The Six Marks of the Wise Man and the Universal 'Said of All' vs. Cause of All (Hegel, Plato)

Orientation #

He refers back to “the first reading” (wisdom is about beginnings and causes; knowledge begins at the singular; the man of art wiser than the man of experience; arts for necessity and for relaxation) (prev. lecture), and looks ahead to Book Four (being as being and the one, said of all). The verified sources place the class on handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom” p. 9 and DHB Vol III p. 458. The previous class covered the ascent from experience to art in Metaphysics I,1; the next continues the six attributes and asks why wisdom is most certain and most architectonic.

The class, in order #

1. What causes and beginnings is wisdom about? (“since we seek such a episteme”) #

Aristotle announces his chief interest: sophia is an episteme, so about which causes and beginnings (the two words nearly synonymous here) is it?

• Aside: here he calls sophia an episteme, though in the Nicomachean Ethics he distinguished the two; a use of words “we’ve talked about before.”
• Method: take the opinions (hypolepsis) people have about the wise man — about six — and work out a description or “encircling” of him, so that the kind of causes may become clear.
• Wise man vs. wisdom: the description is interchangeable (“the wise man knows all things in some way” = “wisdom is a knowledge of all things in some way”); “wise man” is only more concrete.

2. The six attributes (“the wise man knows all things in the way that is possible”) #

Each is a common opinion, tested against ordinary speech and against the lesser “wise men.”

1. Knows all things in some way (hōs endechetai), not in particular (kath’ hekaston). Vulgar sense: “wise guy,” “know-it-all,” “he’s got it all together.” Socrates reasoning with the Athenians about goods of soul, body and outside: he considers all the goods of man. The natural philosopher on motion, place, time: what is common to all natural things. Dialectician and sophist ape the wise man precisely by this universality — conversation about anything, refutation everywhere. So if the partially wise know all in their area, the simply wise must know all, period.
2. Knows things difficult, not easy, for man. We admire him for what is hard to know. Recalls the earlier point that axioms, which everyone knows, seem the last thing wisdom is about — “who misses the door?” (Greek proverb). Aristotle’s example: to sense is common to all, hence easy and “nothing wise”; connects with the earlier argument that if wisdom were of the singular and the “that,” sensing would be wisdom.
3. More certain. Sign: when in doubt you go to someone wiser to be confirmed or corrected. He used to visit a wiser man at Thanksgiving and Easter breaks to “check out what I was thinking” [name unclear in recording]; the general practitioner sends you to the expert; his wife’s optometrist sent her to a Boston specialist.
4. More able to teach causes. Teacher thought wiser than student; if not (Thomas wiser than Albert the Great [ed.: ASR “Alfred”]), Albert arranges a debate “in which Thomas wins, of course.” Comes from what was seen before: one teaches better who can give the why.
5. The science for its own sake, for the sake of knowing, is more wisdom than those for results. “A little more difficult for us moderns,” who think all knowledge should be practical. Recalls the earlier arts for necessity vs. arts for leisure. Shakespeare thought wiser than any carpenter or cook; Einstein, Time’s man of the century, honored for understanding the universe, not for making something; Bohr’s lectures in Germany nicknamed the “Bohr Festival” because he seemed to understand the atom more than anyone.
6. The more architectonic (chief) science is more wisdom than the subordinate: the wise man ought to command, not be commanded; persuade, not be persuaded. Follows what was seen before about the commanding arts.

• The whole is “a pretty convincing six-part description”; Aristotle closes (his lines 19–20): such and so many are the opinions we have about wisdom and the wise.

3. Review: the six said of the wise man and of wisdom (“just to review it”) #

Wise man: knows all things in some way, not in detail; knows things difficult to know; is more sure; more able to teach causes; knows things better to know; orders all the rest. Wisdom: knowledge of all things in some way; of things difficult for men; more certain; most of all of causes; most desirable; that by which everything is ordered.

