Poetry, Scripture, and Wonder: Philomuthos vs. Philosopher, and the Historian's View

Orientation #

He refers back to what he quoted earlier on admiration and “the praise of Sylvia”, and to “the same principle we saw in the second book of Wisdom” (prev. lecture: the class on the proem’s account of wonder and admiration). He looks ahead: “when we get into the questions of the third book, all these questions about the first cause.” The previous class treated the proem’s teaching that philosophy begins in wonder and the higher wonder of admiration; the next turns to Book III and the aporiai.

The class, in order #

1. Poet vs. philomythos (“the poet is named from the Greek word for maker”) #

Point: a student reports the University of Dallas view that poets are the wisest men, based on the likeness between the wise man and the philomythos; he answers that the text is about the philomythos, not the poet.

• Poet is named from the Greek for maker, “by antonomasia”: the name of the whole given to the part (Plato, Symposium, explaining the word “lover” by comparison with “poet”, which to a Greek was the more known case).
• Examples of antonomasia: among all Greek makers, Homer is the maker; the romantic lover stands out by absurd behaviour (Romeo shutting the shutters, sitting in the dark, not dressing properly, his father worried), so he gets the name the lover, though a philosopher too is a lover (of wisdom).
• Conclusion: the poet may be a philomythos, but he is not called poet because of that; he is called maker because he makes wonderful fictions. Why the Greeks ranked fiction-making above other making is a separate question.
• Aristotle’s likeness here is between the philomythos and the philosopher, not the poet and the philosopher: the philomythos is “not simply a philosopher” but has something of him in an imperfect way, namely wonder. “Even the wonder of the philomythos is not the wonder of the philosopher; it’s a stepping stone to that.”
• Student: Thomas speaks of the theologizantes poetae, Perseus and the seven wise men. He: look at what Shakespeare says about the poet to see the difference (not developed).

2. Mystics, metaphor, and the modus of Scripture (“whether the modus, the way of proceeding of Scripture, is artful”) #

Point: a student asks how mystics (John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila) who have the highest wisdom can express it only by metaphor; he answers from Aristotle and from Thomas’s article on Scripture’s way of proceeding.

1. Aristotle says God alone, or most of all, is wise; so one who partook of God’s own wisdom would have a wisdom higher than the fourteen books. Aristotle did not know Christ (not yet come) nor, as far as he knows, the Hebrew scriptures.
2. Thomas’s article (in the Sentences, analogous to the first question of the Summa): whether the modus of sacred Scripture is artificiosus (“artful”; not “artificial”, given the majority sense of that word).
3. What the question means: not merely “orderly”. Go back to the Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle gives the same principle as the second book of Wisdom but more expansively, comparing to the arts, even the mechanical arts: you must understand the matter and find tools and ways of working that fit it (the De Trinitate refers to the Ethics for this because Aristotle is more explicit there). So “artful” means: does the way of proceeding fit the matter? Boethius adds: fit the matter and how we are to the matter.
4. Thomas then shows why Scripture’s way is artful and why it proceeds in more than one way. Reasons: prayer, because the beginnings of this knowledge are from God and must be received by prayer; also metaphor and parables; argument; command. At the beginning of the commentary on the Psalms he touches this: different books proceed differently, the Psalms orativus and laudativus (prayerful and praising), but the Sentences goes into everything.

• Examples: the Epistles of Paul and Job proceed in the modus disputativus or argumentativus; the Song of Songs quite differently; there is a reason for having both. In the Summa Theologiae, Thomas has the article whether it is argumentativus (and one on metaphors), and the Summa itself proceeds in the modus argumentativus, imitating one of Scripture’s modes. Christ combines all modes: asking the Pharisees “whose son is he” is proceeding like Socrates, modus disputativus; teaching the Our Father is a different way. In the other books one mode dominates.
• Application: John of the Cross’s “poems” (not poems in the poet’s sense) proceed like the Song of Songs; one cannot say Scripture should proceed only that way or only as Paul does.
• Aside: when Thomas lays out Paul, there are syllogisms there; you realise how argumentative Paul is, compared with other books (“probably why the Dominicans” like him; the rest unclear in recording).

