Certitude, the First Causes, and Which Philosophy Is Most Like Wisdom (Logic, Nature, Politics)

Orientation #

He picks up at “the third attribute of the wise man,” having done the first two already (prev. lecture), and refers back to “the first reading” (art vs. experience) and “the second book” (end and good the same, the road to be known before the science). He looks forward to “the third reading,” where the knowledge of the best will be brought out. The previous class worked through the six attributes as pointing either to “said of all” or to “cause of all”; the next class begins Book III (Beta) on doubting well.

The class, in order #

1. Third attribute: most certain, from most universal (“the science that needs to take into account more things”) #

Point: Aristotle reasons that wisdom is most certain because it is about the most universal, using a principle he “recalls” from the Posterior Analytics.

1. Principle (Post. An.): the science that must take more things into account to know something is less certain; the one that takes fewer into account is more certain.
2. Same example as the Post. An.: arithmetic is more certain than geometry. Shown from the beginnings of each: the one (beginning of number) and the point (first thing Euclid defines) are both indivisible, but the point has in addition position (“here or there”); so the Greeks called a point “a one having position.” Three ones in the number three are nowhere; three points may lie on one straight line or not. More to consider in geometry, so less certain.
   • His own experience: reading Heath’s notes or Proclus on Euclid’s theorems, one sees mathematicians distinguishing cases (sometimes too many, sometimes too few); Euclid takes the most difficult case and leaves the others to us. “I’m not as certain here as I am in arithmetic,” where one need not worry about where the three ones are.
3. From the sphere in geometry to the sphere that is the Earth: now matter, its changeableness and attributes, must be considered (is it a perfect sphere or flattened at the poles?). Counting the seven people in the room vs. the crowd at Yankee Stadium (people coming and going): more things to take account of, less sure.
4. From natural to political philosophy: the political philosopher must consider not only what man is by nature (enough for the natural philosopher) but what he is by custom and by choice. Hence the order of certitude: arithmetic, geometry, natural philosophy, political philosophy; this is why Thomas says the sciences about doing get more particular and take in more.
5. As one goes from more universal to less universal (animal, quadruped, dog, a kind of dog) one adds things to think about; conversely, going up there is less. So the most universal takes in the least, and by the principle is the most certain. Connection he “makes in your mind”: the axioms are the most certain statements, and their words are the most universal ones (being, non-being: “something cannot both be and not be, same time, same way”), which is why Book V of Wisdom, on the names used in wisdom, is also about the names in the axioms. Student: don’t those words get complexity from being equivocal? He: they do, but the connection stands. Student: “when you’re down low, you are including your understanding of the most universal” — he agrees (“you have additions”). Student: it still sounds strange, given the difficulty attribute. He: there is “a little bit of a paradox there,” which is why Aristotle says schedon (“almost”); Aristotle puts up with it to keep the first three attributes pointing at wisdom as about the malista katholou, the most universal, “what is said of all.” Now to the other side.

2. Fourth attribute: most able to teach, hence the first cause (“the guy who can teach the cause of the cause”) #

Point: the wise man, most able to teach, must know the first causes. He notes “a little maybe confusion in the text”: is the attribute “most able to teach causes” or just “most able to teach”? Either way it works out:

1. One is more able to teach the more one knows the causes (earlier stated as teaching the causes).
2. He who can teach the cause of the cause is more able to teach.
3. So he who can teach the first cause is most able to teach; the wise man, most able to teach, knows the first causes. Aside: when he teaches this himself he sometimes gives the attribute simply as “most able to teach” and then goes back to causes.

3. Fifth attribute: most desirable for its own sake (“the knowledge that most of all makes you know”) #

Point: knowledge sought just for knowing is the knowledge that most makes one know, i.e. of the first cause.

1. If something is desirable because pleasant, the most pleasant is most desirable; so if knowledge is desirable simply as knowledge, the most desirable is that by which one most of all knows.
2. One most of all knows when one knows the cause: the first reading showed the man of art or science more knowing than the man of experience, who knows only that, not why. (Even knowing what goes back to causes, Post. An. Book II.)
3. Knowing the cause of the cause one knows more; so one most of all knows by the first cause, “most knowable in itself.” Student: the attribute is that it’s useless, better because good from itself. He: the attribute is that it is most worthwhile to have just for knowing. Aristotle could reason otherwise (as in the dianoia: knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge, so wisdom is of the best), and will in the third reading; here he wants only that wisdom is of the first causes.

4. Sixth attribute: most architectonic, the end as cause of causes (“the best in the whole of nature”) #

Point: the wise man who orders all others must know the end, the greatest good in the whole of reality, and the end is the cause of all the other causes, so he knows the first cause. This ties back to the course’s earlier point on why the end matters most to the wise man, and to Book II: end and good are the same.