4. A paradox in the second and third (“a little paradox there”) #

How is the wise man both about the most difficult things and most certain? Aristotle does not resolve it here; he offers a resolution in imitation of De Koninck.

• Parallel from the De Anima (taught this summer): all knowledge is desirable, but one excels by certitude or by the dignity of its object, and knowledge of the soul is put in the front rank for both; yet what the soul is is among the hardest things to know. De Koninck: it is most certain that we have a soul, most difficult what it is.
• Descartes’ cogito: sure that you think, unsure what thinking is, whether material or immaterial.
• Beatrice in Much Ado: as sure of Hero’s innocence “as I have thought in the soul” — both the sure “that” and the obscure “what.”
• Applied: the wise man knows the axioms, and knows them better than anyone (distinctly, able to defend them) — “what’s more certain than the axioms?” — while the first causes are most difficult. So he is most certain and about the most difficult “not in the same way.”

5. Two conclusions, not one: said of all vs. cause of all (“universale in praedicando”) #

His own long-standing observation on the structure: Aristotle reasons from the first three attributes to wisdom being about the most universal, what is said of all (universale in praedicando), and from the last three to its being about the first causes, what is a cause of all (universale in causando). (He once says “the last four,” then corrects to attributes 4, 5, 6.) Thomas’s commentary takes the whole as ordered to the first and most universal causes — the principal intention — and does not bring the two out distinctly; but neither Aristotle nor Thomas would confuse them.

• Note: from attribute 2 (difficult things) one could reason to the first causes, but Aristotle deliberately reasons only to the most universal — to keep the two distinct, “as if he has foresight that people will confuse the two.”
• Hegel: begins the system with being, which is the being said of all; being so confused it seems to say nothing, so passes into non-being, then the synthesis, becoming, with contradiction. Illustration: “what is a chair? — a thing”: not nothing, yet seems to answer nothing. He supposes the old confusion of ability and non-being (as with matter and lack of form): being is very confused, hence very potential, hence seems nothing. Then Hegel’s Logic says this being is Scripture’s “I am who am” — confusing the cause of all with what is said of all, “one of the greatest mistakes you could possibly make.”
• Like David of Dinant saying God is prime matter.
• Summa contra Gentiles, Book I: after showing God’s substance and being are the same (“I am who am”), a whole capitulum shows God is not the being said of all things (not esse commune omnium) — as if refuting Hegel in advance.
• Plato: thought the way we know must be the way things are; since we truly know the universal in separation from singulars, the universal exists separated — the Forms; but the Forms are also causes (things partake of the form of dog). So he makes what is said of many the cause of the same many.
• Marx mocking Hegel: abstract “fruit” from apple, orange, peach, then call each the unfolding of the idea of fruit; Plato is “a little bit in that problem too.”
• Shakespeare’s pun on two senses of “general”: “soldier” said of everyone in the army (general in predication) vs. MacArthur, general of the army, its universal mover (general in causing). Troilus and Cressida: Agamemnon kisses Cressida; Ulysses: kissed by the general but not in general — then everybody kisses her.
• Aristotle wants both conclusions: wisdom is about what is said of all (Book Four: being as being, and one) and about the first causes, causes of all.

6. Student: is the root error identifying how we know with how things are? (“the way we know with the way things are”) #

Yes — a problem with most philosophers. Truth is conformity of mind to things, but what must agree with things is what you say about them, not your way of knowing. Cube known apart from ice cube, wooden block, plastic cube: truly knowable so, but not therefore separate outside the mind. Plato, convinced by Socrates that definition truly knows, wrongly inferred separate existence.

• Memory: you remember the past now, without falsity; falsity would come in saying the past is now — “now” refers to your knowing, “the past” to the known.
• God knows past, present and future in his eternal now. Boethius, Consolation: announces himself a member of the Academy (Plato’s school), yet in Book V, on God’s eternity and knowledge, Lady Wisdom [ed.: Philosophy] introduces Aristotle as her true follower — his subtle way of saying he must follow Aristotle here. “Perhaps the greatest Christian philosopher between Augustine and Thomas.”
• Aside: the dialogue form shows “the Italian influence.”

