Truth and the Cause: Why Wisdom Most Considers Truth, and the Beginning of the First-Cause Argument

Orientation #

He says “we saw this morning” the first part of the second book (prev. lecture), and today begins the second of its three parts, “the second reading in Thomas”, intending to reach “the second reading and maybe part of the third”. He refers back to the Book IX classes on ability and on the truth of simple vs. composed things, and forward to the third and fourth readings, where the first cause will be shown for mover and matter, then end and form. Verified sources by text-matching: a handout paper on the Meno as an introduction to logic (p. 1, about 11 min read), a “Note for Readings Two through Four” (p. 1, about 4 min), and pages from the DHB volumes on the School of Plato (II, p. 7) and the School of Aristotle (III, p. 535). The previous class treated Book II ch. 1 on truth as easy and hard; the next treats ch. 2 from 994b on the infinite regress in the four causes.

The class, in order #

1. The second part of Book II: two birds with one stone (“kill two birds with one stone”) #

The point: the middle part of Book II gives a reason why the consideration of truth belongs most of all to wisdom, and, since that reason rests on wisdom being about first causes, it also manifests that there is a first cause in each of the four kinds of cause, thereby advancing our knowledge of causes.

• He calls the second purpose a “subplot”, comparing Book I: its main aim was to see whether wisdom could be learned from those who sought it before, but narrating what they said served the further purpose of confirming there are only four kinds of cause.
• The middle part also gives the reason for the third part (how the road to truth in each reasoned-out knowledge should and should not be determined): the wise man does that because the consideration of truth belongs to him most of all. He adds that he himself would rather go back to the proemium: the wise man directs everybody else.

2. Comparison with the order of the Meno (“more useful as an introduction to logic”) #

The point: the Meno, read carefully, is more an introduction to logic than to ethics, and its structure is like this book’s: the middle illuminates the two ends.

• Albert the Great (under whom he studied logic “to some extent”) divides logic into two parts, the art of defining (the simple unknown: what is a man, a dog) and the art of reasoning (the complex unknown, a statement); Thomas divides it into three by the three acts of reason.
• Meno part 1 = the attempt to define virtue (difficulty of defining); part 3 = reasoning whether virtue can be taught; the middle = what is common to both, coming to know what you don’t know through what you do know, against Meno’s sophistical arguments that you cannot investigate what you don’t know. “Something kind of pleasant about that.”
• Aside: Aristotle spent twenty years in Plato’s school and left only at Plato’s death, not wishing to sit at the feet of Speusippus, “who was not too sharp”; Protagoras was not worth listening to, Plato was.

3. The first sentence, 993b19: philosophy is the reasoned-out knowledge of truth (“Orthos, correctly or rightly”) #

The point: Aristotle here calls wisdom simply “philosophy”, and rightly.

• Why can he? Distinction: the etymology of a word (that from which it is taken: love of wisdom) vs. its meaning (that to which it is applied: the knowledge the lover of wisdom pursues). Since what he pursues is wisdom, wisdom is philosophy; natural, mathematical, political philosophy are philosophy in a secondary sense. Thomas in Book VII: the Latin synonym for philosophy would be sapientia; natural philosophy is wisdom only secundum quid.
• Two stages, as in the proemium (wisdom is about causes, then about first causes): (i) truth belongs more to looking knowledge than to practical; (ii) among looking knowledges (natural, mathematical, first), most of all to wisdom.

4. Main reason: truth is the very end of looking knowledge (“the very end or purpose of looking philosophy”) #

1. The end of looking knowledge is truth; the end of practical knowledge is not truth but the doing or making of something, some ergon.
2. The end is what is most important in a thing, since everything else is for its sake.
3. Therefore the consideration of truth belongs more to looking knowledge, whose end it is, than to practical knowledge, whose end it is not.

5. Excursion: wonder as the beginning of philosophy (Theaetetus) (“no other beginning of philosophy than wonder”) #

The point: wonder marks philosophy as looking knowledge, which raises a puzzle about practical philosophy.

• Theodorus introduces Theaetetus (a real mathematician; see Heath’s Euclid for his discoveries) as “something of a philosopher”; when Theaetetus breaks out in wonder Socrates confirms it and says there is no other beginning of philosophy than wonder.
• Hesiod’s genealogy: Iris is the offspring of Thaumas (from thaumazein, to wonder). Why is Iris both rainbow and messenger of the gods? The rainbow unites heaven and earth, the messenger unites man with God; wonder, on the side of our reason, makes us seek the cause, the cause of the cause, and at last the first cause, God. Socrates does not explain it: “if you don’t wonder about it, I suppose it’s a sign you’re not a philosopher.”
• In the proemium Aristotle uses wonder (men began to philosophize out of wonder, not to feed the stomach or get warm) as the sign that wisdom is looking knowledge, for the sake of knowing alone.
• Puzzle: then how can there be practical philosophy? Perhaps it is philosophy in a different sense; perhaps it begins not from wonder but from the desire for happiness (what it is, how to achieve it). Augustine, following Varro: no reason to philosophize except to be happy; Nicomachean Ethics X distinguishes two happinesses, one according to wisdom, one according to foresight, especially political foresight, whence the two kinds of philosophy. He leaves it: looking philosophy alone is philosophy, or is so more than practical; there is some wonder in practical philosophy and even in logic.
• Aside: Monsignor Dian used to say “a teaching with no wonder is nothing.”