3. What is a poem? Prayer in meter is not a poem (“It’s a prayer in meter”) #

Point: against the student’s objection that the greatest Spanish poets praise John of the Cross, he asks what a poem is, and denies that meter and rhyme make one.

• If a poem is anything with meter and rhyme, the Adoro te devote is a poem; but it is basically a prayer in meter and rhyme, named from its purpose.
• Aristotle in the Poetic Art compares Empedocles, who wrote in verse, with the poets: Empedocles should not be classed as a poet, because he is philosophizing though putting it into meter. Dante “has some problems” of classification; deferred as “the problem of Dante”.
• His definition of a Shakespearean sonnet: a likeness of thought and feeling in fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, three quatrains with alternating rhyme, finished by a rhyming couplet. The Adoro te devote has meter (the Latin calls it rhythmus; Thomas’s, with rhyme in each quatrain) but is not a likeness of thought and feeling; Thomas is composing a prayer, not an imitation as Shakespeare does. Not helpful to call it a poem if poem means imitation or likeness.
• Same for the Our Father (he has heard it had a rhythm in Aramaic: Our Lord was giving a prayer, not a likeness) and the Psalms (may have had rhythm in the original; prayers, some a little prophetic, some historical, but mainly prayer).
• Student: hymns as prayers with rhythm and rhyme for the sake of singing. He: the nuns in the choir here; the music concentrates on the words; they are not imitating but praying and praising, proceeding as Thomas says the Psalms proceed. One who sings the Psalms is essentially praying and praising, in meter.
• Personal note: he uses the Adoro te devote alongside prayers not in meter; he does not think “now I’m turning to poetry”; it is easier to use because we naturally like meter and rhyme.
• Student’s back-reference: poetry of Homer “raising words below” (from the other day) is “part of it”.

4. Divide the questions: lover vs. maker (“The lover of myth versus the maker of myth”) #

Point: three different questions must be separated: is the philomythos like a philosopher; how does he differ from him; is the poet the same as the philomythos.

• Reading Homer, he is a philomythos (Homer is an imitator of wonders), not a poet; his “excessive devotion to Shakespeare” satisfies him as a philomythos without making him a dramatist.
• Pairs: lover of myth vs. maker of myth; lover of plays vs. composer; lover of music vs. composer of music. Student: the maker must be an even greater lover (Mozart). He: perhaps, but his being a lover of music is not the same as his being a musician; he is a musician because he can make these things. Aside: Mozart sometimes forced to write what he did not want to.
• Conclusion: “poet” does not mean lover of myth, even if he loves it; it means maker.

5. Do philosophers lose wonder? Wonder as the only beginning (“there is no other beginning of philosophy than wonder”) #

Point: a student reports the claim that philosophers lose their wonder while poets nourish it, so poetry is more like wisdom; he says this mixes things up.

• He was quoting Albert the Great: poetry such as Homer gives the motum admirandi, but more precisely it gives the wonder of the philomythos, a stepping stone, not the philosopher’s wonder; that a man makes something arousing that wonder does not make him a philosopher.
• Philosophers who do not wonder are not philosophers in Plato’s and Aristotle’s sense: Socrates in the Theaetetus is very clear, there is no other beginning of philosophy than wonder. Student: that is for the beginner, once something is acquired it differs. He: distinctions could be made, but the statement is unqualified. There are many senses of “beginning” (fifth book); even the axioms or principles of a science are beginnings, but wonder has to come first, so a man without it would never become a philosopher.
• Aside: Monsignor Dionne, “teaching without wonder is nothing.”

6. Two senses of wonder: curiosity and admiration (“thaumaston, this is wonderful”) #

Point: since we never comprehend God, is wonder always present? He distinguishes the wonder that begins philosophy from the wonder Aristotle has at God once he knows him as far as reason can.

