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

Orientation #

He is continuing the same reading of the opening of the Metaphysics (“the fourteen books of wisdom”) from sensing, memory, experience and art up to wisdom (prev. lecture). He says at the end that next time they will “start the second reading from the beginning” and finish the remaining parts of the six-part account of the wise man.

The class, in order #

1. Admiration for the finder of any art (“was admired by men”) #

Aristotle: the first to find any art beyond the senses common to all was admired, not only because what he found was useful but as wise and distinguished from others.

• Prints bought in downtown Worcester: from either side of the room he seemed to be looking straight down the scene — perspective as the painter’s admirable skill. Some painters draw eyes that follow you around the room (Washington Irving’s servants think the painting is alive).
• The first man who made beer or wine: admired not merely for the usefulness but because “how’d you discover that?”
• His son Paul watching popcorn: tiny grains put in, the lid rises — “Daddy can do.” A practical art, admired.

2. Arts of necessity, arts of pleasure, and the poet as maker (“some for passing the time pleasantly”) #

Many arts having been found, some are for necessities (cooking, medicine, clothes-making, wagon-making, house-building), some for passing the time pleasantly (music, drama, painting); the finders of the latter were held wiser because their sciences were not for use.

• Poiētēs in Greek means maker. Calling Homer “the poet” is antonomasia (a student supplies the name): among all makers the dramatist or epic poet is the maker.
• Test of the common opinion: we may enjoy what the cook makes, but we do not think him as wise as Shakespeare. He quotes the epilogue: “We’ll strive to please you every day.”

3. Leisure, and the mathematical sciences in Egypt (“where men had leisure”) #

The sciences that are for neither pleasure nor necessity arose where men had leisure — a sign they are not for practical things; hence mathematics began around Egypt, where the priestly class was allowed leisure.

• His three greatest teachers: Charles De Koninck, Monsignor Deane [spelling uncertain], Father Boulay — the latter two priests, in a Quebec that then had a surplus of priests, so some in education had leisure to pursue theology deeply.
• Against the idea that a priest says his Mass and loafs: in the Shrewsbury parish the priest’s phone rang every few minutes the whole time he was there — how can you do theology?

4. Aristotle’s footnote: art, science, and whether episteme is equivocal (“has been said in the Ethics”) #

Aristotle notes he is not here treating precisely the difference between art and science; art is right reason about making, science is about knowing, and these with prudence are distinguished in Nicomachean Ethics VI.

• The difficulty he raises: in Ethics VI episteme (scientia) and sophia (sapientia, wisdom) are distinct virtues, yet in the fourteen books of wisdom Aristotle calls wisdom an episteme. “Is he mixed up, or is the word episteme equivocal here by reason?” — St Thomas takes the second, because Aristotle was such a great philosopher.

5. How a name becomes equivocal by reason, not by chance (“equivocal by reason as opposed to by chance”) #

Method from the Politics: the man who considers a thing from its origin understands it best — so ask how a word becomes equivocal. He says two or three ways; he notes that in an older text of his own the second and third were put together under the second, “but they’re distinct.”

• Equivocal by chance: his brother Richard (named from his mother’s father Richard) and Richard, the man who comes Tuesday nights for philosophy; the two Winston Churchills, his hero and the novelist, who exchanged a funny letter about telling themselves apart — and Churchill did write a novel, so the confusion was real.
• First way (closest to inevitable): a name said of two things for more or less the same reason is kept by one as its private name, the other gets a new name. Two sub-cases:
  • (a) One has nothing noteworthy beyond the common note, so keeps the common name; the other has something noteworthy added, so gets a new name. Animal = a living body having senses, said with one meaning of a student (Habibi) and of Argos; but because man adds reason, “animal” is kept for the beast and man gets a new name, and then man is divided against the animals. Hence: if the biologist calls you an animal he is not insulting you; if your girlfriend does, she is. (His mother disliked his calling man an animal.)
  • (b) The reverse: the one with the excellence keeps the name. Understanding names the act of the mind and also the power; the angel understands everything at once while man must run hither and thither in discourse, so “understanding” stays with the angel and man gets the new name reason — so in one sense reason is divided against understanding, in another reason is a kind of understanding.
  • Application: so with episteme and sophia, knowledge and wisdom. Sometimes wisdom is divided against knowledge; in the broad sense wisdom is knowledge too, the highest, and because of its excellence gets its own name, “knowledge” being left to geometry, natural philosophy and the lesser ones. No contradiction in Aristotle.
• Second way: by being carried over. Two modes:
  • by dropping part of the meaning, i.e. being generalized;
  • by likeness of ratios. Before first means before in time, carried over to before in being, before in knowledge, before in goodness — “if this can be without that but not that without this” answers to “if this can be known without that but that cannot be known without this”; a likeness of ratios, as four is to six as two is to three. Philosophy carried over to logic: logic is only the tool of philosophy, yet can be called philosophy. Being carried over (Thomas) from substance to quantity and quality: quantity is the size of a substance, quality the disposition of a substance.

