Metaphysics Proemium: Wonder as the Beginning of Philosophy — Wisdom as Free and Divine Knowledge

Orientation #

He locates today’s reading: Thomas divides the proemium in two, and the first two readings (already done) showed what wisdom is about — causes, and precisely the first cause. The third reading, today’s, asks what kind of knowledge it is. He notes Aristotle’s epilogue at the bottom of page five recalls these two things in reverse order, the later one first. The previous class worked through the natural road of knowledge and Aristotle’s six marks of the wise man (prev. lecture).

The class, in order #

1. The division of the proemium (“the kind of knowledge that wisdom is”) #

Point: the third reading treats the nature of this knowledge; the goal of the road was settled earlier — to know the very first cause, which Aristotle reaches in Book XII, where he says the first cause “compels our wonder.” He notes how the translator renders methodos as “road.”

2. It is not a making science: philosophy begins in wonder (“men both now and even at first begin to philosophize through wonder”) #

Point: the first paragraph gives a sign that wisdom is not for making or doing but simply for knowing.

• Men begin by wondering at strange things close at hand (a new toy), then little by little at greater things: the changes of the moon (half moon, quarter moon), the sun and its eclipse, the stars, and finally the origin of the universe.
• The man in doubt and wondering thinks himself ignorant, and so is trying to escape ignorance — not to make or do anything.
• Aside: if God gives us the beatific vision, He is taking pity on our ignorance.

3. Plato and Aristotle, dialogue and lecture (“the two chief philosophers”) #

Point: a digression on why Plato and Aristotle look so different, and why dialogue matters.

• Thomas calls Plato and Aristotle the chief philosophers. Plato thanked the gods for three things: that he was born a man and not a woman, a Greek and not a barbarian, and that he had met Socrates.
• Caution in comparing them: Plato’s dialogues survive but his lectures do not; with Aristotle it is the reverse — the lecture summaries survive, the dialogues (one introductory to philosophy, one with the poets) are lost. In one lecture Aristotle asks his hearers to thank him for new discoveries and forgive what he does not know. So one gets a false view of both.
• Three statements from the Poetic Art: man is the most imitative of the animals; we all delight in imitations; we first learn by imitation. Examples: he meows for his grandchildren and niece; he moos at the cows at his daughter’s and calls them “my cousins, not my brothers”; Mark imitating the ape on the way back from the zoo; the man at Laval who imitated professors at the Christmas party, catching quirks of voice and hand, the professor himself laughing; learning one’s native English by imitating parents and brothers.
• Hence the dialogues are the right introduction to philosophy, being imitations of men. Aristotle perhaps wrote fewer because Plato had done the job so well.

4. The Theaetetus: there is no other beginning of philosophy (“ou gar allē archē”) #

Point: Plato agrees with Aristotle that wonder is philosophy’s beginning.

• Dialogues are named not from Socrates but from the man he talks with; Theaetetus is a real historical geometer (the Heath edition of Euclid marks what goes back to him), here a young man, prized pupil of Theodorus. The topic is episteme — appropriate, since a geometer has experience of it.
• Theodorus introduces him as “something of a philosopher.” Mid-dialogue Theaetetus says: “By the gods, Socrates, I am lost in wonder when I think of all these things… it makes my head swim.” (Compare Niels Bohr on quantum theory: if it doesn’t make your head swim you are not really getting into it.)
• Socrates: Theodorus was a good guesser about your nature — this is very much what the philosopher undergoes, to thaumazein. Then the strong statement: “there is no other beginning of philosophy than this.”
• He dislikes the old Victorian translation here.

5. Iris the child of Thaumas (“seems to not make a bad genealogy”) #

Point: Socrates’ unexplained allusion (to Hesiod) says why wonder is the beginning.

• Thaumas is wonder personified; Iris is the rainbow personified and the messenger of the gods. Shakespeare’s Tempest greets her, “Hail, many-colored messenger!” — both things at once. “Very subtle, Socrates is saying, but he doesn’t explain himself at all.”
• He used to test students: if you did not wonder why Socrates said that, you are not called to be a philosopher.
• His reading: as messenger, Iris unites us with the gods (as Gabriel coming to Mary unites man and God); as rainbow, she joins heaven and earth — and in the Old Testament, after the flood, the rainbow was the sign of God’s reconciliation. So wonder unites man with God, on the side of his reason: it makes us seek the cause, then the cause of the cause, and finally the first cause.
• Asides: today is the feast of the three named angels, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael; “angel means messenger”; the St Francis de Sales piece he gave out last week used Psalms 103 and 138, and the two numbering systems drive him crazy. A student recalls “Wonderful” among the names of Christ in Isaiah.