• The wonder at the end proceeds not from ignorance of God but from God’s excellence. Student: Newman’s prayer on the beatific vision, “from wonder to wonder and mystery to mystery”, speaks of this.
• Reading of Lambda, eighth reading, 1072b24 (having just shown the kind of knowing God has): if God has himself well as we do only sometimes, this is thaumaston, wonderful; ei de mallon, if he understands always and better than we ever do, eti thaumasioteron, even more wonderful. Then (around line 29): life belongs to him, for the act of the mind is life, and this is act; life, zoe, eternal, belongs to God; and “touto gar ho theos”: not only does life belong to God, God is life. The wonder arises from seeing that the most wonderful moment of our life, understanding something beautiful (rare, since we are enslaved to so many things), God has always and better.
• Student: is this wonder still based on not seeing what God is? He: maybe a little, but do not confuse it with the beginning of philosophy, where you do not know what the first cause is (the questions of the third book). Student: does God wonder in this sense? He: the wonder here proceeds from knowing that God always has what we rarely have; your knowing this enables you to wonder at what you could not otherwise.
• Contrast: the beginning-wonder proceeds from recognising ignorance of the cause and wanting to know it, so it diminishes; this wonder grows the more you see God.
• Student: then “wonder” is equivocal in the two cases. He: “it may be equivocal by reason”; what is common may be that in both there is something above us. Father Boulay’s example: “fear” carried from physical fear all the way up to the fear of those seeing God; the meaning changes a lot but it is still a kind of fear or awe. So Aristotle is no clod without wonder at God; it is a different kind.
• Names: “curiosity” is used commonly (scientists) for the wonder giving rise to investigation, though Thomas names the vice curiositas. Max Born (worked with Einstein in Berlin, with Heisenberg and Bohr, Nobel prize; a good witness): the two aspects of science, technical and the desire to know; “nothing great can be accomplished in science without the elementary curiosity of the philosopher”, curiosity in the non-pejorative sense. “Admiration” comes from the Latin for wonder but in English names what proceeds from knowledge of excellence: “Who is Sylvia… heaven lent her such graces that she might admired be” (as he quoted before). So, if one wanted two names: curiosity (in the good sense, not Thomas’s curiositas) for the beginning of philosophy; admiration for the wonder here. Admiration may be used most where one cannot fully comprehend the excellence seen, which lends the same word to both, but fundamentally it proceeds from the excellence seen, not from ignorance.
• Aside: Holton [ASR “Horton”] of Harvard, a talk (he has it in French, from Quebec) at a symposium on the tenth anniversary of Einstein’s death with Heisenberg and others, on Einstein’s letters and his break with an earlier physicist [name unclear in recording] precisely over Einstein’s desire to know the laws.

7. The pure historian and historical parallels (“the purpose of history is to show the fallacy of all historical parallels”) #

Point: a student’s principal, following a Renaissance author, puts history at the top of the liberal arts because it yields understanding of human nature; he asks whether inducing human nature from particulars is proper to history, and describes the pure historian.

• D. Fahey [ASR “D. Fee”], a very good historian who introduced him to McNeill’s The Rise of the West, was a pure historian: “the purpose of history is not to point out historical parallels; it is to show the fallacy of all historical parallels.” If so, history shows the fallacy of any generalization from history. Perhaps exaggerated, but much truth: as another historian said, history is always more complicated than we think.
• Etymology: history is named by antonomasia, as Thomas explains, because it is the nature of a history to be incomplete; it means investigation, which is not complete. So the incomplete gets a good name.
• The pure historian sees the differences where “we dimwits” see parallels; this makes him not superficial. He wants the uniqueness of this event or period and has no patience with unhistorical minds using superficial, meaningless parallels to prop up pseudo-science.
• Student: the claim that we study history so as not to repeat our mistakes is also a fallacy. He: Fahey’s basic principle: if someone pays me for doing what I like, fine; the “learn from the past” reasons are for public consumption; inside there is none of that.
• Principle of simplicity: extremely important to the great physicists (Galileo, Kepler, Newton; Einstein and Heisenberg inculcate it), but if history is always more complicated than we think it would be a very bad principle for the historian (Marx’s reduction to the economic mode of production as a bad simplification). He wishes he had noted which historian said it.
• Student objection: does this show a weakness of mind, able to distinguish but not to see the same? He: they can see the likeness, but of a thousand elements maybe two or three are alike and 999 not; and if everything were the same, why study history?
• Student: he would not like “there is nothing new under the sun”. He: “History never repeats itself” would be the terrible thing to say.
• Anecdote: dinners with Fahey and an old, stingy German professor; a dispute over Shakespeare’s dates, a bet, Fahey (phenomenal memory for dates) wins; thereafter any time a date came up Fahey said “I’ll bet you” and the professor acceded. Fahey has since died; he finally married.