6. Why the whole discourse was made (“that for the sake of which we have now made a discourse”) #

He recalls the road run so far: sensing → memory → experience → knowledge of the universal, then practical arts → the more speculative arts and the arts for pleasure. The man of art is wiser than the man of experience because he knows the cause; and since a cause can itself have a cause, the man who knows the cause of the cause is wiser.

• Aristotle’s stated purpose: all philosophers call wisdom a knowledge about the first causes and beginnings. He glosses with “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
• The ranking restated: experienced man over the merely sensing, man of art over man of experience because he knows why, the chief artist over the handicraftsman, the looking (speculative) sciences over the making ones. Conclusion for today, deliberately modest: “Let’s say the wisdom is about beginnings and causes” — he backtracks, notes he has gone too fast, and quotes “wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.”

7. Which causes and beginnings? (“about what sort of beginnings is wisdom the knowledge”) #

The proemium now asks formally what sort of causes and beginnings wisdom knows. Here cause and beginning are used as synonyms, but in the fifth book of wisdom beginning will be shown to be said more generally than cause — we use “beginning” chiefly of matter and of the maker, yet there are other causes, and beginnings that are not causes: Thomas says the Father is a beginning, because the Son proceeds from Him, but not His cause.

• Aristotle’s “perhaps” — his philosophical modesty, as Thomas notes.

8. The six-part description of the wise man, parts 1–3 (“the wise man knows all things so far as possible”) #

Aristotle works out, in order, what we think about the wise man.

1. He knows all things so far as possible, not each in particular. Tied to the definition of reason as the ability for a larger discourse: the wise man’s discourse is about the most universal things, so he sees everything in some way, in general. Boswell admires Johnson as seeming to know everything. Even the pejorative — “wise guy,” a know-it-all — is a sign that this is most known about the wise man.
2. He knows things difficult and not easy for a man to know. We admire Einstein as wise: not for the atomic bomb (he did not make it) but because general relativity set off the explosion of cosmology — kosmos in Greek means order — and he seems to understand the whole universe, which is hard. We do not call a man wise for knowing what everyone knows, two plus two is four, or the taste of candy; what is by the senses common to all is easy and nothing wise.
3. He is more certain in every science. Common opinion: when you are unsure you go to the one wiser in the matter; even a doctor goes to a specialist. Aside: Rush Limbaugh on Hillary’s health and bacterial pneumonia not being in the book used under Obama’s medical plan — how do you recommend treatment for something with no name?

9. The paradox of difficulty and certitude, and the parallel in the De anima proemium (“a kind of paradox there in what he’s saying”) #

The paradox: how can the wise man know what is most difficult for man to know and yet be most certain? Is he knowing the same thing in both?

• Parallel from the proemium to the three books on the soul. Aristotle says all knowledge as such is good. Objection he used to put to students: is it good that a terrorist knows how to make a bomb? Reply: knowledge as such is not bad, it can be misused — like bodily strength, which a man may abuse to beat people up, or beauty, which a woman may misuse to lead men astray. But love is different: love of something good is good, love of something bad (torturing, stealing, seducing another man’s wife) is bad; whereas knowing something bad is not bad, since there is the same knowledge of opposites — ethics knows virtue and vice — and if knowing the bad were bad all knowledge would be bad. Knowledge can be bad for someone only by accident. (Aside: the secretary at his father’s office showing him how to open the safe.)
• Aristotle then says some knowledge is better than others for two reasons: you know a better thing, or you know it better, with more certitude. In both ways knowledge of the soul seems better: the soul is the best thing in the whole material world (living things are better than non-living, and that by the soul), and we have great certitude that we are alive. Yet Aristotle also says that to know what the soul is is one of the most difficult things in the world — so he is most certain that he has a soul, by inward experience, not certain what it is. Even modern philosophers who deny the reality of matter, like Berkeley — whom Johnson refuted by kicking a stone, “I refute him thus” — do not deny that they are alive; “I think therefore I am.”
• Applied: in the twelfth book of wisdom Aristotle knows the first cause, very difficult; in the fourth book he knows that something cannot both be and not be (“to be or not to be, that is the question”), the axioms, which are most certain. So the wise man knows the axioms better than anybody, and one reason is that the axioms are all stated in words equivocal by reason — the whole fifth book is about this.

10. Whole and part: the fallacy of equivocation (“sometimes what is only a part contains more than the whole”) #

Demonstration of why the fifth book is needed. He used to play the sophist deceiving his students with the most common fallacy, equivocation — likelier with words equivocal by reason than by chance, since with chance equivocals you can see the difference more easily.

