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

Orientation #

He is continuing the reading of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book Alpha, finishing the first reading (through “wisdom is about beginnings and causes”) and starting the first paragraph of the second reading, where Aristotle turns to the thoughts men have about the wise man. He refers back to methodos “as I mentioned” (prev. lecture). The previous class worked through the proemium of the Metaphysics and began the six-part description of the wise man.

The class, in order #

1. Methodos, and what a road is in knowledge (“knowledge over a road”) #

• Methodos = meta (after, over) + hodos (road): philosophy is “knowledge over a road,” knowledge that follows a road.
• Road is said first of the way he drove here; carried over to knowledge, you drop the cement or tar and keep the before and after. So: a road in our knowledge is a before and after in our knowledge; to understand a road, understand its before and after.
• Why the first road is the natural one: nature is what is first in the thing, and man’s nature is animal having reason. What is generic develops before what is specific, so the road begins with the senses and goes into reason. First description: the road from the senses into reason.

2. The order of kinds of knowing along the road (“sensing, memory, experience”) #

• Aristotle’s order in the first reading: sensing (seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching) → memory of one’s senses → experience → art (in a broad sense), which is of the universal.
• Memory examples: how licorice tastes, a crisp green Minnesota apple, what the moon looks like.
• Experience = many memories of the same kind of thing brought together, forming in a way one experience, a collection of many memories.
• The universal: this man has two ears, and that one, and that one — so man is a two-eared animal (Aristotle usually says two-legged, biped). That is the end of the road.
• Aside: Joshua arrives late; the readings cost ten dollars apiece.

3. The order in which different things are known (“effects are known before causes”) #

• Sensible things before non-sensible (if those can be known at all); more sensible before less sensible; therefore material before immaterial.
• Hence natural philosophy comes before wisdom, because natural philosophy is about material things, things subject to motion.
• For the most part effects are known before causes, and causes before causes of the cause; therefore the last thing known is the first cause — so wisdom, which is about the first cause, comes last in the order of our knowledge.
• Aside (polemic): this shows where the Jesuits are wrong in teaching metaphysics before natural philosophy. Interviewing philosophy candidates at Assumption College, he found they did not even know what natural philosophy means. At Laval the two greatest teachers, Charles De Koninck and Monsignor Dionne, laid foundations: De Koninck always taught natural philosophy, never a course in metaphysics; Dionne taught logic and the like.

4. The order in which the same thing is known (“outward before inward, confused before distinct”) #

• Boethius: a thing is singular when sensed and universal when understood — so the singular comes before the universal.
• Outward before inward. Grade-school definition of sacrament, “an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace”: outward there was a synonym for sensible. The excellence of the Latin intelligere, etymologically intus legere, to read within — the road from senses into reason is from outward to inward knowledge, which “understand” does not convey; though “understand” does suggest something hidden underneath which we gradually come to. Thomas on why we say a sharp or penetrating mind.
• Confused before distinct, in the senses as well as in reason (from the proemium to the eight books of “natural hearing,” the so-called Physics).
  • Senses: tasting someone’s salad dressing and not being able to name what is in it; a painting on the wall (looking down the canal from the right side, then from the left) where you notice things later or someone points them out; Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, where Warren Murray told him five melodies are combined at the end of the last movement — he had heard it many times without hearing that; also not being good at telling which instruments are playing. This shows his hearing was indistinct, confused.
  • Reason: it must define things to know distinctly what they are. Aristotle: a child calls all men father and all women mother, then distinguishes (as in a big Greek household full of women). His own small children at the window: “look at the mama” of a woman who might not be a mama — using mother to mean woman is a sign of indistinct knowledge. So too a child calling a cat a dog: what he grasps is “little four-footed furry animal.”
• Summary: three orders — of kinds of knowing, of things known, of how the same thing is known. Aristotle here treats the first, because he is looking for what comes last in our knowing.

5. End of the first reading: wisdom about first causes (“all hold what is called wisdom”) #

• The man of art or science not only knows the universal but seeks why, the cause — giving insight that what comes last in our knowledge is knowledge of the very first cause.
• Last paragraph of page two, read looking at first and last lines. First line: “all hold what is called wisdom to be about the first causes and beginnings.” Here cause and beginning are used almost interchangeably, but in the fifth book of wisdom he points out beginning is more general than cause: every cause is a beginning in some way, but not every beginning is a cause.
• Then: the experienced man is wiser than those having just sensation; the artist than the experienced man, because he knows why; the chief artist than the handicraftsman, because he knows in a sense the cause of the cause; and the looking sciences more than the making. (“Looking” = Greek theoretical, Latin speculative; “I speak English, so I call it the looking sciences.”)
• Last sentence backtracks: “thus it is clear that wisdom is about beginnings and causes” — he wants to go more slowly over the claim that it is about the first causes. So the second reading asks: about what sort of beginnings and causes?

