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

Orientation #

He says he prefaced this class “with the discussion of the dispositions” of will, because Aristotle writes with regard to the student’s dispositions as well as to the truth (prev. lecture). At the end: “that’s the end of the first reading,” and the class will meet again this afternoon. A text-matching system found him reading from the handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom,” p. 24, for about 14 minutes, and from DHB Vol III, p. 473. The previous class introduced Book Two as Aristotle’s pause on man’s relation to truth; the next takes up the second reading.

The class, in order #

1. Should he first ask whether man can know truth at all? (“there’s a question before this question”) #

Point: the modern objection that Aristotle assumes man can know truth is answered as Aristotle answers the parallel objection about nature: what is obvious is not to be asked.

1. Parallel: in Natural Hearing II Aristotle asks “what is nature?” and afterwards meets the objection that he should first have asked “does nature exist?” His answer: it is obvious that nature exists; what is not obvious is what it is. To ask whether it exists is to act as if you didn’t know what you do know — “what is known through itself as if it had to be known through something else.”
2. De Anima: Aristotle and the Greeks before him all ask what the soul is, none asks whether it exists, because “soul” means the cause of life within living bodies, which obviously exists. He does not stop on the objection there, but the solution is the same.
3. Reverse of Socrates’ error: Socrates showed men think they know what they don’t; the reverse mistake is to think you don’t know what you do know.
4. Applied: it is obvious man can know truth, e.g. the axioms (“the whole is more than the part”). Thomas: the existence of truth is obvious — if truth does not exist, it is true that truth does not exist, so truth exists. His own version: “statements exist” — to deny it you must make a statement. In the Peri Hermeneias Aristotle asks what a statement is, never whether statements exist. Conclusion: what needs discussing is not whether but how man is towards knowing truth — easy, difficult, or both; Aristotle says both.

• Student: “you can know truths, but only ones not worth knowing.” He: not the same kind of question, though in a way it touches on how man is towards knowing truth.

2. Different emphasis on the two halves (“why is it difficult, right?”) #

Point: since everyone admits truth is difficult, what needs unfolding is the cause of the difficulty; since “easy” is controversial, what needs unfolding is in what way it is easy.

• He takes the easy part first — perhaps to encourage you before the caution. This is why the dispositions were discussed first: Aristotle writes with regard to the student’s will.
• Key line: although no one attains the truth “worthily” (axiōs), they do not completely miss it; each says something about nature, i.e. reality.

3. Three ways truth is easy (“nobody misses the door”) #

1. No one goes through life without saying some truth, however small. Examples: the man making McDonald’s hamburgers sees some truth about hamburgers (they contract, lose grease); the carpenter about wood, the seamstress about thread, the farmhand about cows or pigs, the pet owner about cats or dogs.
2. Even a large amount is easy through the efforts of many (athroizomenon, gathered together). Examples: an organization’s cookbook made of everyone’s family recipe; the Boston TV cook who has viewers send recipes and writes the book; professors who get credit for a book made of graduate students’ bits of research; his mother’s Saturday motto “many hands make light work”; ten men lifting the piano; one geometer discovers one theorem, fifty geometers fifty; Niels Bohr’s essay that no one scientist invented quantum theory.
3. Some part of the truth everybody sees — the Greek proverb: walking Athens’ streets you can only guess what is behind the door, but nobody misses the door. The door is the gateway, the beginning: the axioms of natural understanding. Whoever says he doesn’t see that the whole is more than the part will “rave and rant” if given part of his salary or part of the car he bought. Aside: Regnery’s “Gateway editions” — named for the way in. Distinction, third vs. first: in the first, the part you see is not the part I see (pet dog vs. pet cat, carpenter vs. hamburger man); in the third everybody sees the same part (men exist; the whole is more than the part). “His big thing… that nobody else has said”: the truths everybody sees are the beginning of wisdom, indeed of all reasoned-out knowledge (Posterior Analytics). How the three are related: the third is the foundation; the first and second build a large amount of truth on it — as Euclid’s Elements begins with the whole greater than the part and all right angles equal, then builds theorems that one man at a time saw. “That’s very encouraging… but now let’s balance that with some caution.”