• The sophism (from the exchange with his mother, who was happier once man was called an animal that has reason): animal is only a part of man, yet animal includes besides man dog, cat, horse, elephant; so sometimes a part contains more than the whole, and a whole is not always more than its part. (A student: “You just untied the knob of the universe right there.”)
• Solution: two senses of whole. The composed whole is put together from its parts and is always more than any one part; the universal whole is said of its parts and is always said of more than any one particular is. Animal is a part of the definition of man, a composed whole put together from animal and reason; animal as a universal whole is said of man and many others. The sophism mixes the two. He imagines Aristotle coming up to the floor: “Shame on you! Logic is good, but you are misusing it to deceive your students.”

11. The fourth mark: more able to teach, and the certainty–cause link (“and be more able to teach the causes”) #

4. The wise man is more able to teach the causes — clear from what went before: he teaches because he explains why.

• Theology is wisdom, as Thomas explains in the first question of the Summa. It explains why God became man (Anselm, Cur Deus homo), and why the second person in particular: the Son is the Logos, and logos in Greek also means reason, and as Aristotle says in the tenth book of the Ethics reason more than anything else is man; also we are sons by partaking of the sonship of Christ. Augustine and Thomas say this was not the only way God could have saved us but the best way — and one keeps discovering further reasons why it was good.
• Connection between certitude and cause: from the definition of demonstration — a syllogism making us know the cause, and that of which it is the cause cannot be otherwise — so knowing the cause you know why it must be so, as you see in geometry.
• He stops here, over time; the fifth mark and the rest of the six will come next time, the point being to reach that wisdom must be about the first causes. “Very thorough guy, Aristotle.”

His words #

• “the fourteen books of wisdom” — his name for the Metaphysics.
• “the looking sciences” vs “the making” — speculative vs practical [ed.: theoretical sciences].
• “poet” = maker, poiētēs; “the poet” of Homer is antonomasia.
• episteme / scientia / knowledge, vs sophia / sapientia / wisdom.
• “equivocal by reason” vs “equivocal by chance” — a name of two things either for a likeness/ratio, or accidentally (two Churchills).
• “carried over” — [ed.: analogy/transference], either by dropping part of the meaning (generalizing) or by likeness of ratios.
• “beginning” and “cause” — used as synonyms here; beginning said more generally (the Father is a beginning, not a cause, of the Son).
• “reason” — from Shakespeare: the ability for a larger discourse, to understand, and direct yourself and others.
• “composed whole” vs “universal whole” — put together from its parts vs said of its parts.
• “the three books on the soul” — [ed.: De anima]; “Premium” [ed.: proemium].

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I.1–2 (arts admired; necessity and pleasure; Egypt and leisure; “what the difference is between art and science… has been said in the Ethics”; wisdom about beginnings and causes; “since we seek such knowledge… about what sort of causes”; the first three notes of the wise man and the fourth, teaching).
• Aristotle, De anima, proemium (inferred: Bk I ch.1) — all knowledge good; some better, by better object or greater certitude; knowledge of the soul.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VI (art, prudence, science, wisdom distinguished); X (reason is most of all man).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IV (something cannot both be and not be), V (words equivocal by reason; beginning), XII (the first cause).
• Aristotle, Politics (consider a thing from its origin).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.1 (theology is wisdom); Thomas on the Father as beginning, and on being said of substance, quantity, quality.
• Anselm, Cur Deus homo; Augustine and Thomas on the fittingness of the Incarnation.
• Revelation, “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (inferred).
• Shakespeare: “We’ll strive to please you every day”; “wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast”; “to be or not to be”; the definition of reason.
• Boswell on Johnson; Johnson refuting Berkeley by kicking a stone; Washington Irving; Churchill.

His questions #

• What does the word poet mean in Greek? — Maker; calling Homer “the poet” is antonomasia.
• Do we think the cook as wise as Shakespeare? — No; the arts for pleasure are held wiser than those for necessity.
• In the Ethics episteme and sophia are distinct virtues, yet wisdom is called an episteme — is Aristotle mixed up? — No; the word is equivocal by reason, wisdom being knowledge in the broad sense and the highest of it.
• How does a word become equivocal by reason rather than by chance? — Two or three ways: one of two things keeps the common name (either because it adds nothing noteworthy, or because it has the excellence), or the name is carried over, by generalizing or by likeness of ratios.
• About what sort of causes and beginnings is wisdom the knowledge? — Announced, not yet settled: it will be about the very first ones; the six-part description of the wise man is the way there.
• Why do we admire Einstein as wise? — Not for the bomb, but because he seems to understand the whole universe, which is difficult to know.
• Is the wise man knowing the same thing when he knows what is most certain and what is most difficult? — Left open; the parallel of the soul (most certain that we live, most difficult what the soul is) suggests there is some answer.
• If a part (animal) contains more than the whole (man), is a whole not always more than its part? — Fallacy of equivocation: animal is part of the composed whole of the definition, and a universal whole said of many.
• Is it good that a terrorist knows how to make a bomb? — Knowledge as such is good, as strength or beauty is; it can be misused, and is bad only by accident.