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)

Orientation #

He is continuing through the assigned readings on the wise man, picking up where the class left off in the second reading (last paragraph, p. 3), and he ends by saying “we’ll continue here with page three.” A handout, “Reasoning and the Four Kinds of Argument,” p. 2, is read from during the class. The neighbouring classes also treat the six marks of the wise man and the natural road of knowledge.

The class, in order #

1. Sapientis est ordinare and the definition of reason (“to look before and after”) #

Thomas, in the proemium to the Nicomachean Ethics, takes Aristotle’s sixth mark of the wise man — it belongs to the wise man to order — and divides human knowledge by the orders reason considers. Thomas’s reason: wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, and it is proper to reason to know order.

• Shakespeare’s definition of reason, “to look before and after,” fits this: if you know reason is the ability to look before and after, you are not surprised that the wise man most of all knows order; and conversely, seeing that the chief artist is wiser because he directs others shows you something about reason. The two truths illuminate each other in both directions.
• Hugo’s definition: reason is “the ability to understand and to direct oneself and others.” He calls Hugo a plagiarist, borrowing “understand and reason” from Thomas’s Proemium to Logic, and the directing of self, will and exterior making from the proemium to the Ethics. Hugo is recent, not a contemporary of Thomas.
• Aside: “Hugo” means mind; he once looked up his own name in a book of etymologies, relieved not to get “some stupid etymology.”
• Recap of the six marks: knows all things (in general, not in particular), knows things difficult for men, is more certain, is more able to teach (knows causes), has knowledge more desirable for its own sake, and directs everybody else.

2. Order of the marks, and the order of the three arguments (“which is more known to us, syllogism or induction?”) #

The six-part description is ordered from more known to us to less known, just as the kinds of argument are.

• Induction is more known to us than syllogism: syllogism starts from the universal and rests on the dici de omni and dici de nullo [ed.: dictum de omni et de nullo] — “the said of all” and “the said of none” — i.e. on something seen universally; induction goes from many singulars to the universal. Syllogism is the stronger argument, induction the better known.
• Before induction comes example. The word is equivocal: (a) a singular used to illustrate a universal; (b) an argument from one singular to another singular of the same kind. As an argument, example is even more known to us than induction and easier to use.
• Example of example: he and his brother Mark, Midwesterners unused to seafood, bought lobster legs for a Friday dinner; Mark threw up, went to a movie, came back, smelled it, threw up again — and they never bought it again. One singular to another singular of the same kind.
• Aside: biologists who think cockroaches are at the top of the evolutionary scale because they resist atomic radiation (from Warren Murray) — the narrow mind of the highly specialized. “I suppose a stone could survive a time of war too.”

3. Why the sixth mark is least known (“they don’t want to be directed”) #

Student: why is the sixth characteristic considered least known, since a man giving orders obviously seems to know?

• His answer: along the natural road — sensing, memory, universal knowledge, then knowing why, then seeing that there are chief artists and subordinate artists — directing another man is the last thing you come to. Knowing all things (the universal) is what is first known; that is what distinguishes art and science from experience, which is of singulars only.
• Example: MacArthur is wiser than the officers obeying him, and they than those below; the chain of command should track wisdom. And from that you begin to see it will be the first cause.
• The resistance is moral, not only cognitive: people don’t read Aristotle and Thomas because they don’t want to be directed. His friend Rodney Melky: “I’m my own philosophy.” He himself got interested through his brother Richard and cousin Donald.

4. The fifth mark: knowledge for its own sake (“Mary has chosen the better part”) #

People also fail to appreciate that wisdom should be knowledge for its own sake. Martha and Mary: the practical life ends with death; if you have been reasonably good, the speculative life then begins in full — you will not change God or make anything, but contemplate and praise him.

• Student: the fifth seems more abstract or less known than the sixth, since the chief artists Aristotle points to are practical men directing others. His reply: yes, the sixth is taken from the practical order precisely because the practical is more known to us; in Nicomachean Ethics VI, wisdom comes later among the virtues of reason.
• Asides on the practical bias: “when you get out into the real world”; professors vote Democratic because they don’t live in the real world; William F. Buckley preferring the first 200 names in the telephone book to the Harvard faculty.
• The same refusal appears in the speculative order: Catholic university professors who say “I’m not going to be told what to believe”; Catholics voting against what the Church teaches; Hillary announcing she intends to use political will and resources against religious beliefs contrary to her party line on abortion.

