An introduction to Aristotle's Metaphysics and first philosophy (2016). These lectures trace the progression from sensation through experience to wisdom, examining how wonder initiates philosophical inquiry and how knowledge of first causes represents the highest form of human understanding. en © 2025 Berquist Lectures Wed, 23 Sep 2026 02:12:09 +0000 Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Duane H. Berquist An introduction to Aristotle's Metaphysics and first philosophy (2016). These lectures trace the progression from sensation through experience to wisdom, examining how wonder initiates philosophical inquiry and how knowledge of first causes represents the highest form of human understanding. false Duane H. Berquist info@example.com https://berquistcourse.com/images/cover-08.jpg https://berquistcourse.com serial Berquist works through the opening lines of Aristotle's Metaphysics—"all men by nature desire to know"—with Aquinas's commentary, tracing knowledge from sensation up through memory, experience, and art toward wisdom. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/001-metaphysics-proemium-i-all-men-desire-to-know-sense-memory/ Berquist opens Aristotle's Metaphysics at its first line, "all men by nature desire to know," and asks what that desire actually tracks as it develops. Reading the text closely alongside Aquinas's commentary, he lays out the ladder from sensation to memory to experience to art and universal knowledge, and finally to wisdom, which knows through causes. Along the way he reaches for homely examples—music, wine, medicine, raising children—to show concretely why the wise man who grasps causes outranks the merely experienced man who only knows that something works. The session sets up this proemium as the doorway into what Aristotle will call First Philosophy. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/001-metaphysics-proemium-i-all-men-desire-to-know-sense-memory/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/001-metaphysics-proemium-i-all-men-desire-to-know-sense-memory/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/wis16/001-1.mp3 1:09:33 1 full false Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Berquist works through Aquinas's commentary on the opening of Aristotle's Metaphysics, tracing the rise from sensation to wisdom and laying out the six marks by which Aristotle describes the wise man. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/002-metaphysics-proemium-ii-doing-and-making-wisdom-as-knowledge/ Berquist follows the proemium of Aristotle's Metaphysics with Aquinas's commentary, tracking the ascent from sensation through memory, experience, and art to wisdom as knowledge of first causes. Along the way he pauses over the distinction between motion and operation and between doing and making, and takes up the meanings of "beginning" and "cause" from Book V. He then sets out Aristotle's six-part portrait of the wise man—knowing all things universally, grasping what is difficult, possessing greatest certainty, teaching through causes, seeking knowledge for its own sake, and ruling rather than obeying—linking it to Aquinas's account of wisdom as reason's highest ordering perfection. Anecdotes from teaching, seminary life, Mozart, MacArthur, and the Bohr-Heisenberg-Einstein debates keep the argument concrete. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/002-metaphysics-proemium-ii-doing-and-making-wisdom-as-knowledge/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/002-metaphysics-proemium-ii-doing-and-making-wisdom-as-knowledge/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/wis16/001-2.mp3 1:05:37 2 full false Thu, 19 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Berquist opens Aristotle's Metaphysics, tracing the ascent from experience to art to wisdom through the six marks of the wise man, and closing with philosophy's roots in wonder. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/003-metaphysics-i-proemium-knowledge-experience-art-and-the-six/ Berquist works through the proemium of Aristotle's Metaphysics, asking what separates mere experience and art from wisdom itself. He lays out Aristotle's six-fold portrait of the wise man—knower of universals and of difficult things, more certain, able to teach through causes, seeking knowledge for its own sake, and fit to direct others—drawing on Aquinas's commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics and the proemium to the De Anima for comparison. He ends with Aristotle's claim that philosophy begins in wonder, likening the philosopher to the "philomythos," the lover of stories, and pointing to Homer and Shakespeare as examples of how narrative first stirs the mind toward philosophical questioning. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/003-metaphysics-i-proemium-knowledge-experience-art-and-the-six/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/003-metaphysics-i-proemium-knowledge-experience-art-and-the-six/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/wis16/002-1.mp3 1:07:08 3 full false Thu, 09 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Berquist opens Aristotle's Metaphysics Book I, tracking wonder from chance encounters to the incommensurability of the diagonal, then charts the book's review of earlier philosophers. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/004-metaphysics-i-proemium-cont-wonder-chance-and-the-end-of/ Why does philosophy begin in wonder, and why does that wonder vanish once a cause is grasped? Berquist works through Aristotle's opening of Metaphysics Book I, contrasting wonder at mere chance—a surprise meeting—with wonder at something like the diagonal's incommensurability, whose resolution satisfies curiosity while leaving admiration intact. He digresses through Shakespeare's meter, Euclid, Thérèse of Lisieux's Story of a Soul, and Aquinas on divine simplicity to test the point, then sketches Book I's survey of Aristotle's predecessors and what Books II–V will take up, closing with Socrates' remark that wonder is offspring of Thaumas. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/004-metaphysics-i-proemium-cont-wonder-chance-and-the-end-of/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/004-metaphysics-i-proemium-cont-wonder-chance-and-the-end-of/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/wis16/002-2.mp3 0:58:36 4 full false Thu, 09 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Berquist opens Aristotle's Metaphysics proemium with Aquinas's commentary, using Hamlet's "looking before and after," Homer, and Boswell's Life of Johnson to show what reason and wisdom are, before examining the claim that all men by nature desire to know. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/005-metaphysics-proemium-i-reason-as-looking-before-and-after/ Berquist begins with prayer, then asks what reason and wisdom actually are, turning to Shakespeare's definition of reason in Hamlet as a "large discourse, looking before and after" and finding the same ordering of before and after at work in passages from Homer's Iliad and Boswell's Life of Johnson. He then moves into Aristotle's proemium to the Metaphysics alongside Aquinas's commentary, reading closely the opening line that all men by nature desire to know. He follows Aristotle's argument from the primacy of sight among the senses, arguing that we love to see apart from any practical use, and illustrates the point with his own anecdotes about astronomy and the sheer pleasure of natural beauty. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/005-metaphysics-proemium-i-reason-as-looking-before-and-after/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/005-metaphysics-proemium-i-reason-as-looking-before-and-after/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/wis16/003-1.mp3 0:43:06 5 full false Thu, 15 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Berquist traces Aristotle's "natural road" of knowledge in the opening of the Metaphysics—sense, memory, experience, art, wisdom—showing why the wise man is the one who knows causes. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/006-metaphysics-proemium-ii-the-natural-road-of-knowledge-sensing/ Berquist works through the opening chapter of Aristotle's Metaphysics, following the ascent from sense perception through memory and experience to art and finally to universal, causal knowledge. He illustrates each stage with homely examples—cats, French fries, tea-making, his father's factory, a kindergarten teacher—and draws in Aquinas's commentary, Cicero on prudence, and lines from Shakespeare, including Romeo and Juliet. Along the way he argues that reason's grasp of universals reveals the soul is not merely bodily, touching briefly on Francis de Sales's account of angelic versus sensible knowledge to sharpen the contrast between fact and cause. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/006-metaphysics-proemium-ii-the-natural-road-of-knowledge-sensing/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/006-metaphysics-proemium-ii-the-natural-road-of-knowledge-sensing/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/wis16/003-2.mp3 0:54:30 6 full false Thu, 15 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Berquist works through the proemium of Aristotle's Metaphysics, tracing sense to art to wisdom, and begins unpacking the six marks of the wise man. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/007-metaphysics-proemium-iii-speculative-arts-leisure-words-equivocal/ Berquist follows Aristotle's proemium as it climbs from sense experience and memory through art and experience to the speculative sciences, asking why "maker" arts like poetry and painting, and leisure-born sciences like mathematics, count as wiser than practical crafts. He pauses over how words become equivocal "by reason" rather than by chance, using episteme and sophia, and animal and man, as examples drawn from the Ethics and Metaphysics Book V. He then begins working through Aristotle's six-part description of the wise man—touching universal knowledge, difficulty, and certainty—as groundwork for the claim that wisdom is knowledge of first causes and beginnings. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/007-metaphysics-proemium-iii-speculative-arts-leisure-words-equivocal/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/007-metaphysics-proemium-iii-speculative-arts-leisure-words-equivocal/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/wis16/003-3.mp3 0:45:21 7 full false Thu, 15 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Berquist opens Aristotle's Metaphysics Book I by tracing "methodos"—the road of knowledge from sense to wisdom—then digresses into why divine love, unlike ours, causes rather than follows goodness. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/008-metaphysics-i-reading-1-the-natural-road-from-sense-to-reason/ Berquist begins Metaphysics Book I by unpacking "methodos" as a road, tracing how knowledge naturally travels from sense perception through memory, experience, and art up to universal knowledge and finally wisdom's grasp of first causes. He pauses at length on a theological point drawn from Aquinas, Scripture, and Shakespeare: human love is caused by goodness already seen in another, while God's love causes the goodness creatures have. This distinction explains why wisdom, as knowledge of the first cause, must come last in the order of human learning, even though it is first in the order of being. He weaves in Boethius, the contrast of natural philosophy with metaphysics, and the roots of the Greek and Latin terms along the way. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/008-metaphysics-i-reading-1-the-natural-road-from-sense-to-reason/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/008-metaphysics-i-reading-1-the-natural-road-from-sense-to-reason/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/wis16/004-1.mp3 0:56:42 8 full false Thu, 22 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Berquist works through the six marks of the wise man from Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book Alpha—universal knowledge, difficulty, certitude, teaching through causes, knowledge for its own sake, and the capacity to rule. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/009-metaphysics-i-reading-2-the-six-part-description-of-the-wise/ Continuing his reading of Book Alpha, Berquist takes up each of the six marks by which Aristotle describes the wise man, pausing longest over the apparent tension between certitude and difficulty: how can wisdom be both hardest to attain and most certain? He draws on St. Thomas's commentary to sort out equivocal terms like "whole" and "part" as they bear on the axioms, and traces the kinship between logic and wisdom. He closes by tracing the word "philosopher" itself back to Pythagoras, reading into it a lesson in humility, with anecdotes from his Laval teachers De Koninck and Dion along the way. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/009-metaphysics-i-reading-2-the-six-part-description-of-the-wise/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/009-metaphysics-i-reading-2-the-six-part-description-of-the-wise/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/wis16/004-2.mp3 0:46:53 9 full false Thu, 22 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Berquist finishes his treatment of Thomas's commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, showing how the wise man's role as director follows from universal knowledge, and why the most universal things are hardest for us to know. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/010-sapientis-est-ordinare-the-wise-man-as-director-universal/ Berquist closes his reading of Thomas's commentary on the opening of the Metaphysics by tying the sixth mark of wisdom—that the wise man directs others—back to the earlier marks: knowledge of the universal, of first causes, and of what is desirable for its own sake. Using the contrast between induction and syllogism, and analogies of command like king and general, he distinguishes two senses of "universal": universal in predicating versus universal in causing. He then turns to the passage explaining why the most universal things, being furthest from the senses, are hardest for men to know, with digressions on pride as a cause of error and on modern philosophy along the way. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/010-sapientis-est-ordinare-the-wise-man-as-director-universal/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/010-sapientis-est-ordinare-the-wise-man-as-director-universal/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/wis16/004-3.mp3 0:39:40 10 full false Thu, 22 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Berquist traces Aristotle's "natural road" from sensation to universal knowledge, then works through the six marks of the wise man from the Metaphysics to show wisdom is knowledge through first causes. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/011-metaphysics-proemium-the-natural-road-and-the-six-marks-of/ Berquist opens with Aristotle's account, from the proemium to the Physics, of how human knowing moves from sensation through memory and experience to universal knowledge—an order running from confused to distinct. He then turns to the Metaphysics and its description of the wise man by six marks: knowing all things universally, knowing difficult things, knowing with greater certitude, knowing through causes, knowing for its own sake, and being one who commands others rather than obeys. Working through Aquinas's commentary, he argues these marks together identify wisdom as knowledge of the first causes. Digressions along the way take up logic versus natural philosophy, the several senses of "before," and the distinction between per se and per aliud. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/011-metaphysics-proemium-the-natural-road-and-the-six-marks-of/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/011-metaphysics-proemium-the-natural-road-and-the-six-marks-of/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/wis16/005-1.mp3 0:53:29 11 full false Thu, 29 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Berquist continues Aquinas's commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics proemium, tracing wisdom as speculative knowledge born of wonder, from Plato's Theaetetus to the diagonal's incommensurability. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/012-metaphysics-proemium-wonder-as-the-beginning-of-philosophy/ Berquist takes up the third reading of Thomas's commentary on the proemium, where Aristotle explains wisdom not as practical but speculative knowledge, sought for its own sake out of wonder rather than necessity. He pairs this with Plato's Theaetetus, where Socrates tells Theaetetus that wonder is the beginning of philosophy and calls Iris daughter of Thaumas, and works through the liberal versus servile arts and the philomuthos and philomathes as forerunners of the philosopher. Wisdom emerges as the most divine science, since it concerns God and is the very knowledge God possesses. He closes with Aristotle's own examples of wonder—the diagonal's incommensurability, changes of moon and sun—and Thomas's epilogue summarizing what wisdom is about and what kind of knowledge it is. Notes and transcript: https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/012-metaphysics-proemium-wonder-as-the-beginning-of-philosophy/ https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/012-metaphysics-proemium-wonder-as-the-beginning-of-philosophy/ https://media.juskelis.com/episodes/v1/wis16/005-2.mp3 0:36:55 12 full false Thu, 29 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000