7. From the first attribute to the most universal (“has a knowledge of what is malista katholou”) #

The wise man cannot know all things in particular, so he knows them only by knowing what is said of all — the most universal.

• Arithmetic: “no odd number is even,” “no prime is composite” (Euclid’s theorem: infinitely many primes) — true statements about an infinity, made not by knowing each but by knowing what is said of them. So too reason knows all things by knowing what is said of all.
• Greek: the one knowing all things knows what is malista katholou; he knows “in some way” all the hupokeimena (subjects) that fall under the universal.
• Ties to the earlier Shakespearean description: wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, reason’s “large discourse”; one sense of large is covering many things, and the wise man’s discourse is the largest there is (“beside the theologian”). Socrates’ discourse with the Athenians ranged over all the goods of man (soul, body, exterior) — Aristotle has the same in Politics Book VII; the practical philosopher’s discourse is larger than the doctor’s or carpenter’s, which concern one particular good.

8. From the second attribute: why the most universal is most difficult (“that means what? Perhaps”) #

Aristotle writes schedon (“perhaps”): the most universal (ta malista katholou) are perhaps the most difficult (chalepōtata) for men, because they are furthest (porrōtatō) from the senses — knowledge begins at the singular, and the most universal is furthest from it.

• Why “perhaps”? (a) The first cause may be even harder. (b) Objection from Physics Book I: the confused is more known to us, so the more universal is more known, not less.
• Replies: we must ascend from the less to the more universal. Metaphysics Book IX: act and ability as found in motion first, then the most universal consideration in its second part. History of thought: the extreme difficulty of rising from the one that is principle of number to the one convertible with being. Thomas: when he says being is first understood, if he meant being in the universality wisdom considers, that is not first known; more precisely, the being first known is being in material things.
• Most concrete text: Physics Book IV on place — all earlier Greeks held that whatever is must be somewhere, so being-in-place, a property of natural bodies, is taken as a property of being; most people today would agree. Even orthodox Catholics feel God must be somewhere; he himself, convinced by argument and faith of his soul’s survival, finds it hard to think of his soul as nowhere. Socrates’ joke: the ghosts at cemeteries are souls of lovers of the body trying to get back in — still imagining the soul as an air-like body. Same with substance: identified with bodies, hard to consider substance more universally than body. Aristotle: if that opinion were true, place would be a marvelous thing, first of all things (student: fits Newton — “the sensorium of God”).
• Second reason: the universal is too far from sense and imagination. Students call fundamental philosophy “so abstract” — i.e. separated from the concrete singular; even in philosophy of nature (“so abstract, Mr. Berquist”), though change is in everyone’s experience. Anaximander’s “unlimited” felt too abstract, so others preferred air. Strictly the universal cannot be imagined: modern logicians substitute class (a collection, discrete quantity), Venn diagrams (continuous quantity); Plato’s Parmenides pictures the universal as a sail covering us; people prefer “the human race” (a multitude) to “man.” Porphyry’s first two meanings of genus: the one man from whom many descend, or the many descended; Israel is one like the genus but individual unlike it; the Israelites are many like what the genus is said of, but the genus is one, not a multitude.
• What strikes him: Aristotle could have reasoned from difficulty to the first causes, but keeps one conclusion from the first three and one from the last three, to help the mind hold the two apart.

9. Closing: pantheism (“not the esse commune omnium”) #

Student: where is Thomas’s chapter? SCG Book I, after showing God is “I am who am.” Dionysius’s “God is the esse omnium” can be misread; Thomas says Dionysius did not mean it so, “but you never know about these Platonists.” Confusion of the two universals lands in pantheism: Tocqueville’s inclination to pantheism in democratic customs; Hegel; 19th-century German Catholic theologians always being corrected; a book by Cardinal Siri (Gethsemane) on pantheistic-seeming passages in Rahner and others. Question about Anselm’s argument: “let’s not discuss that” — left there.

