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

Orientation #

He opens by recalling “what he did in the first reading” and works through the second and third readings of the Metaphysics proemium in this class. He points ahead: being in Books VI–IX, the one in Book X, the first causes in Books XI–XIII, and God among the causes in Book XII.

The class, in order #

1. Knowledge and wisdom; the trap of equivocation (“would you distinguish between knowledge and wisdom?”) #

A student answers that knowledge is the tools, wisdom the judgment about using them. He presses: isn’t that part of knowing? Aristotle says wisdom is knowledge — the man of art knows more than the man of experience, because he knows the cause and can teach. Parallel cases where a word divides two ways:

• Loving / liking. His daughter: “I don’t like this, I love it” — there loving is divided against liking. But in general loving is a kind of liking, an intenser liking.
• Habit / disposition (Categories): a habit is a firm disposition, so it falls under disposition; but a disposition easily lost keeps the bare name, and habit is set against it. A habit is “like a second nature,” as Cicero says; being moody or depressed today is only a disposition. He cites Sophistical Refutations: the commonest mistake is equivocation. Conclusion: wisdom is a kind of knowledge, but the most perfect, most complete knowledge.

2. Review of the first reading: the road from sense to art (“the road from the senses into reason”) #

Knowledge is good, and the sign is that we naturally desire it — the good is what all want, and natural desire is a good sign of a real good. Then the order: sensation, memory, experience (many memories of the same kind), then the universal. Example: the child sees a dog, then another dog, then says “there’s a dog” — separating out what is common, seeing the universal. Art vs. experience (text read, p.2): artists are wiser because they know the why, the cause; the experienced know only that it is so. Example: a husband knows from experience that his wife is upset and what to avoid; the psychologist on television is thought wiser because he knows why people are annoyed. Student’s parallel: the objection to Euclid’s proof that the straight line is the shortest between two points — the ass in the field goes straight to the food, so it is undemonstrable. Answer: the ass knows that it is shortest, but not why. Chief artist vs. handicraftsman: the chief artist knows the cause of the cause; the handicraftsmen are like inanimate things, they make without knowing what they make, “as fire burns.” Sign of knowing: the ability to teach. Senses are no wisdom though they are chief in knowing singulars: memory can be fallacious and you go back and check by the senses, so the senses are more definitive and certain — but they do not say why. Arts for necessity (cooking, farming, carpentry) vs. arts for passing the time pleasantly (the poetic arts): the finders of the latter were held wiser, their sciences not being for use. Especially Greek: Plato says Homer is the teacher of all the Greeks — not a carpenter or a cook; we too would think Shakespeare wiser. And Shakespeare says “we’ll strive to please you every day” in the epilogue. Leisure: mathematics began around Egypt, where the priestly class was allowed leisure. Conclusion of the first reading: all hold what is called wisdom to be about the first causes and beginnings — since if the man who knows the cause is wiser, the man who knows the cause of the cause is wiser still. He notes Aristotle then backtracks and says merely “wisdom is about beginnings and causes,” “see how careful Aristotle is” — philosophical modesty, as Thomas would say.

3. The two universalities: king and general (“the universale in causando… the universale in predicando”) #

First mark of the wise man: he knows all things so far as possible, not in particular — he knows the universal. Distinction: the universal in causando (universal in causing) vs. the universal in praedicando (said of many). Boundary example, the kingdom: the king commands the general of the army, so the king is the more universal cause; the general’s causality extends to all of whom “soldier” is said, the king’s to all of whom “citizen” is said, and every soldier is a citizen but not every citizen a soldier. So the more universal cause corresponds to what is said of more. Hence in Book IV wisdom is about being and one, said of everything that in any way is — real being or being of reason. Errors from confusing the two: Hegel works back to being, the most universal and in a sense most confused thought of our mind, and tries to generate all reality from it. Plato to some extent did the same, making of a universal in praedicando an abstract form separate from matter, partaken of. “A very serious mistake.” MacArthur as test case: “general” is like “universal,” but MacArthur is not said of every soldier — he is an individual whose causality extends to all of them. He is general in causality, not in predication. “That’s a very subtle thing.” Aside: the pejorative “wise guy” — a know-it-all: even there, the wise man is the one who knows it all.