6. The opening of the second reading (“this ought to be considered about what sort of causes”) #

• Read: since we seek this knowledge that comes at the end of our knowledge, we ought to consider about what sort of causes and beginnings wisdom is knowledge; “perhaps it would become clearer if one took the thoughts that we have about the wise man.” He calls the reserve here philosophical modesty, and notes the “we” is not the editorial we but men in general.
• Aside: LBJ as Senate leader — “come, let us reason together,” meaning I will persuade you or twist your arm; he takes it instead as “come, let us look before and after.”

7. Does God love the saints because they are good? (“can the first cause have a cause?”) #

• He puts the question and predicts the class will say yes, as the average person would. His answer: no.
• Argument: if God is the first cause, He has nothing before Him as a cause before an effect. To say God loves the saints because they are good makes the saints’ goodness the cause of God’s love. Can the first cause have a cause? You are not looking before and after.
• He announces he will show how bad the answer is by way of the word have.

8. Haver and had (“is the haver and what he has the same thing?”) #

Three grades of cases, all showing haver ≠ had:

1. Possessions, easiest because outside: his car in the lot (if someone says “that’s you,” that is figurative), his house, his books, dollar bills in his pocket; the English “haves and have-nots.”
2. Things inside: knowledge of triangles, squares and circles got from his teacher Euclid of Alexandria; a little virtue, a reluctance to steal (making one’s kid bring the candy back); knowledge of logic, syllogism, predication. Also health and strength: if I were health itself could I ever be sick? if strength itself, could I be weak? — he felt weak after mowing the lawn.
3. Hardest: I have a body and a soul. Am I either? They are parts, and I am a put-together thing. Thomas: St. Peter is not in heaven; the soul of St. Peter is in heaven — Peter will be in heaven after the resurrection. De Koninck said to Pius XII, when the Assumption was being defined, that if Mary’s body were not assumed into heaven Mary would not be in heaven; the Pope was very impressed. So strictly speaking, Duane Berquist will be dead even though his immortal soul survives his death — unless you call a part of me, me. Even here the distinction holds: whole and part are not the same, so a whole “having” a part still keeps a distinction — but here you are getting closer.

9. In God, haver and had collapse (“God is whatever He has”) #

• The first thing learned about God’s substance in the Summa Theologiae is that He is not put together in any way; no composition. If God had something there would be composition — unless “have” is used in a very different sense. To safeguard against heresy: God is whatever He has.
• Last Supper: “I am the road [hodos, the same word Aristotle has], the truth, and the life.” As Thomas taught him (third part of the Summa, on the Incarnate Word and the sacraments), Christ as man is the via tendendi ad Deum, the road to God; as God He is life itself and truth itself. He does not say “I am living” or “I have life,” because of simplicity; “I have the truth” would imply He and the truth are two.
• So too “God is love” — one may say He has love, but strictly He is love itself, contrary to all the earlier meanings of “has.”
• On himself: whatever wisdom or knowledge Duane Berquist has is not Duane Berquist — “that sounds very incriminating.” A fortiori he is not knowledge itself, for knowledge is that by which everything known is known, so knowledge itself would be all knowledge. He has some truths in his mind (the whole is larger than the part), but is not truth itself.

10. The conclusion, and God’s love as first cause (“His love is the cause of whatever good is in them”) #

• Conclusion of the argument: if God is love, and the saints’ goodness causes God’s love, then the saints’ goodness causes God’s existence — “the horrible sin or falsehood you’ve fallen into, gentlemen.”
• A first mistake leads to another: you would then say God hates sinners because they are bad — but St. Paul says God wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
• Our love vs. God’s love: we begin to love because we see something good — a beautiful woman; or his high-school biology class under the tough Professor Gatto (“numskulls!”), where Murray always knew the answer, and walking home together they found they were politically compatible too, so he came to like him. God’s love is not an effect of the good in things but the cause of it.
• He notes this whole discourse is “looking before and after” in Aristotle’s fifth sense, laid alongside the second, the sense in which the cause is before the effect.

11. Then why are there sinners? (“God respects the nature of our will”) #

• Student-facing question: if God’s love causes the good in creatures, why are some men saints and some sinners? Not because He hates them.
• Via his opening prayer (“God, our enlightenment, help us to know and love You; guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, pour in and illumine our images and arouse us to consider them correctly; St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, help us to understand”): he sometimes says “move us” — but God does not move by necessity; He respects the nature of our will and free will, so we can refuse the movement and not cooperate with His grace.
• The saints (Mother Teresa, recently canonized) must know whatever good is in them is from God, whose love is always prior as cause to effect; but they freely cooperated with grace. Sinners did not cooperate with the grace and inspirations given. The Old Testament sets life and death before you to choose. He calls it a kind of mystery.

12. Second puzzle: all my love to God and none for my neighbour (“I got one hell of a thing”) #

• The act of contrition: “…most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love.”
• Dilemma: if I give God all my love — and all means all, not some or the greater part — I have none left for my neighbour, and I am commanded to love my neighbour; but if I do not give all my love to God I am not a saint. A student: “between a rock and a hard place.” A student adds: and for yourself.
• Hint from the articles on Mother Teresa: she loves God in her neighbour, seeing Christ in the miserable creature on the street — “what you did to the little ones, you did unto me.” The saints say you must love your neighbour in God — a hard thing to understand.
• And that is how God loves us: He loves Himself so much that He wants to multiply it; Thomas says when one loves something very much one wants to multiply it. He quotes Shakespeare: “This were to be new made when thou art old, and see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.”