• He reads: the science is architektonikotate, most chief, more commanding than obeying; it knows the hou heneka, that for the sake of which, the good of each and more generally the best “in the whole of nature,” en te physei pase (cf. Thomas’s in rerum natura, “in reality”).
• Principal conclusion: “from all the things said, the sought name falls in the same science”: it is theoretical of the first beginnings and causes, “for also the good, that for the sake of which, is one of the causes.” Aristotle reminds us because the end “is the least known cause.”

5. The exercise: which philosophy is most like wisdom? (“kill at least two birds with this stone”) #

Point: a dialectical paper he sets students: of logic, natural philosophy and political philosophy (of which ethics is the element, says Thomas), which is most like wisdom, judged by the six attributes? Two aims: fix the attributes in the mind, and see that “philosophy” is not said of these purely equivocally.

• Attribute 1 (knows all things): logic. Political philosophy is only about human things; natural philosophy about the whole universe; but Thomas often remarks that logic is in some sense about all things, because reason is open to all (Aristotle in De Anima: the soul is in some way all things). In the Categories’ division of beings (ton onton: some in another but not said of another, etc.) universality of logic appears; and Aristotle begins his consideration of substance from logic, “what it is” and definition. “So logic must be wisdom.”
• Attribute 2 (most difficult): ambiguous. Thomas: logic is learned before the other sciences because it teaches the common road (as Aristotle said in the fifth reading of Book II, you must know the road before geometry or ethics), yet against the usual rule of easy before difficult, because logic habet maximam difficultatem; its immateriality is why moderns substitute class for the universal, and why Socrates in the Parmenides and Locke (triangle in general) try to imagine the universal. But the earlier chapter located the cause of difficulty in things too: matter, motion, time make natural philosophy hard; and the defender of political philosophy says contingent things are harder (Einstein asked why political science is such a mess compared to natural science: “more complicated”).
• Attribute 3 (most certain): logic over natural philosophy. So far “logic is winning the race.”
• Attribute 4 (most able to teach): political philosophy lowest (Socrates on the great men of Athens not teaching their sons; Napoleon couldn’t teach his generals). Between logic and natural philosophy: a student first says the logician teaches better; then a student: “if you’re just giving causes… real causes” — “Aha!” The natural philosopher most of all knows causes: in the Phaedo, when Simmias presses for a reason why the soul must survive (a cause, not a probability), Socrates recalls his experience as a natural philosopher, since from these men one gets illumination about causes; Aristotle later in Book I uses the natural philosophers’ opinions to decide whether there are only four kinds of cause; and in Book VI he says if there were no immaterial substances natural philosophy would be wisdom, calling it “second philosophy.” Student: how does logic consider causes? He: it treats demonstrating from cause to effect and effect to cause, and in Book II reasoning e.g. from the end to the parts, but the distinction of four causes comes from the natural philosophers; still the logician beats the political philosopher here. Natural philosopher on top at four.
• Attribute 5 (desired for its own sake): natural philosophy. Political philosophy is for the good of the city; logic is a tool, not even a part of philosophy in the first division into looking and doing (theoretike, praktike); it is “the third kind” only by the ratio of tool to philosophy, especially of looking philosophy. Political philosophy, chief part of practical philosophy, outranks logic in dignity; logic third. Asides: who collected the works as Organon? unknown, the Greek tradition (Neoplatonists?); Socrates asks for a techne peri logous, not calling it a tool. Symbolic logicians at Minnesota admitted their stuff is useless for knowing reality, so must study it “for its own sake” — “like swinging a hammer in the dirt.”
• Attribute 6 (directs all): political philosophy and logic both claim it. Ethics I: knowledge of the last end belongs to political knowledge, since the commanding knowledge aims at the higher end (medicine commands pharmacy because health is its end); the political authority can draft Berquist from logic into the military art. Hence the Straussians make political philosophy wisdom. But the logician teaches how to define, demonstrate, proceed dialectically, checks fallacies, knows the common road all sciences must follow — so he directs all reasoned-out knowledge, even, a student presses, the wise man? He raises the objection himself: the wise man seeks reasoned-out knowledge of being as being and must go to the logician for how to define and demonstrate. Student replies: the tool doesn’t direct the user; another: the logician doesn’t determine the end. His resolution: the wise man has a more basic road, the natural or inborn road (Physics proemium: from more known to us to more known by nature), which explains why the logician does what he does: we know confusedly before distinctly, hence definition, division, distinction; we cannot affirm and deny the same because the same cannot both be and not be, which the wise man defends; demonstration presupposes cause and effect, which the wise man understands more. Nevertheless logician and political philosopher have great likeness in seeming to direct others. Aside: the degree formula “in virtue of the authority invested in me by the board of trustees and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts”: even the college’s “nefarious activity” is licensed by the political authority.