4. Two causes of the difficulty (“the difficulty in knowing can be in us”) #

Point: Aristotle brings out that difficulty can lie in us or in the thing; Thomas’s parallel with burning: hard to light wood either because your fire is small or because the wood is wet. Parallel with love: A, difficulty in the thing (not lovable) vs. B, difficulty in the heart.

• Rock and roll: hard for him to love — defect in his heart or in the thing? (left as a question). Cancer, the example students accept: the difficulty is in the cancer; something would be wrong with his heart if he loved it.
• Common good vs. private good: the whole is better than the part, so the common good is the greater good, yet he loves the private good more easily — the difficulty must be in his heart. Same with loving God: most lovable, most difficult for us. Candy easy to love, wisdom difficult — the cause is in him.

5. Book Nine: actuality, and why dialectic is needed (“something is knowable because it is in act”) #

Point: from Book Nine, a thing is knowable insofar as it is in act, so difficulty in the thing comes from its potentiality; but the most actual things are hardest for us, so the greater difficulty is in our mind.

1. Difficulty in the thing: first matter (Augustine, “almost like a Platonist”: a nothing that is something, a something that is nothing); time (past and future do not exist, no time in the now, and if time were together past and future would coexist); motion likewise hardly exists; contingency (how voters will vote is not yet determined, so cannot be known).
2. Immaterial substances (Book Nine) are more actual, and the first cause, pure act, most knowable of all — yet harder for us than time and motion. Reason: our mind at first is like matter, purely an ability; what is most actual we know, if at all, last; what is least actual we know first.
3. Application to dialectic (beginning of Book Beta/Three): why dialectic precedes discovery in the eight books of Natural Hearing, in the Peri Hermeneias, and in wisdom, but not in geometry. Natural philosophy is harder than geometry because of the defect of the thing; wisdom harder because of the weakness of our mind — “not for the same reason.” Sign: in geometry people guess the same thing before the proof (his “great discovery” that the angles of an equilateral triangle are equal, proved through I.5; he’d have guessed it before studying Euclid), whereas in wisdom some guess God is and some that he is not, some that water is first matter, some air — contrary conclusions from probable reasons.

• Student: in physics you deal with substances, in geometry with accidents, which are less. He: geometry’s objects are more actual than natural philosophy’s and proportioned to us because imaginable; the proper object of our reason is the what-it-is of something sensed or imagined. Natural things are somewhat below our mind, wisdom’s above. Student: “below” is their way of existing? He: yes, more potential. Also to be considered: what is more sensible is more known to us though it has less being.
• Geometry as exception: there you know the cause before the effect — vertical angles equal because a straight line meeting a straight line makes angles equal to two right angles, doubled, with the common angle dropped; you know the lines are straight before you know the angles are equal. Normally effects are more known to us than causes, hence every “why?” is a sign the effect is known and the cause not.
• Student: so that’s why no dialectic at the beginning of geometry? He adds a partial reason from Dionysius: imagination is the disposer for discovery (Einstein: hypotheses come by imagination, then are checked); geometry resolves to the imagination, where you judge. Things that cannot be imagined — God, angel, soul — are hardest to discover.
• Weizsäcker (Heisenberg’s pupil, “went off the deep end”): imagining something makes it actual in the imagination, so imagining an ability makes actual what is only ability — the Greek philosophers’ mistake, and Locke’s general idea of triangle as a mishmash of particular triangles. Imagination is a cause of deception.

6. Parallel: understanding people (“some people hard to understand”) #

Point: we most easily understand people like ourselves; those less reasonable are hard to understand because the difficulty is in them, those more reasonable because it is in us.

• Below us: people on drugs, the new drug spreading, the daily newspaper’s unreasonable acts — with little reason for what they do, how can they not resist being understood? Academics: the historian of Arabic history who doesn’t know why he learned Arabic; the Restoration England specialist who just had a good college course; the English professor working on Titus Andronicus (“that disgusting play”) because little has been written on it; graduate students writing on obscure figures.
• Above us: the abbey praying the hours day in, day out — hard to understand, but they are more reasonable in their choice of life, so the difficulty is in him. Sometimes someone finds you hard to understand because you are more reasonable.

7. The bat and the light of day (“God dwells in light inaccessible”) #

Point: since the most knowable things are least known to us, the chief difficulty is in us; Aristotle’s proportion: our mind is to the immaterial substances as the bat’s eye to daylight (assuming the bat flies at night because the day is too bright — he doesn’t know if this is biologically true).