13. “Heaven lent her such graces” (“why does he say lent?”) #

• Two Gentlemen of Verona: “Who is Sylvia, that all our swains commend her? … Heaven such grace did lend her, that she might admirèd be.” He is struck that the poet says lent, not gave.
• His father-in-law lending him a tool and reminding him he wanted it back: lending is in a way giving, but giving with a return.
• Student answers offered: God expects a return; beauty causes us to thank and glorify God, who is beauty and love itself. His own simpler explanation: a woman’s beauty does not stay — God in a sense takes back what He gave; she has it for a time, catches the husband’s eye, then loses it.
• “Give it to her children”: the sonnet line, “Thou art thy mother’s glass” — glass = mirror — “and she in thee calls back the lovely April of her prime”; she calls it back because it is over, in memory. His daughter Maria’s little girl is called “little Maria” for her resemblance.
• Aside: a volume of essays by scientists who worked with Niels Bohr — the Solvay showdowns with Einstein over the Copenhagen interpretation (named from where Bohr worked), Einstein’s thought experiments refuted overnight, the photograph of Einstein smiling and Bohr worried, and the last attempt, which failed because Einstein had ignored a consequence of his own theory. The book carried a picture of Bohr’s bride, a beautiful woman, and one of her in old age, still keeping something of her beauty with dignity.

14. Closing: all good in creatures is from God (“Thou ancient beauty”) #

• Augustine, Confessions, regretting his slow conversion: “Too late have I come to know Thee, Thou ancient beauty” — calling God beauty, as one calls Him truth itself, life itself, love itself.
• So the beauty of creatures is an effect of God. God’s love of Mary is not an effect of her beauty; her beauty is an effect of His love.
• Mary says this in the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour… He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid” — which might look like the human way of seeing it — “He has done great things for me.” A saint is aware that the good in her is from God, and makes good use of it.
• He then turns back to the second reading. (A brief exchange over a student’s name, Habiba, is left unfinished.)

His words #

• methodos — “over a road”; philosophy as knowledge that follows a road.
• road in our knowledge — a before and after in our knowledge.
• the first road / the natural road — the road from the senses into reason.
• looking sciences — his English for Greek theoretical, Latin speculative.
• natural hearing — his rendering of the title of the eight books, “the so-called Physics.”
• intelligere / intus legere — to read within; outward knowledge before inward.
• haver and had — his pair for the one who has and what is had.
• beginning vs. cause — every cause is a beginning in some way, not every beginning a cause.
• philosophical modesty — Aristotle’s “perhaps it would become clearer.”
• via tendendi ad Deum — the road of tending to God (Christ as man).
• glass — in Shakespeare, mirror.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I (Alpha), first reading, last paragraph of p. 2 of the handout — “all hold what is called wisdom to be about the first causes and beginnings” through “wisdom is about beginnings and causes.”
• Aristotle, Metaphysics I, opening of the second reading — “this ought to be considered about what sort of causes and about what sort of beginnings.”
• Handout, “An Introduction to the First Road in Our Knowledge,” p. 4 (verified source).
• Shakespeare, “Who is Sylvia” (Two Gentlemen of Verona); “Thou art thy mother’s glass”; “This were to be new made when thou art old.”
• Act of contrition; his own opening prayer.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (beginning more general than cause; the senses of “before and after,” second and fifth senses).
• Aristotle, Physics, proemium (confused before distinct).
• Boethius (singular when sensed, universal when understood).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I (no composition in God); III, prologue (via tendendi ad Deum); on the soul of St. Peter in heaven; on love wanting to multiply.
• John 14:6; Matthew 25 (“what you did to the little ones”); the Magnificat; St. Paul (God wills all men to be saved); Old Testament (life and death set before you).
• Augustine, Confessions.
• Euclid of Alexandria.

His questions #

• What is a road in our knowledge? — A before and after in our knowledge.
• What comes after memory along the road? — Experience, a collection of many memories of the same kind, leading to art and the universal.
• Why does natural philosophy come before wisdom? — Because material and sensible things are known before immaterial, and effects before causes, so the first cause is known last.
• What is the Latin for understanding, and its etymology? — Intelligere, from intus legere, to read within.
• Does God love the saints because they are good? — No; God is love itself, and His love is the cause, not the effect, of the good in them.
• Is the haver the same as what he has? — No, in possessions, in knowledge, virtue, health, even body and soul as parts; only in God, who is whatever He has.
• Why then are some men saints and some sinners? — Not from any hatred in God; the saints freely cooperated with His grace, the sinners did not — he calls it a kind of mystery.
• If I give God all my love, what is left for my neighbour? — One loves the neighbour in God, and God in the neighbour, as Mother Teresa did.
• Why does the poet say heaven lent her such graces? — Because beauty is taken back again; it does not stay.