6. Secondary reason: practical men look only at the here-and-now true (“We have no permanent friends”) #

Practical knowers sometimes look for how things are, but only what is relevant to action, not the cause as such; and such things are not true always. Examples: whether Germany or France is England’s friend (reversed between the Napoleonic wars and the two World Wars); whether the market is going up or down. The British statesman: no permanent friends, only permanent interests. The here-and-now true “is not very true”, since it will be another truth tomorrow.

7. The principle: that on account of which, more so (“it belongs more to the cause”) #

The point: around line 25 Aristotle states briefly the principle Thomas cites often; he expands it: when the same (synonymon) belongs to two things, but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause.

• Examples: hot said of fire and of the air around it, of the air because of the fire, so fire is hotter; wet of water and dishcloth; sweet of sugar and his coffee.
• Applications: logic, known said of premises and conclusion, of the conclusion because of the premises, so premises more known (if they were not, you would not use them to prove it); ethics, desirable said of end and means (health and medicine), so the end is more desirable, better; “if I love your children because I love you”, I love you more; the book moving the glass because moved by me, so I am more the mover.
• Aristotle’s application: true is said of cause and effect, of the effect because of the cause; so the cause is more true; so what is most true is the first cause; wisdom is about the first cause; therefore the consideration of what is most true, and so of truth most of all, belongs to wisdom. He adds one could also argue from wisdom’s considering the axioms, most true among statements.

8. A cause of the necessary; and the principle converted (“there can be a cause of the necessary”) #

• Around line 28: “the beginnings of the things that always are are necessarily most true”; beginnings meaning causes, things that always are meaning the necessary. Democritus said that when something is necessary you don’t look for a reason; Aristotle sees that something can be necessary through another (conclusions of a demonstration, necessary because of the premises) and something necessary through itself, the cause of the former. This touches the earlier argument about the necessary and the contingent.
• Student: the principle here says the cause must be the maximum, but Thomas often cites this text to say the maximum must be the cause. His reply: it holds both ways, but something must be made explicit: as discussed the other day, there cannot be more than one cause as such of the same thing; so other things either lack it or have it by the cause as such, more or less as they approach it; hence what has it most of all must be the cause of all the rest.

9. Corollary: as a thing is in being, so in truth (“as each thing has itself in being”) #

The point: the order of things in being corresponds to their order in truth (a switch from the cause-effect order to the order in being).

• Hilary of Poitiers, a Greek philosopher before he was a Christian, tells in the opening of his work on the Trinity that reading God’s “I am who I am” to Moses was a motive of credibility for him; add Christ’s “I am truth itself”, and it fits this corollary: the one who is “I am who I am” is truth itself. A motive of credibility for a philosopher, not the average person; Aristotle could not have seen it (New Testament written centuries later, no evidence he knew the Hebrew scriptures), but “nice to see that harmony.”
• Thomas recalls this in the last reading of Book IX: the truth of composed things and of simple things is not the same truth, not surprising since their being is not of the same kind; so the truth of simple things is higher. Such correspondence of the two orders enters the arguments in the two Summas.

10. Are there first causes? The order of the four (“presupposes that there are first causes”) #

The point: wisdom as knowledge of first causes presupposes there are some; in the rest of the second reading (first part of ch. 2 in the other division) Aristotle announces what the third and fourth readings will show.

• Order of announcement: matter, then mover (beginning of motion), then end, then form. In the showing, mover first, then “something different with the matter”, then end and form in the fourth reading.
• Why matter and mover before end and form? A student: more prior arguments against a first in matter and efficient cause. His answer: the Greeks before Aristotle disagreed whether the first matter was earth, water, air, fire or all four, but all agreed there was a first matter, part of why he does not really show it about matter in the third reading; the unmoved mover is somewhat due to the early Greeks, perhaps Plato.
• He recalls Book IX: the two basic senses of ability, to act on or move another (the mover) and to be acted on or moved by another (the matter); and asks what else was brought in there: “most clearly beginnings.”

11. Beginning, cause, element: matter and mover are more clearly beginnings (“more clearly recognized as beginnings”) #

The point: matter and mover are more obviously beginnings than form and end, and “first” means almost the same as “beginning”, so one looks there first for a first cause.

• In Book V the names come in order: beginning, cause, element; beginning more general than cause (the point is the beginning of the line but not its cause), cause more general than element (every element is a cause, strictly a material cause, not every cause an element). The more general is more known to us.
• Definitions: matter, that from which something comes to be, existing within it; mover, whence first there is a beginning of motion; both fit “that from which something proceeds”.
• The senses of beginning confirm it: (1) beginning of a magnitude (point of line, line of surface, surface of body); (2) somewhat like it; (3) the fundamental part, the foundation of a house, like matter, and inside what it begins, as the point is in the line; (4) the mover, outside what it begins (the carpenter, the rule of the prince); (5) beginning in knowing, premises of the conclusion, seen sometimes as mover or maker, but also like matter since they contain the subject and predicate; (6) every cause is in some way a beginning, where the strange thing appears: the end is a beginning because first in intention. Form is defined as “what was to be”, which is at the end, and end seems the opposite of beginning. [ed.: the six senses are his enumeration; the second is left unspecified.]