4. Difficulty, certitude, and the De Anima parallel (“more certain and more able to teach the causes”) #

Second mark: he knows things difficult and not easy for man to know — sense is common to all, hence easy and nothing wise. Seeing the tree out there earns no praise; the first cause is much more difficult. Third and fourth marks: more certain, and more able to teach the causes. Difficulty: if it is hard to know, how can it be more certain? Answer: in knowing the most universal the wise man knows the axioms, which are most certain of all; Aristotle found the axioms expressed in words equivocal by reason, so in taking up being and one he distinguishes the senses and the order of the words, and knows the axioms more distinctly than anyone. Still it is hard to be certain about the first cause. Parallel from the De Anima proemium: “holding as we do that all knowledge is good.” Objection raised at a talk at Trivium School by one of the fathers: sex education is doing a lot of harm. Reply: Aristotle speaks of knowledge as such; what is good as such can be bad for you — knowing how to make a bomb, knowing how to shoot a gun (and someone knew how to shoot the president); bodily strength is good, and I may beat you up with it. He grants the father that this education was doing harm. Own case: asked what adultery is, he told his small children “it’s stealing somebody’s mother or father” — true, and as much knowledge as was suitable then. Aristotle’s two criteria for one knowledge being better: a better object, or knowing more certainly. Both hold for knowledge of the soul — the soul is better than the body, and we have the inward experience of life (“I think therefore I am, as Descartes says”). But Aristotle later says it is among the hardest things to know what the soul is. So the certitude is that of our common inward experience of life — everyone knows he has emotions, sensations, some thinking — not certitude about the soul’s nature. Specialist example: the general practitioner suspects something and calls in a specialist, thought wiser because more certain that you have it or not — good news or bad. Aside: talking to Warren Murray last night about a friend, a linguist, given two months with an incurable tumour; the man had said the English language is the greatest invention of the human mind. From the Parts of Animals: which criterion is better? Aristotle argues that knowledge of a better thing wins — as we prefer a glimpse of someone we love to a long view of someone we don’t. His classroom version: the glimpse of your girlfriend through the window is worth more than the leisurely view of the boss.

5. Fifth and sixth marks; “sapientis est ordinare” (“the wise men ought not to receive orders”) #

Fifth mark: the science for itself and for the sake of knowing is more wisdom than that for the sake of its results. He grants this is not clear “especially to us democratic people,” and offers Einstein — thought wiser than engineers because he understood the universe, though you can’t do anything about it. Sixth and culminating mark: the one ruling is more wisdom than the one obeying; the wise ought to give orders, not receive them — sapientis est ordinare. Thomas quotes St. Paul: the things which are from God are ordered. In the proemium to the Ethics Thomas separates kinds of rational knowledge by the order each considers, resting on this text: wisdom is the name of the highest perfection of reason, whose proper act is to know order. He adds that Thomas lacked “the advantage we have of Shakespeare’s definition of reason,” which culminates in order — “looking before and after.” “This is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful text.” MacArthur again: returning to the Philippines, taking the south first, he personally made the plan to rescue the prisoners in the north before the Japanese could turn on them — the man who can command and direct is thought wiser. He counts six things said of the wise man, and notes that from almost all of them you can argue that the wise man knows the first causes: most able to teach — knows the cause of the cause; most able to order — orders by the end, one of the four causes; knows the most universal — which goes with the most universal cause.

6. Running the six back through the text (“those most of all about what comes first”) #

Reading p.4: the most certain sciences are those about what comes first, and those from fewer things are more certain than those from addition. That the whole is larger than its part is far more certain than that water is H₂O. Arithmetic vs. geometry: the one and the point are both indivisible, but the point has more to consider — where it is; three points may lie in a straight line or make a triangle, three ones raise no such question. From his own study of Euclid: theorems require distinguishing cases, and Heath gives Proclus’ distinctions; Euclid takes the hardest case and lets the easier go — “I wonder if I got all the cases I should have considered,” so he is less certain there than in arithmetic. The science of causes is most fit for teaching; knowledge for its own sake belongs to the most knowable, since the cause makes the effect known; the chief and ruling science knows that for the sake of which each thing ought to be done — the end, the good of each and of the whole, the best in all nature. One of the causes is the good and that for the sake of which; as Augustine says, because God is good, we are. Note on the epilogue (bottom of p.5): he recalls what he has done in the two parts, but in reverse order — first the nature of the knowledge sought, then the goal of the investigation, “the whole knowledge over a road” (his translation of methodos).