8. Closing question on teaching Homer (“Aristotle is supposed to have written a work on Homer”) #

A student asks for principles of why Homer is great; “a vast subject”. Aristotle is supposed to have written a work on Homer for Alexander the Great, now lost; it would have to be found first. He leaves for church.

His words #

• antonomasia; giving the name of the whole to the part: “the maker” for Homer, “the lover” for the romantic lover, “history” for what is incomplete.
• philomythos; lover of myth/wonders; has something of the philosopher imperfectly, by wonder (transcript “Philomuthos/Philotheus”).
• poet; the maker, of wonderful fictions; not the lover of myth.
• artificiosus; “artful”, of Scripture’s modus: fitting the matter (and how we are to it); not “artificial”.
• modus orativus, laudativus, disputativus/argumentativus; ways Scripture proceeds (Psalms; Paul, Job).
• rhythmus; Latin name for the meter of the Adoro te devote.
• poem; an imitation or likeness (of thought and feeling), as against a prayer in meter.
• motum admirandi; Albert the Great, what poetry gives.
• thaumaston / thaumasioteron; wonderful / more wonderful (Lambda).
• zoe; life; “touto gar ho theos”, God is life.
• equivocal by reason; his suggestion for the two senses of wonder [ed.: analogy not named].
• curiosity; wonder beginning philosophy, in the good sense; Thomas’s curiositas names the vice.
• admiration; wonder proceeding from knowledge of excellence.
• principle of simplicity; the physicists’ principle, bad for the historian.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics, Lambda, eighth reading, 1072b24 ff. (read in Greek and commented). Mentioned
• Aristotle, Metaphysics, proem (the philomythos passage; God alone/most of all wise); Book V (senses of beginning); Book III (questions on the first cause).
• Plato, Symposium (on “lover”); Theaetetus (no beginning of philosophy but wonder).
• Aristotle, Poetic Art (Empedocles vs. the poets); Nicomachean Ethics (how to proceed; comparison to the arts).
• Boethius, De Trinitate (refers to the Ethics; fit the matter and how we are to it).
• Thomas, Sentences, article whether the modus of Scripture is artificiosus; Commentary on the Psalms, beginning; Summa Theologiae, articles whether argumentativus and on metaphors (q. 1 inferred); Thomas on the theologizantes poetae (student).
• Thomas, Adoro te devote; the Our Father; the Psalms; Song of Songs; Job; Epistles of Paul; Christ questioning the Pharisees.
• Albert the Great on poetry; Newman’s prayer on the beatific vision; Shakespeare, sonnets, “Who is Sylvia”; Max Born on curiosity; Holton’s talk on Einstein; McNeill, The Rise of the West; Aristotle’s lost work on Homer.

His questions #

• Is the poet the same as the philomythos? No: poet means maker of fictions; the philomythos is the lover of wonders; one may be both, but the poet is not named from loving.
• What does it mean to ask whether the modus of Scripture is artful? Whether its way of proceeding fits its matter (and how we are to the matter), as an art fits its matter.
• Is the Adoro te devote a poem? No: it is a prayer in meter and rhyme, not a likeness of thought and feeling.
• What are the nuns doing up there in the choir? Praying and praising, not imitating.
• Is Aristotle contradicting himself in wondering at God after philosophy has begun in wonder? No: two senses of wonder, one from ignorance of the cause (diminishes), one from knowledge of God’s excellence (grows); perhaps equivocal by reason, common in that something is above us.
• Does God wonder in the second sense? Not answered directly; that wonder proceeds from our knowing that God always has what we rarely have.
• Is the induction of human nature from particulars proper to history? The pure historian says the purpose of history is to show the fallacy of historical parallels; history is always more complicated than we think.
• Why is Homer great? Left open (“a vast subject”; Aristotle’s work on Homer is lost).