12. The first sense of beginning anticipates the argument (“a beginning that has no beginning”) #

The point: in magnitude, a beginning can have a beginning, but not forever: a square is the beginning of the cube, the line of the square, the point of the line, and the point has no beginning.

• Would the cube be limited if its squares were not limited? No; would the square be limited if its lines went on forever? No; the point is a limit that is not limited, needing no limit to make it a limit.
• Generalised: would anything be limited if every limit had to have a limit? A limited limit is a kind of middle, between what limits it and what it limits; however many limited limits there are, one, many, even infinite, they presuppose a limit that has no limit. This anticipates the argument to come “with something much easier to see.”
• He compares his own procedure in Book IX, where “act is before ability” in time may also mean before in being and before as cause before effect; here similarly beginning anticipates cause.
• Recording ends as he starts on the apparent contradiction “the end is the beginning.”

His words #

• Wisdom: his name for the Metaphysics [ed.: Metaphysics]; “second book of Wisdom” = Book II.
• proemium / “premium”: the opening of Book I where the wise man is described.
• reasoned-out knowledge: episteme [ed.: science].
• looking knowledge: theoretical knowledge, for the sake of seeing or understanding [ed.: speculative/theoretical].
• orthos: “correctly or rightly”, the first word of 993b19.
• ergon: the work, doing or making, which is the end of practical knowledge.
• sapientia: Thomas’s Latin synonym for philosophy (Book VII).
• secundum quid: natural philosophy is wisdom only in a qualified sense.
• thaumazein / Thaumas: to wonder; the father of Iris in Hesiod’s genealogy.
• foresight: the virtue of the second happiness in Ethics X [ed.: prudence].
• motive of credibility: what disposed Hilary toward the faith.
• that on account of which, more so: his expansion: when the same belongs to two things but to one because of the other, it belongs more to the cause [ed.: propter quod unumquodque, illud magis].
• synonymon: “the same” name and account belonging to cause and effect.
• cause as such: the one proper cause of something, whence the convertibility of the principle.
• ability: the two basic senses of Book IX, to act on another, to be acted on [ed.: potency].
• beginning: the name prior to cause and element in Book V; six senses [ed.: principle, archē].
• what was to be: the form [ed.: to ti ēn einai].
• limited limit: a limit that itself has a limit, a “middle limit”.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics II ch. 1, 993b19-28 (the “second reading” in Thomas): philosophy as reasoned-out knowledge of truth; looking vs. practical; the principle at line 25; the beginnings of what always is, line 28; the corollary on being and truth.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics II ch. 2, first part (end of the second reading), announcing first causes in the four kinds.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, proemium: wisdom about causes and first causes; wonder as sign of looking knowledge; the wise man directs.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics I: narration and examination of the predecessors.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V: beginning, cause, element and the senses of beginning.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX: senses of ability; last reading on truth of composed and simple things; act before ability.
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Metaphysics VII: sapientia as synonym of philosophy.
• Plato, Meno (verified handout: paper on the Meno as introduction to logic); Plato, Theaetetus; Hesiod’s genealogy of Iris.
• Heath’s edition of Euclid, on Theaetetus’s discoveries.
• Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, autobiographical opening; Exodus, “I am who I am” (inferred); John, “I am the truth” (inferred).
• Augustine following Varro; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics X on two happinesses.
• Albert the Great, division of logic into defining and reasoning.
• Verified handout: “Note for Readings Two through Four”, p. 1; DHB Vol. II (School of Plato) p. 7; DHB Vol. III (School of Aristotle) p. 535 (found by text-matching).

His questions #

• What does Aristotle call this part of philosophy, and why can he? “Philosophy”: the word is applied to the knowledge the lover of wisdom pursues, i.e. wisdom; the rest are philosophy secondarily.
• In how many stages does he show that truth belongs most to wisdom? Two: looking over practical, then wisdom over the other looking knowledges.
• Does practical philosophy begin from wonder? Seems rather from the desire for happiness; left partly open.
• Wet said of water and dishcloth: which is wetter? Sweet of sugar and coffee: which is sweeter? The water; the sugar.
• If the book moves the glass because I move the book, which is more the mover? I am.
• If the cause is more true than the effect, what is most true? The first cause, which wisdom is about.
• Why show a first cause for mover and matter before end and form? Student: more prior arguments; his: all the Greeks agreed on a first matter, and matter and mover are more clearly beginnings.
• What did we connect in Book IX with matter and mover? Ability to act on another (mover) and to be acted on (matter); and both as most clearly beginnings.
• Does the square have a beginning? the line? the point? The line; the point; the point has none.
• Would the cube be limited if its squares were not limited? No; the limits must be limited down to the point, a limit that is not limited.