wise men’s “Know thyself” (fitting, since in the De Anima the soul knows itself) and “Nothing too much.” Cassirer’s Essay on Man makes “know thyself” the end of Greek philosophy; but to make self-knowledge, rather than knowledge of the first cause, the end is to pursue it too much — so “know thyself, and nothing too much” applies even to knowing thyself; it is more a beginning than an end.

8. Why the prior question need not be asked (“it’s obvious that man can know truth”) #

Point: Aristotle did not naively assume; that man can know truth is self-evident, and the denial refutes itself. Argument:

1. Student: to say truth can’t be known is to claim that is true. He: if man cannot know truth, he cannot know it is true that he cannot.
2. There are statements obviously true, like the whole is more than a part.
3. His favourite: “statements exist” — the man who says statements do not exist can only say it by making a statement. Conclusion: it is absurd to say man cannot know truth; what is not obvious is how much or how well he can know it — and that is the question of ease and difficulty. Thomas Aquinas: the existence of truth is obvious; to say truth does not exist is to maintain it is true that truth does not exist.

• Parallel: in Physics II Aristotle asks what nature is, not whether it exists, and comes back to say why (it is known of itself); likewise not whether but what the soul is. Here he does not say explicitly why; we are “forced to ask” by dealing with the moderns and “bad custom,” though even in natural thought one could ask.
• Student: the seven wise men’s question was “what is man,” not “is man.” Student’s example: a student asked “How do I know I am?” and the professor answered “Who’s asking the question?”
• Why is this so widespread? They read Descartes first; bad custom; minds out of order, denying the more known by the less known (De Koninck); probably the imagination is influenced.

9. Why the consideration fits here, even before Aristotle’s reason (“about time we thought about that”) #

Point: the proem and Book One already move one to ask how man stands towards knowing truth.

• From the proem: wisdom is about all things in some way and most of all about the first causes; given that universality it is appropriate to ask how man is towards knowing the truth, especially about all things and the first causes.
• From Book One: his predecessors did not come to an adequate knowledge of the causes, let alone the first causes, though all sought this universal truth — which “seems to necessitate this consideration.”
• Aristotle’s own reason, given in the middle of the book, is “a little more precise”; but the consideration seems appropriate even before it.
• Closing aside: “those pork chops are thawing.”

His words #

• reasonable “simply” vs. “in some way”: giving up a certitude because of an unanswerable objection is reasonable in some way, not simply.
• “must have a defect somewhere in it”: what certitude tells you of any objection to what you are sure of.
• “the denial of the more known by the less known”: De Koninck’s characterization of modern philosophy.
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics].
• “paradoxe du devenir par contradiction”: De Koninck’s title for Hegel’s argument that a thing both is and is not in becoming.
• “no last instant”: Aristotle’s solution — there is no last instant of not being a circle.
• “co-presence”: the theological error of bread and body together, arising from the paradox.
• “the consideration of universal truth” vs. its pursuit: Thomas’s division of Books II–XIV.
• “how man is towards knowing truth”: the first lectio’s subject.
• “look before and after”: what the wiser man sees; the modern claims Aristotle fails to.
• “statements exist”: his self-evident example against skepticism.
• “bad custom”: reading Descartes first; the cause of not knowing what one knows.
• “premium” [ed.: proem].

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Metaphysics, division of Books II–XIV (“Dividitur ergo ista pars in partes duas”), translated and commented.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics II, first sentence (paraphrased: consideration of truth in one way difficult, in another easy).
• Handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom”, p. 17, and DHB Vol. III p. 466 (verified sources for this episode).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Physics VI (solution of the last-instant paradox).
• Aristotle, Physics II (what nature is, not whether it exists); De Anima (soul knowing itself; what, not whether, the soul is).
• Metaphysics, proem and Book I (predecessors and the causes); Book IX (previous work).
• De Koninck, Laval Théologique et Philosophique, “Le paradoxe du devenir par contradiction”.
• Hegel (being and non-being); Zeno (walking out the door); Kant (scandal of the external world); Descartes; Cassirer, An Essay on Man; the seven wise men at Delphi.
• Thomas Aquinas on the existence of truth being obvious (locus not stated).

His questions #

• Would it be reasonable to give up the faith because of an objection you cannot untie? In some way it seems so; simply speaking, no — you know by certitude the objection has a defect.
• Would it be reasonable to give up an axiom because of an objection you can’t resolve? No, because you know the axiom (Zeno and walking out the door).
• Is it reasonable to drink a delicious poison? Here and now yes; seeing the consequences, hardly.
• Is the beginning (or end) of a time, time or an instant? An instant, as the end of a line is a point.
• Do you think it’s necessary to consider how man is towards knowing truth? Yes; it gives the limit of what he can and should pursue, and is of universal importance.
• Is it easy or difficult for man to know truth? Aristotle: in one way difficult, in another easy — a distinction the average professor misses.
• Why doesn’t Aristotle ask the question that comes before, “Can man know truth?” Because it is obvious; the denial refutes itself (statements exist); what is not obvious is how much and how well.
• Did Aristotle naively assume that man can know truth? No; there are obviously true statements, like the whole is more than a part.
• Why do so many people think they don’t know what they know? They read Descartes first; bad custom; minds out of order, denying the more known by the less known.
• Why is this consideration here, before Aristotle gives his reason? The universality of wisdom and the predecessors’ failure make it “about time we thought about that.”