6. Verdict and other pretenders to wisdom (“natural philosophy has most of all the claim”) #

Point: each of the three has some claim; which is strongest?

• Student: by numbers, logic. He: outweighed by the fact that wisdom is chiefly about causes and first causes, and natural philosophy would be knowledge of the first causes if there were no immaterial things (Book VI). So natural philosophy is most like wisdom in substance; logic in its mode (immateriality, universality). His memory: when Monsignor Dionne first came down, Kasurik confirmed natural philosophy as more like wisdom; Dionne would quote Proclus that mathematics purificat oculum mentis, and add that logic purifies the mind even more, being more immaterial than geometry. But the science is properly called metaphysica (Thomas: transphysica, in the proemium of the commentary), not metalogica.
• Other claimants from the sixth attribute: Straussians (political philosophy directs); Cicero thought rhetoric wisdom, since the wise man persuades rather than is persuaded; the sophists, who all taught rhetoric, were called “the wise men.” Aside: Murray announcing famous speakers (“Protagoras will be in town tomorrow”) — students should take such a man “with a grain of salt.” [Recording ends mid-sentence.]

His words #

• “certain” / “sure”: more certain = takes fewer things into account (Post. An. principle).
• “a one having position”: the Greeks’ account of the point.
• schedon: Aristotle’s “almost,” admitting the paradox in the first three attributes.
• malista katholou: the most universal, “what is said of all.”
• “Wisdom”, “Book Five of Wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics].
• architektonikotate: most architectonic, most chief, commanding rather than obeying.
• hou heneka: that for the sake of which; “the good of each.”
• en te physei pase: “in the whole of nature,” cf. Thomas in rerum natura, “in reality.”
• “theoretical of the first beginnings and causes”: the principal conclusion.
• dianoia: an earlier reasoning that knowledge of a better thing is better knowledge.
• “first reading”, “third reading”, “fifth reading of the second book” [ed.: lectiones].
• “common road of reasoned out knowledge”: what logic teaches (Thomas); “reasoned out knowledge” [ed.: science, scientia].
• habet maximam difficultatem: Thomas on logic.
• “looking philosophy” / “philosophy of doing”: theoretike, praktike.
• “tool philosophy”: logic, “by the ratio of logic to philosophy”; Organon; techne peri logous.
• “natural road” / “inborn road”: from more known to us to more known by nature.
• “second philosophy” (natural philosophy) vs. “first philosophy”.
• purificat oculum mentis: Proclus (via Dionne) on mathematics.
• metaphysica, transphysica (Thomas), metalogica (his joke).

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I: the third through sixth attributes and the conclusion that the sought science is theoretical of the first beginnings and causes (Greek phrases quoted). Mentioned
• Aristotle, Posterior Analytics: arithmetic more certain than geometry; Book II, knowing what goes back to causes; reasoning from end to parts.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book V (names); Book VI (second philosophy, if no immaterial substances); later in Book I (natural philosophers’ opinions on causes).
• Euclid, Elements, with Heath’s notes and Proclus.
• Aristotle, Categories: the division ton onton; consideration of substance beginning from logic.
• Aristotle, De Anima: the soul is in some way all things.
• Aristotle, Physics, proemium: the inborn road.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, beginning: political knowledge commands.
• Thomas Aquinas: logic before the other sciences, maximam difficultatem; ethics the element of political philosophy; in rerum natura; transphysica in the proemium (inferred).
• Plato, Phaedo (Simmias and Socrates), Parmenides (young Socrates), Protagoras (the young man wanting to hear Protagoras).
• Locke on the general triangle; Cicero on rhetoric; the Straussians; Einstein on political science.

His questions #

• Why is arithmetic more certain than geometry? The point adds position to the one’s indivisibility; more to consider, so less certain.
• Why is the most universal the most certain? Going up from less to more universal there are fewer things to take into account; by the Post. An. principle it is most certain.
• Is the fourth attribute “most able to teach” or “most able to teach causes”? Either; both lead to the man who knows the first cause.
• What is the knowledge most desirable for its own sake? The one that most makes you know, i.e. knowledge of the first cause.
• Of logic, natural philosophy, political philosophy, which is most universal? most certain? Logic, on both.
• Who most of all knows the causes? The natural philosopher (Phaedo; Book VI’s “second philosophy”).
• Does the logician direct the wise man? No: the wise man knows the more basic natural road that explains why the logician does what he does, and defends the axioms; the tool does not direct its user.
• Which of the three has the most claim to wisdom? By count, logic; but natural philosophy, because wisdom is chiefly of first causes.