7. Third reading: wonder, and the philomythos (“men… begin to philosophize through wonder”) #

Wisdom is not a making or practical science, as is clear from the first philosophizers. Order of wonder: first about strange things close at hand — Einstein’s father brought home a magnet, and he wondered because there seemed to be no contact — then about greater things, the changes of the moon, the sun and stars, and finally the origin of the universe. The man in doubt thinks himself ignorant, so he seeks knowledge for the sake of knowing. The philomythos is in some way a philosopher, because the myth is put together from wonders — mythos means myth or more generally story, and in the Poetics it names the plot; so “lover of plots.” Reading the Odyssey, or any good story, you want to know how it turns out. Sign that all men desire to know: you watch a movie past your bedtime, are tired at work tomorrow, learn nothing useful — yet your wonder has been aroused, so you are like a philosopher. Every child wants the story; serials like the Perils of Pauline, and Dickens published in installments with readers begging that so-and-so not die. Monsignor Dionne quoted Albert the Great on poetry (meaning fiction): dat modum admirandi — it gives the manner of wondering. You must in a way be a philomythos before you can be a philosopher, and Homer or Shakespeare makes you a real one. Asked whether there would have been Greek philosophers without Homer first, Dionne said no — “rather strong statement.” Own case: in McKeon’s Oxford Basic Works of Aristotle the first thing that caught him was the Politics, because he was interested in politics — not yet a philosopher in the full sense. As a freshman, told the class would read plays not read in high school, he bought a complete Shakespeare and read every play: “that made me a looking philosopher.”

8. The second sign: leisure, and the Bergquist family (“when almost all necessary things… existed”) #

Since men philosophize to escape ignorance, they sought knowledge for understanding and not for use; the witness is that such knowledge began to be sought when the necessities and amusements were already in hand. His family as the sign: his grandfather Bergquist came from Sweden at twelve with no education and became the blacksmith at Parkers Prairie, Minnesota — a rough job, no thought of philosophy. His father, with no high school in town, worked his way through school in Alexandria, sleeping in the shop because he could not afford a room, learned machines from an uncle’s shop and advertisements, became a manager and finally started his own company. No leisure there. With a little money and leisure, the father sent Duane and his brothers Richard and Marcus through high school and college (with summers in the factory) — “so we all became philosophers.” The priests of Quebec as the same sign: two of his three best teachers there, Monsignor Dionne and Father Boulay, were priests freed from parish duty by a surplus of priests — like the priestly class in Egypt. Contrast: visiting a parish priest in Shrewsbury about the CCD program, the phone rang every half hour. Student adds Father Dave McNamara, teaching at a Boston seminary, wanted back by Fall River because no diocese can now afford to send a man for higher studies.

9. Looking knowledge, and the three senses of “liberal” (“if you want to speak English, it’s looking knowledge”) #

First mark of this knowledge: it is speculative in Latin, theoretical in Greek, “looking” in English — specula, to look. Second: it is liberal. Warning from his logic teaching: “liberal” has many senses because it has many opposites — liberal/conservative, liberal/servile, liberal/stingy. Liberality as an Aristotelian virtue concerns money. Here it is liberal as in the liberal arts against the servile arts, pursued for the sake of knowing, like geometry, the quadrivium and trivium. The text: as we call a man free who is for himself and not for another, so this alone among the sciences is free, for it alone is for its own sake. Applied to God: to see God as He is is free, not for the sake of anything else. Thomas’ ladder, from a student: consider the body so as to consider the soul, the soul so as to consider the angels, the angels so as to consider God. And Christ at the Last Supper: “I do not call you slaves” — because the slave does not know what his master is doing; he only knows what he is to do.