• Scripture: God dwells in light inaccessible; Thomas’s after-communion prayer, Lux vera, the true light that enlightens every man — yet difficult for us.
• Better than Plato’s cave, which is temporary, like coming out of a movie theater on a bright afternoon and being blinded. His cousin’s story: going in on a bright afternoon, the difficulty is in the theater (lack of light) — he sat down beside a lady in a double “lovers’ seat”; coming out, the difficulty is in you. Both temporary; the bat is by nature. “This is a severe warning” — the problem won’t go away.
• Students: probably more true of owls; bats fly at night because their prey does and they use sound. He grants it.
• Text: the nous of our soul towards the things by nature, or simply speaking, most clear of all. Also: the cause makes known and clarifies the effect; we know the effect darkly first and go from darkness to light.
• Recap: everything so far unfolds the original statement — easy, in what way (three ways); difficult, why (two causes, and which is greater for us).

8. Thomas on metaphor: poetry and sacred scripture (“poetry is infima doctrina”) #

Point: the first question of the Summa, on whether sacred scripture should use metaphor, matches the two causes of difficulty.

• Objection: metaphor belongs to the poet, and poetry is infima doctrina, the lowest teaching. Reply: both use metaphor because their object is not proportioned to our mind, but for reverse reasons — the poet’s is below our mind, scripture’s above. Scripture brings God down to us (“the Lord is my rock,” “my shepherd”); the poet raises his matter up, making it more intelligible than it is.
• The same in fiction: a plot has beginning, middle and end, but life doesn’t; the play gives life an intelligibility it lacks. Titian’s portrait gives one expression more meaning than any daily-life expression a photograph catches. Mozart: in opera the words are the obedient servant of the music, and the music gives the situation more meaning; Kasurik tells him, “Duane, you think there’s more intelligibility than there is.” Macbeth’s “life’s a walking shadow… a tale told by an idiot” gives the chaos of life more intelligibility by likeness.
• Student: poetry reveals a meaning hidden to us in life? He: “maybe… I don’t know, whether Providence or something.”
• Shakespeare’s characters (Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear; Mrs. Jamieson’s book on the female characters — Desdemona, Portia) are more sharply drawn and distinct than people in real life, so more knowable; real people have strange inconsistencies.
• Aside: his friend Jim said women love to be told “I can’t understand you”; Cymbeline’s king on the evil queen: “who is it can read a woman?” — is the difficulty in us, or in her? A joke, but a real question.

9. Back to dialectic and the proemium of Natural Hearing (“Aristotle doesn’t always unfold”) #

Point: Aristotle’s reasons at the beginning of Book Three for dialectic seem to fit discovery everywhere, but the reason they do not fit geometry lies here — the different difficulties of natural philosophy and wisdom (and ethics too).

• Parallel worry from the first reading of Natural Hearing: the reason for going from general to particular (our mind knows confusedly before distinctly) seems to fit every science, so why is it the proemium to natural philosophy? A professor noted wisdom goes from less to more universal, geometry from simple to composed, equal before unequal. His answer: Thomas on the De Trinitate of Boethius — natural philosophy proceeds rationabiliter, mathematics disciplinabiliter, wisdom intellectualiter; among the senses of rationabiliter, natural philosophy most follows the natural way of reason, learning from the senses. So what is characteristic of reason is especially found in natural philosophy.

10. Gratitude to those who spoke superficially; the music example (“one ought to give thanks”) #

Point (from “line eleven”): it is just to thank not only those with whom we shared some position but also those who spoke more superficially, for they gave us the habit and exercised our mind. This touches the dispositions of will (gratitude) and how one man helps another towards truth — “very important.”