6. The philomuthos and the poets (“the myth is put together from wonders”) #

Point: Aristotle’s comparison — the lover of myths is in some way a philosopher.

• Philomuthos = lover of myths; myth is like our fairy tale, made up of wonderful things. He recommends the Dover fairy-tale books (green, blue, yellow, red), on Warren Murray’s judgment the best collection, with good illustrations, to read to children.
• From Monsignor Dion: Albert the Great, commenting here, says poetry gives hoc modum admirandi — the way of wondering. The wonder Homer or Shakespeare gives is not exactly the philosopher’s, but a necessary stepping stone. Asked whether there would have been Greek philosophy without Homer, Dion said no.
• His own case: a freshman professor set plays of Shakespeare, which led him to buy the complete plays that first year — that disposed him to be a philosopher. His brother Richard started in literature and soon moved to philosophy. Chesterton’s remark about detective stories: if you like them, [ed.: as reported in class] you won’t like philosophy.

7. The philomathes and mathematics (“a lover of learning”) #

Point: wonder links also to mathematics.

• Mathematikos in the Greek dictionary is near a synonym for philomathes, lover of learning. So it is fitting that this great statement about wonder is made to a young geometer.
• Euclid’s theorems are wonderful when seen; high-school geometry as taught to him did not arouse wonder. Kasurik told him at graduation, simply, “get a copy of Euclid,” and would not argue.
• Plato: a philosopher must be a philomathes; over the school door, “Let no one ignorant of geometry come in here” — he adds, nor anyone ignorant of Homer. De Koninck said one should have read great literature before doing philosophy. Even a little child can be a philomathes.

8. The second sign: sought only when the necessities were there (“we seek this knowledge to no other need”) #

Point: history witnesses that wisdom is not practical. Only when almost all necessary arts existed — farming, hunting, householding, the tailor’s art — and the arts of recreation and amusement, such as music, was this knowledge sought. So it is sought for no other need.

9. The only free science, and barely a human possession (“this alone is free among the sciences”) #

Point: third mark — freedom.

• Argument as he gives it: a free man is one who is for himself, not for another; a slave is for the good of his master; this science alone is for the sake of itself; therefore it alone is free. Hence “the liberal arts,” the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic — the verbal part) and Quadrivium (the mathematical part), as a beginning.
• Objection from the text: it might justly be thought not a human possession, for in many ways man’s nature is enslaved — bodily needs, family to provide for, and beyond that the passions: the irascible man enslaved to anger (even some saints had to fight this), the lustful to his passions, the coward to his fear. Professor Prioreschi at Laval: the ancient world had slaves, but today each man is his own slave — “take out the trash, I’m my own slave.”
• Simonides: God alone can have this honor; man is not worthy to seek knowledge for itself. Aristotle’s reply: if the poets are saying something, the divine would be especially envious here, and unfortunate would be all who excel in knowledge — but the divine cannot be envious; God sees the excellence of creatures as in agreement with, a reflection of, His own. And “poets say many false things,” per the proverb.

10. Most divine in two ways (“a knowledge of God in two senses”) #

Point: fourth mark — no knowledge is more honorable, since the most divine is most honorable.

• Two ways of being most divine: (1) it is the knowledge God most of all would have; (2) it is of divine things — of the first cause, and “God seems to all to be among the causes and a beginning.” He notes this is not equivocation but amphiboly in the phrase “knowledge of God,” as with Lady Wisdom: knowledge about God, and the knowledge God has. That God is the first beginning is proved later, in Book XII.
• Summary of the four: looking knowledge; free, for its own sake; not a human but rather a divine possession; most divine and most honorable. Hence other sciences are more necessary — food, clothing, shelter — but none is better.

11. Mary and Martha; theology as straw (“Mary hath chosen the better part”) #

Point: an extension to the contemplative life.

• The Church’s law tells religious their first duty is contemplation of divine things; in some way this is necessary. Mary chose the better part, which shall not be taken from her, because contemplation continues and is perfected in the next life, while the practical life ends with this one. Some students say: be practical now, contemplate later — but it is better to be Mary, to begin now and look forward to having it perfectly.
• When we see God as He is (St John), face to face (Psalms, St Paul), the knowledge of God had in first philosophy or even theology will seem like ignorance by comparison. Thomas, given supernatural knowledge, found his summas like straw; God took him at forty-nine, when, as Aristotle said, the mind is best. Thomas sometimes calls theology a consolation for the soul before it sees God as He is.

12. The two wonders, and wonder against expectation (“contrary to what you expect”) #

Point: wisdom’s possession lands in the opposite of the searching, since wonder ceases when the cause is known — but there is a second wonder, admiring the excellence of the thing, as in Book XII where God compels our wonder.