10. Hardly a human possession; divine in two ways (“the divine is not able to be envious”) #

Third: it might justly be thought not a human possession, for in many ways man’s nature is enslaved — he must feed the body, rest it at night, earn money for food, a bed, a house against the elements; the house always needs something done, the car must go to the dealer, the grass grows. Added slaveries partly our own fault: the coward is slave of his fear, the lustful man of his lusts, the irascible man of his anger; and some men are really slaves. Simonides: God alone may have this honour, man is not worthy to seek this knowledge for itself; the divine is able to envy, so all who excel in knowledge are unfortunate. Aristotle’s reply: the divine cannot be envious — he notes Aristotle does not give the reason here, but the envious man sees another’s good as an evil to himself, “you got to be kind of stupid to think that,” and the divine cannot make that mistake. And by the proverb, poets say many false things — Plato has the famous discussion of the poets; Aristotle wrote a dialogue on the poets, now lost. Thomas on “possession”: it does not mean man cannot pursue it at all; a possession is something I can use when I want, as a ballpoint pen. But I cannot pursue wisdom whenever I want — I am hungry, sleepy, the car needs fixing, the lawn mowing, money earning. So it is not a human but a divine possession, hence the most honourable knowledge: the most divine is most worthy of honour. Divine in two ways: (a) the knowledge God most of all would have; (b) the knowledge about divine things. Parallel double senses: natural knowledge (had by nature / of natural things); “that horrible word” humanities (knowledge human beings have / about human things); a student’s joke about “feminine knowledge.” This alone is divine both ways — God seems to all to be among the causes and beginnings (not yet shown; it will be shown in Book XII), so a knowledge of causes and beginnings is a knowledge about God, and such knowledge God alone has or most of all has; man has it not at all or in some minor, imperfect way. Conclusion: all other knowledges are more necessary than this, but none is better.

His words #

• wisdom — a kind of knowledge, but the most perfect and complete knowledge.
• universale in causando / in praedicando — universal in causing vs. universal in being said of many; the two must not be confused.
• philosophical modesty — Thomas’ term for Aristotle’s saying less than he has shown (“about beginnings and causes”).
• looking knowledge — his English for speculative / theoretical; from specula, to look.
• sapientis est ordinare — it belongs to the wise man to order.
• dat modum admirandi — Albert the Great on poetry: it gives the manner of wondering.
• philomythos — lover of myth or plot; in the Poetics mythos names the plot.
• methodos — “the whole knowledge over a road,” his translation.
• liberal — here as opposed to servile, not to conservative nor to stingy.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I.1–2, proemium: the first reading (pp. 2–3 of his text) reviewed; the six marks of the wise man; pp. 4–5, certitude and the ruling science; the epilogue at the bottom of p. 5; the third reading on wonder, liberality, and the divine science.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, De Anima, proemium (all knowledge is good; two criteria of better knowledge).
• Aristotle, Parts of Animals (better object beats greater certitude).
• Aristotle, Categories (habit as firm disposition); Sophistical Refutations (equivocation); Poetics (mythos as plot); Metaphysics IV (being and one), VI–IX, X, XI–XIII, XII; a lost dialogue on the poets.
• Thomas Aquinas, proemium to the commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics.
• Euclid, Elements, Heath edition with Proclus on cases.
• Plato (Homer teacher of the Greeks; the discussion of the poets); Simonides; Augustine; Cicero; Shakespeare; Homer, Odyssey; Descartes.

His questions #

• Would you distinguish between knowledge and wisdom? — Wisdom is a kind of knowledge, but the most perfect and complete kind.
• Who is the more universal cause, the king or the general of the army? — The king, whose causality reaches all citizens, while the general’s reaches only soldiers.
• If wisdom is difficult to know, how can it be the most certain? — Because it knows the axioms most distinctly; but certitude about the first cause remains hard.
• Is knowledge as such always good, given the harm of sex education? — Yes, as such; but what is good as such can be bad for you, like knowing how to shoot a gun.
• Is it better to have a more certain knowledge or a knowledge of a better thing? — A knowledge of a better thing — a glimpse of one you love beats a long view of one you don’t.
• Would there have been any Greek philosophers without Homer first? — Monsignor Dionne answered no.
• In what sense is wisdom not a human possession? — A possession is usable at will; man cannot pursue wisdom at will, being enslaved to bodily needs.
• In how many ways is this knowledge divine? — Two: the knowledge God most of all would have, and the knowledge about God — and this alone is both.