5. The wise man’s rule and the logician’s (“they don’t seem to know the names of the kinds of mistakes”) #

Student: is the sixth mark’s ruling a speculative ruling, like a teacher’s over students? Yes — the wise man directs those in the other sciences as regards certain fundamental things. He compares the logician, who likewise directs others: modern philosophers don’t know the names of the kinds of mistakes, and so are not directed by the logician as they should be. Knowing the names is not yet understanding them, but understanding them lets you make that kind of mistake [as he says it]. Student: should they be called philosophers or sophists? — “They’re more sophists, I suppose.”

6. Wonder in the physicists, not the philosophers (“begin in wonder”) #

Philosophy begins in wonder (third reading); he finds more true wonder in the twentieth-century physicists than in the modern philosophers — Heisenberg, Max Born, Einstein.

• Max Born: “nothing great in science can be accomplished without the elementary wonder of the philosopher.”
• Warren Murray’s conversation with Heisenberg (in German): Heisenberg was more a Platonist as a mathematical physicist but greatly admired Aristotle’s understanding of potency (see the Gifford lectures); he quoted Greek fragments from memory.
• Schrödinger: there has never been science where people have not come in contact with the Greeks. Einstein: if Euclid did not arouse your youthful enthusiasm, you were not born to be a scientist.
• His own teacher Kasurik ordered him: “Duane, go get Euclid” — no reason given, “I don’t want any reason… If you’re going to study philosophy, you learn some Greek.” He obeyed. That is directing — and most people would say “the hell with you, I choose my own courses,” especially in this democratic age.

7. Pride as a cause of error (“they don’t have the humility”) #

Student: would a wise man today have to suggest rather than direct? He answers that people fight direction for lack of humility. Thomas on pride as a cause of error on the part of appetite gives two reasons: (1) the proud man thinks himself more capable than he is, and so judges what he is not able to judge, or before he is able; (2) he will not listen to minds greater than his own, which often recall a man from his errors. Aside: “the story of Luther.”

8. Universal in predicating and universal in causing (“who’s a more fundamental mover, the king or the top general?”) #

Reading resumes: “of these, to know all things necessarily belongs to the man most of all having knowledge of the universal, for he knows in some way all things placed under the universal.” He stops to ask what connects knowing the most universal with knowing the first cause.

1. The king moves more fundamentally than the top general — the general obeys the king.
2. The general’s causality extends to all of whom “soldier” is said; the king’s to all of whom “citizen” is said.
3. “Citizen” is more universal than “soldier.”
4. Therefore the more universal cause corresponds to the more universal predicate.

• Hence the Latin distinction: universale in praedicando (said of things) and universale in causando (universal cause) — two different kinds of universality which nonetheless go together.
• Boundary case in English: in the army “soldier” is perhaps the most general term, but in the Pacific War MacArthur is most of all “the general.” Not general in the same way: soldier is general in being said of many, MacArthur in commanding all. Yet MacArthur’s causality does extend to everyone called a soldier in that army.
• Confirming case: in the Politics Aristotle treats both who governs and who is a citizen — fitting, since the government rules everyone who is a citizen; both are political, in different ways.
• Conclusion: because the wise man knows all things, having the most universal knowledge of what is said of all, you would expect him to look for universal — i.e. first — causes. “All things harmonize,” they fit together.

9. “And perhaps the most universal are the most difficult” (“for they are furthest from the senses”) #

Why does Aristotle hedge with “perhaps”?

• The reason given in the text: the most universal are furthest from the senses, since the senses know singulars, and the less universal is closer to the singular — “man” is closer to you and me than “animal,” “dog” closer to the cat Abibi [name uncertain in recording] than “animal.”
• But by another route from the natural road: effects are more known than causes, and causes than the cause of the cause; so the first cause, especially if immaterial, is even further from the senses and even more difficult, and must be reasoned to. Hence “perhaps.”
• Student: is he talking about the first cause here? No — he is saying the most universal are hardest, because furthest from the starting point of our knowledge, the senses. The first cause is also furthest, and perhaps harder still.
• Aside (cats): Scrappy the Persian, who disappeared and was thought stolen; Captain (“Cappy”) and Commodore, abbreviated to “Commie” in the McCarthy days; the pet shop with monkeys in a cage; the cat climbing the screened porch at the lake.

10. Marx and the four senses of opposites (“things develop out of opposites”) #

Student: what is the purpose of modern philosophy — is it just an academic game?