His words #

• episteme — science; here applied to sophia, though the Ethics distinguishes them.
• hypolepsis — opinions people have (about the wise man).
• “encircling” of the wise man — his word for Aristotle’s description by attributes.
• hōs endechetai — “in the way that is possible”; kath’ hekaston — in particular.
• malista katholou — most of all universal; hupokeimena — the subjects under the universal.
• schedon — “perhaps”; chalepōtata — most difficult; porrōtatō — furthest away.
• universale in praedicando / universale in causando — what is said of all / what is a cause of all; “in more English,” said of many vs. cause of many.
• “ability” [ed.: potency]; “ability and non-being” confusion as with matter and lack of form.
• “Natural Hearing” [ed.: Physics].
• “large discourse” — Shakespeare’s phrase for reason; wisdom as the largest discourse.
• esse commune omnium — the being common to all, which God is not; esse omnium (Dionysius).
• capitulum — “little chapter” of the Summa contra Gentiles.
• “abstract” — as students use it: separated from the concrete singular.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics Book I, “second reading” of the proemium: the six opinions about the wise man; “such and so many are the opinions”; the reasoning from the first attribute (malista katholou) and the second (schedon … porrōtatō) (982a, inferred). Handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom” p. 9 (verified).

Mentioned

• Thomas, Commentary on the Metaphysics (on this passage; locus not stated).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (episteme vs. sophia).
• Aristotle, De Anima, opening (knowledge of the soul in the front rank); De Koninck’s explanation.
• Descartes, cogito; Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (Beatrice on Hero); Troilus and Cressida (Ulysses’ pun on “general”).
• Hegel, Logic (being, non-being, becoming; “I am who am”); Marx on Hegel (fruit); David of Dinant.
• Thomas, Summa contra Gentiles Book I (God’s substance is his being; God is not esse commune omnium); Dionysius (esse omnium).
• Plato, Forms; Parmenides (the sail); Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy Book V.
• Euclid (infinity of primes); Aristotle, Politics Book VII (goods of man); Socrates with the Athenians (Apology, inferred); Socrates on ghosts (Phaedo, inferred).
• Aristotle, Physics Book I (confused more known) and Book IV (place; all things somewhere); Metaphysics Book IX (act and ability); Book IV (being as being, one).
• Anaximander; Porphyry on genus; Newton (sensorium of God); Tocqueville; Cardinal Siri, Gethsemane; Rahner; Anselm.

His questions #

• Is “the wise man knows all things in some way” a common opinion? Yes — “wise guy,” “know-it-all”; Socrates, the natural philosopher, dialectician and sophist all show it.
• Would you admire the wise man for knowing what is easy to know? No; hence wisdom is of things difficult for man, and sensing, common to all, is “nothing wise.”
• Do we think of the wise man as more sure than other men? Yes — in doubt we go to someone wiser; the GP sends you to the expert.
• How can the wise man be most certain and yet about the most difficult things? Not in the same respect: most certain of the axioms, least certain about the first causes (after De Koninck on the soul).
• Is it the same to be said of all and to be a cause of all? No; confusing them (Hegel, in part Plato) is one of the greatest mistakes in thinking.
• How can one know all things when there is an infinity of them? By knowing what is said of all — as “no odd number is even” is true of infinitely many.
• Why does Aristotle say schedon, “perhaps,” the most universal are most difficult? Because the first cause is harder still, and because Physics I says the more universal is more known to us.
• If the more universal is more known, how is the most universal most difficult? We must ascend from being in material things (whatever is is somewhere) to being in its full universality, far from sense and imagination.
• Where is Thomas’s chapter against Hegel’s confusion? Summa contra Gentiles Book I: God is not the esse commune omnium.
• Does Anselm’s argument also involve this? Left open (“let’s not discuss that”).