• Even errors help, since refuting them exercises the mind: De Koninck’s refutation of Descartes on confused and distinct gave him “a quantum leap” in understanding the beginning of natural philosophy. He is grateful to De Koninck and Dion for truths, but also profited from reasoning against others.
• Augustine: heresies are necessary for the development of theology; the patristic books contra so-and-so; Augustine understood grace better by refuting the Pelagians, so is indebted to them as well as to Ambrose. Student: and the martyrs to their persecutors — “in another way, yeah.”
• Why music as the example? Music is named from the muses; if anyone is taught by nature rather than by men, it is the musician (Mozart: if melodies don’t come as easily as a cow’s piddling, don’t bother). So if even the musician depends on other men, a fortiori in more teachable things.
• Timotheus, Alexander’s favorite musician (Dryden’s feast: one melody and Alexander is back in battle, a lascivious one and he relaxes with the girl), would not have been without the lesser Phrynis. His stock example: Mozart dedicated the six quartets to Haydn because Haydn taught him how to write the quartet (Einstein on the impression of Haydn’s Russian quartets, each instrument its own voice); Haydn told Mozart’s father, before God, your son is the greatest composer I know; yet Mozart surpassed him. Mozart had studied every master before him; on discovering J.S. Bach’s manuscripts, “here’s something you can learn from”; his early pieces imitate Johann Christian Bach, “second daddy.” Bach’s biographer: before studying Vivaldi his hands taught his mind, afterwards his mind taught his hands.
• Text where he stops: some have taken certain positions and others before them were the causes of these. End of the first reading; class resumes in the afternoon.

His words #

• Natural Hearing — Aristotle’s Physics [ed.: Physics].
• “what is known through itself as if it had to be known through something else” — his gloss on asking whether nature or soul exists.
• axiōs — “worthily”; no one attains truth worthily.
• athroizomenon — “gathered together”; the large amount of truth got from many.
• the door / gateway — the axioms, the beginning of knowledge everybody sees.
• ability — his rendering of potency [ed.: potency]; “purely an ability” for the mind at first.
• passive potentiality — why first matter, time, motion are hard to know in themselves.
• nous — “the understanding of our soul.”
• Lux vera — the true light (after-communion prayer).
• infima doctrina — poetry, “the lowest teaching.”
• rationabiliter / disciplinabiliter / intellectualiter — Boethius’s modes of proceeding for natural philosophy, mathematics, wisdom.
• dialectica — dialectic, reasoning from probable opinions to contradictory conclusions.
• a fortiori — from the musician to the more teachable arts.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Two, first reading in Thomas’s commentary (inferred): the three ways truth is easy; the two causes of difficulty; the bat and daylight; “line eleven,” thanks owed to those who spoke superficially; Timotheus and Phrynis.
• Handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom,” p. 24 (verified source, ~14 min).
• DHB Vol III, The School of Aristotle, p. 473 (verified source).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Natural Hearing II (does nature exist?) and the proemium of Book I (general to particular; confused/distinct).
• Aristotle, De Anima; Peri Hermeneias; Posterior Analytics; Metaphysics IX (knowable as in act); Metaphysics Beta/III opening (dialectic).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa I q. 1, article on metaphor in sacred scripture; commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius.
• Euclid, Elements (axioms; I.5; vertical angles).
• Augustine on first matter; on heresies and theology; against the Pelagians.
• Niels Bohr’s essay on the quantum theory; Weizsäcker; Locke on the general triangle; Einstein on hypotheses.
• Shakespeare: Macbeth, Cymbeline, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, Othello, Lear; Mrs. Jamieson on Shakespeare’s women; Dryden on Timotheus.

His questions #

• Is Aristotle mistaken in not first asking whether man can know truth? No — that man can know truth is obvious (axioms; “truth exists” cannot be denied), as with nature and soul; what needs asking is how he stands towards it.
• In what way is knowing truth easy? Three ways: nobody misses it entirely; a large amount comes through the efforts of many; some truths (the axioms) everybody sees — the foundation.
• What is the cause of the difficulty in knowing? Either in us or in the thing, like a small fire or wet wood; the chief difficulty is in us.
• I find it difficult to love rock and roll — a defect in my heart or in the thing? left open (cancer: in the thing; common good, God, wisdom: in the heart).
• Why is dialectic needed in natural philosophy and wisdom but not geometry? Both are harder than geometry, natural philosophy because its objects hardly exist, wisdom because of our mind’s weakness; in geometry we guess the same thing.
• Why do people do such unreasonable things, and why are they hard to understand? Because they have little reason for what they do; the difficulty is in them, whereas with the more reasonable it is in us.
• Why should sacred scripture use metaphor, as the lowest teaching does? Both objects are unproportioned to our mind, the poet’s below, scripture’s above; the poet raises up, scripture brings down.
• Why should Aristotle take music as his example of dependence on other men? Because the musician seems taught by the muses, not by men; if even he depends on others, a fortiori everyone else.