7c. Wisdom (2016)

Wisdom (Metaphysics 2016) #

An introduction to Aristotle’s Metaphysics and first philosophy (2016). These lectures trace the progression from sensation through experience to wisdom, examining how wonder initiates philosophical inquiry and how knowledge of first causes represents the highest form of human understanding.

12 episodes, about 11 hours

Listen #

Classes #

Class 1 2016-05-19 #

Part 1 of 2 · Metaphysics Proemium I: All Men Desire to Know — Sense, Memory, Experience and Art #

70 min Berquist works through the opening lines of Aristotle’s Metaphysics—“all men by nature desire to know”—with Aquinas’s commentary, tracing knowledge from sensation up through memory, experience, and art toward wisdom.

Part 2 of 2 · Metaphysics Proemium II: ‘Doing’ and Making, Wisdom as Knowledge of First Causes, and the Six Marks of the Wise Man #

66 min Berquist works through Aquinas’s commentary on the opening of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, tracing the rise from sensation to wisdom and laying out the six marks by which Aristotle describes the wise man.

Class 2 2016-06-09 #

Part 1 of 2 · Metaphysics I Proemium: Knowledge, Experience, Art, and the Six Marks of the Wise Man; Wisdom as Looking, Liberal and Divine Knowledge #

67 min Berquist opens Aristotle’s Metaphysics, tracing the ascent from experience to art to wisdom through the six marks of the wise man, and closing with philosophy’s roots in wonder.

Part 2 of 2 · Metaphysics I Proemium (cont.): Wonder, Chance, and the End of Inquiry; Wonder What and Why, Why God Has No Cause, and the Order of Sense, Memory and Experience #

59 min Berquist opens Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book I, tracking wonder from chance encounters to the incommensurability of the diagonal, then charts the book’s review of earlier philosophers.

Class 3 2016-09-15 #

Part 1 of 3 · Metaphysics Proemium I: Reason as Looking Before and After — Anaxagoras, Homer, Boswell, and ‘All Men by Nature Desire to Know’ #

43 min Berquist opens Aristotle’s Metaphysics proemium with Aquinas’s commentary, using Hamlet’s “looking before and after,” Homer, and Boswell’s Life of Johnson to show what reason and wisdom are, before examining the claim that all men by nature desire to know.

Part 2 of 3 · Metaphysics Proemium II: The Natural Road of Knowledge — Sensing, Memory, Experience, Art, and the Chief Artist Who Knows the Cause #

54 min Berquist traces Aristotle’s “natural road” of knowledge in the opening of the Metaphysics—sense, memory, experience, art, wisdom—showing why the wise man is the one who knows causes.

Part 3 of 3 · Metaphysics Proemium III: Speculative Arts, Leisure, Words Equivocal by Reason, and the Six Marks of the Wise Man #

45 min Berquist works through the proemium of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, tracing sense to art to wisdom, and begins unpacking the six marks of the wise man.

Class 4 2016-09-22 #

Part 1 of 3 · Metaphysics I, Reading 1: The Natural Road from Sense to Reason, and Why God’s Love Causes Goodness (Part 1 of 3) #

57 min Berquist opens Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book I by tracing “methodos”—the road of knowledge from sense to wisdom—then digresses into why divine love, unlike ours, causes rather than follows goodness.

Part 2 of 3 · Metaphysics I, Reading 2: The Six-Part Description of the Wise Man — Universality, Certitude, Causes, Knowledge for Its Own Sake, and the Origin of ‘Philosopher’ (Part 2 of 3) #

47 min Berquist works through the six marks of the wise man from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book Alpha—universal knowledge, difficulty, certitude, teaching through causes, knowledge for its own sake, and the capacity to rule.

Part 3 of 3 · Sapientis est Ordinare: The Wise Man as Director, Universal in Predicating and in Causing, and Why the Most Universal Is Hardest to Know (Part 3 of 3) #

40 min Berquist finishes his treatment of Thomas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, showing how the wise man’s role as director follows from universal knowledge, and why the most universal things are hardest for us to know.

Class 5 2016-09-29 #

Part 1 of 2 · Metaphysics Proemium: The Natural Road and the Six Marks of the Wise Man #

54 min Berquist traces Aristotle’s “natural road” from sensation to universal knowledge, then works through the six marks of the wise man from the Metaphysics to show wisdom is knowledge through first causes.

Part 2 of 2 · Metaphysics Proemium: Wonder as the Beginning of Philosophy — Wisdom as Free and Divine Knowledge #

37 min Berquist continues Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics proemium, tracing wisdom as speculative knowledge born of wonder, from Plato’s Theaetetus to the diagonal’s incommensurability.