• Aristotle’s examples of what all wonder at: things that happen wonderfully by chance, the turnings of the sun, the incommensurability of the diagonal — it seems wonderful that something is not measured by the smallest.
• On Thomas’s handling of the incommensurable: wonder is aroused most when what is so seems contrary to what you expect. Einstein’s father’s magnet moved things without touching them, against his experience that you must touch to move — though Einstein went on to develop the field. A friend acting as expected raises no wonder; acting strangely, you begin to wonder why.
• His geometrical example: quadrilaterals can have more perimeter but less area. A 5×5 square: perimeter 20, area 25. A 2×10 oblong: perimeter 24, area 20. So more perimeter, less area — and a square always beats an oblong of equal perimeter. [He also says one can have “a square with more area but less perimeter.”] He used this for brevity — less perimeter containing more, as the wise man says more with fewer words while the fool multiplies words and says less. The Russian story of the man promised all the land he could run around in a day, who tried for too much and died; and the trick of land bought and sold by perimeter, where one who knows geometry gives more perimeter but keeps more land.
• The arithmetical parallel: 2+10 exceeds 5+5, yet 2×10 = 20 is less than 5×5 = 25 — though you would expect the greater sum to give the greater product.
• He has heard that many great scientific discoveries came not with “Eureka” but with “gee, that’s weird, I didn’t expect that.”
• Close: the epilogue recalls the two things done. He asks what to do next and leaves it open — “Read some Shakespeare, maybe.”

His words #

• premium / proemium — the prologue of the Metaphysics, divided by Thomas into what wisdom is about and what kind of knowledge it is.
• methodos — as the translator has it, “road”; the road the whole knowledge must reach its goal by.
• looking knowledge — his English for speculative (Latin) or theoretical (Greek) knowledge; knowledge not for making or doing.
• thaumazein — to wonder; what the philosopher undergoes.
• Thaumas / Iris — wonder personified; the rainbow and messenger of the gods, her child.
• philomuthos — lover of myths, “in some way a philosopher,” since myth is put together from wonders.
• hoc modum admirandi — Albert the Great: poetry gives the way of wondering.
• philomathes / mathematikos — lover of learning; near synonyms in the Greek dictionary.
• episteme — the topic of the Theaetetus.
• amphibole [ed.: amphiboly] — the double sense in “knowledge of God”: about God, and had by God.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics I, proemium, third reading (pages four and five of the handout): wonder as origin of philosophizing; the philomuthos; the sign from the necessary and recreational arts; the free science; Simonides and the envy of the divine; the most divine science; the epilogue.
• Plato, Theaetetus: Theodorus’ introduction of Theaetetus, Theaetetus’ “my head swims,” Socrates on wonder as the sole beginning of philosophy, Iris child of Thaumas.

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on this proemium (on the incommensurable diagonal, and on the division of the text).
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XII: God the first beginning; God compels our wonder.
• Aristotle, Poetic Art: three statements on imitation.
• Albert the Great, commentary on this passage.
• Euclid (Heath edition); Hesiod; Homer; Sophocles; Shakespeare, The Tempest and the complete plays; Simonides; Isaiah (“Wonderful”); Psalms 103 and 138; St Francis de Sales; the Gospel of Mary and Martha; St John, St Paul; Chesterton; Dover fairy-tale books.

His questions #

• What kind of knowledge is wisdom — is it for making or doing? No: it begins in wonder and seeks only to escape ignorance, so it is looking knowledge.
• What sign shows it is not a making science? Men philosophized only after the necessary arts and even the arts of amusement existed; so it answers no other need.
• Why did Socrates say Iris was a good child for Thaumas? Because wonder, like the rainbow and the messenger, joins man to God — by making reason seek the cause, and the cause of the cause, up to the first cause.
• What is the philomuthos, and why is he in some way a philosopher? A lover of myths; the myth is composed of wonders, and poetry gives the way of wondering, a stepping stone to the philosopher’s wonder.
• Would there have been Greek philosophy without Homer? Monsignor Dion answered: no.
• Why is this alone the free science? Because the free man is for himself and not for another, and this alone is for the sake of itself.
• Is it too great for man, as Simonides said, and is the divine envious? It is barely a human possession since man’s nature is enslaved in many ways; but the divine cannot be envious, and poets say many false things.
• In what two senses is wisdom “knowledge of God”? It is about God, the first cause, and it is the knowledge that God most of all would have.
• When is wonder most aroused? When you do not know why something is so and what is so seems contrary to what you expect.
• What will we do next? Left open — “Read some Shakespeare, maybe.”