• Whittaker Chambers, Witness: after his education at Columbia he had two choices, suicide or communism; he chose communism, his brother suicide.
• From a graduate-school thesis on Marxism: the official name of Marxism is dialectical materialism — matter is the beginning of everything, the first cause, and everything develops by the conflict of opposites, applied also to human society. The key thing: Marx never distinguishes the senses of “opposites” nor shows their order. Aristotle in the Categories and in the fifth book of wisdom [Metaphysics V] distinguishes four: contradictories, having and lacking [ed.: privation], contraries, and relatives.
• This confirms the point: the most universal things are hard. So too with being — distinguished according to the figures of predication and according to act and ability [ed.: potency] — “we can’t do that, even philosophers,” it is too far from the senses. Kasurik drummed the four senses of opposites into him, and so he can teach them.
• Student: is temperament a major force behind Marx, and Luther? Yes — reading Marx you feel his anger; he is not calm.
• Closing aside: he pokes fun at Beethoven’s enthusiasm (the Fifth became the victory symphony of the Second World War); Beethoven is closer to Haydn than to Mozart, and on hearing Mozart’s 24th piano concerto said, “Now we shall never equal that.” “No philosophy without music.”

His words #

• “Sapientis est ordinare” — it belongs to the wise man to order things.
• “To look before and after” — Shakespeare’s definition of reason, which he adopts.
• Hugo’s definition of reason — the ability to understand and to direct oneself and others.
• “The said of all,” “the said of none” — the two great principles on which syllogism rests [ed.: dictum de omni et de nullo].
• Example (as argument) — argument from one singular to another singular of the same kind; equivocal with “example” as an illustrating singular.
• The natural road — sensing, memory, experience, universal knowledge, knowing why.
• Chief artist / subordinate artist — the one who directs, the one directed.
• Universale in praedicando / universale in causando — universal in being said of things / universal cause.
• Ability [ed.: potency] — in “being according to act and ability.”
• Having and lacking [ed.: privation] — one of the four senses of opposites.
• The fifth book of wisdom — Metaphysics V.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I — second reading, last paragraph of p. 3: “to know all things necessarily belongs to the man most of all having knowledge of the universal… and perhaps the most universal are the most difficult for men to know, for they are furthest from the senses.”
• Handout, “Reasoning and the Four Kinds of Argument,” p. 2 (read from during the class).

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, Proemium to the Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics (division of knowledge by orders; reason knows order).
• Thomas Aquinas, Proemium to Logic (inferred: Posterior Analytics) — source of Hugo’s “understand and reason.”
• Thomas Aquinas on pride as a cause of error (locus not stated).
• Aristotle, Categories, and Metaphysics V — the four senses of opposites.
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VI — the virtues of reason, wisdom coming later.
• Aristotle, Politics — government and citizen.
• Luke: “Mary has chosen the better part” (inferred).
• Euclid; Nevison’s introduction to geometry; Heisenberg’s Gifford lectures; the Born–Einstein correspondence; Whittaker Chambers, Witness.

His questions #

• Which is more known to us, syllogism or induction? — Induction; syllogism is stronger but starts from the universal.
• Why is the sixth characteristic of the wise man considered least known? (student) — Because directing another man is the last thing reached on the natural road; the practical is more known to us but wisdom’s ordering comes late.
• Is the ruling in the sixth characteristic a speculative ruling, like a teacher’s? (student) — Yes: the wise man directs those in other sciences as to certain fundamental things, as the logician does.
• What is the purpose of modern philosophy — is it really just an abstract academic game? (student) — He answers by example: Columbia’s education left Chambers a choice of suicide or communism; and Marx never distinguished the senses of “opposites.”
• Who is the more fundamental mover, the king or the top general? — The king; the general obeys him.
• Which is more universal, citizen or soldier? — Citizen — so the more universal cause corresponds to the more universal predicate.
• Was MacArthur “general” in the same way that “soldier” is general? — No: soldier is general in being said of many, MacArthur in commanding all; but the two universalities correspond.
• Why does Aristotle say “perhaps” the most universal are hardest to know? — Because the first cause is in another way furthest from the senses and perhaps harder still.
• Is he here talking about the first cause? (student) — No; he is saying the most universal are hardest, being furthest from the senses.
• Is temperament a major force behind Marx, and Luther? (student) — Yes; in Marx you feel the anger, he is not calm.