Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
1. Aristotle's Proemium I: The Natural Desire to Know and Wisdom as Knowledge of Causes
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/1-philosophy-1999/001-aristotles-proemium-i-the-natural-desire-to-know-and-wisdom/

[0:01] And Sophia meaning wisdom. Now, in the legendary origin of the word, they say that Pythagoras was the first man to call himself a philosopher. He was not the first philosopher, but the first man to call himself a philosopher. And the occasion for it that's recounted is that he discovered some wonderful things, like the Pythagorean theorem and the other things. And so his contemporaries started to call him wise.

[0:40] And Pythagoras is supposed to reply, "Don't call me wise. God alone is wise." But what shall we call you then? Well, you have to call me something. Call me a lover of wisdom.

[0:59] So, in the origin, well, not the etymology, right? There's also an element of humility, right? The wisdom of man is nothing compared to the wisdom of God, and you find that same thought running through the other great Greek philosophers. And obviously, the Christian philosophers say that even more strongly. So you get to say Heraclitus, who's in some ways a central figure in thought, and he has these two wonderful proportions.

[1:39] As an ape is to a man, so is man to God. As an ape, you know, is inferior to man in beauty and wisdom and everything else. So man is like that to God.

[2:00] Or the other proportion was as a child is to a man, so is man to God. And so the to the child, the man appears to be wise, right? But in the presence of God, man is not wise. Biologists call us Homo sapiens, which means the wise ape. Compared to the ape, we look wise, right? But compared to God, we're like an ape.

[2:37] They find that same thought in Socrates, right? In the Apology. The Oracle of Delphi said that no one is wiser than Socrates, right? And Socrates said, "What does that mean?" Because he knew he was ignorant of many things, And the first thing he realized that he's not wise in the way God would be wise, right? May be wise in some human sense, so not wise in full sense.

[3:12] In Plato's last work, which is usually considered to be the Laws, he quotes Protagoras, who said, "Man is the measure of all things," and Plato says, "No, God is the measure of all things." Same idea. We'll see in this proemium that Aristotle says either we should say God alone is wise, right, or only God in the full, complete sense.

[3:49] Now that humility, of course, is found even more profoundly in people like Augustine or Thomas or the Christian philosophers in general. But it was lost among the famous modern philosophers,

[4:06] Hume say or Marx and so on. The human reason is the supreme mind that reigns in the universe, right? So to understand what a lover of wisdom is, we have to know something about what wisdom is, and then how the philosopher must love wisdom. So this proemium of Aristotle's to wisdom is the best short proemium to what wisdom aims at and what kind of knowledge it is.

[4:43] Okay. Now the word "proemium" is a Greek word originally meaning paving the way, or is the way right? The proemium is something shorter than an introduction, right? Introduction means what leading you into it. So in college, say a whole course might be called introduction to some subject, right? But the proemium is something very short, like the prologue to Oedipus Rex, fourteen lines, and in some way prepares the way for what comes afterwards.

[5:21] If you look at the Dei Verbum in Vatican II, I first had an English copy of it, In the very beginning it says introduction, not introduction, Beginning of it. not introduction. Then I got the official Latin text, and it says proemium It's magnificent proemium, and just about all of Aristotle's works have a proemium. So we're going to

[5:55] look at this proemium to get an idea of what wisdom aims at and the kind of knowledge it is. Let's look at the first sentence in this proemium. Aristotle says all men by nature desire to know.

[6:15] Now the word there in Greek in the eidenai, right? Which could be translated to know, and it usually is translated to know, but it could also be taken in a more particular sense, meaning to understand. And either way you take it, it makes sense. But when he gives the second sentence, a sign from the senses, right? If you take the first sentence as referring to knowing in general, well, sensing is a kind of knowing, sense knowing.

[6:54] But if you take eidenai there to mean to understand, which it usually does in Aristotle, right? There's a kind of a likeness. Or we carry the word to see over to understand it sometimes, right? Or even Gregory the Great speaks of reason as the eye of the soul. He says anger disturbs the eye of the soul.

[7:22] Now I usually ask two questions about this first statement. One is what does it mean? Okay. Two, is it true? And three, why does he begin with that statement?

[7:44] Now when he says all men, does he mean men as opposed to women, let's say? Huh? Or men as opposed to boys? Huh? No. Okay. It's the common one, right Now, When he says by nature, what does he mean?

[8:25] The word nature in Latin or the Greek word physis at first means birth. And so we kind of lose that a little bit in English, right? It's like if he said that this desire is inborn, right? It's not something that grows by custom or fashion, but the source of this desire is within, right? Nature is always something within, just like the baby comes from within the woman, okay?

[8:57] Now I think we all know what the word desire means, huh? And as I mentioned, we can understand that last word either to know in the broad sense or to understand to reason in particular.

[9:14] Now, the second question is that statement true? Another sign that Aristotle gives, he says, a sign of this is that men do scientific experiments. No. A sign of this is that men do historical research. No. A sign of this is that men philosophize. No. Right? He takes a sign from something that is common to all of us, and that's the love of the senses. And does everybody, or does anybody, let's put it this way, is anybody who doesn't sometimes use his eyes not to make or do something, but just to see something?

[9:58] Look at that beautiful sunset, right? We won't see? it today, but look at those beautiful mountains, right? or, You know, people hang up in their living room wall sometimes a painting or a reproduction of a famous painting, maybe a beautiful scene, right? You don't hang up the table weights and measures, do they, But that'd be more practical, right? So everybody uses their eyes sometimes just to see something, right?

[10:24] But they have a desire to know about anything, what, to make or do because of that, okay? Especially about the eyes, because the eyes are the senses that have a certain clarity in what they know, and they can know things at a distance, right? Sun and the moon and the stars would be lost to us, right, if we had no eyes.

[10:55] Now, notice the second sign, which he doesn't give here, but he touches upon in the book about the poetic art. He said everybody enjoys stories, right? And as a child, when your mother was reading you, let's say Little Red Riding Hood, you wanted to know what happens to Little Red Riding Hood when she gets to her grandmother's house, right? You're going to make or do something with that knowledge?

[11:24] No, but your wonder has been aroused. And so even practical people who have to get up in the morning and do something, right, sometimes start to read a mystery story or watch a movie that's intriguing on TV or something, and they stay up beyond their bedtime, right? They'll be tired. Not going to pick up something by watching the movie to help them on the job tomorrow, and they'll be tired, right?

[11:52] But they have, but their wonder's been aroused. Want to see how it turns out? My cousin Don was a very, very practical woman, right? No time for philosophy, yeah. But anyway, he was reading some Russian spy novel, right? He said she was laying around the house, and she accidentally picked it up and said, "Look at it," and she got engrossed in it, and she was mad at Don to be about this book around because she couldn't put it down, and she wasn't doing her gardening and all her other practical things.

[12:23] So even that very practical woman has something in this life, desire, right? You see it in a baseball game, right? You see people sometimes in the ninth inning leaving the ballpark if the game is lost sight of, right? But if it's in doubt who's going to win, right? You won't have that same number of people leaving the stands. Although that's a practical thing to do, right? To get out of the parking lot before they jammed in there for an hour or two, right?

[12:54] Okay. So the statement here is true, right? Second, being asked about. Now, the third and last reason why does Aristotle think begin with the statement? It just got to do with finding out about wonder and pursuing, pursuing wisdom, finding out about this.

[13:26] Yeah. Now, notice the fact that something is desired is a sign that is good. Now it's not a necessary sign, right? Because sometimes people desire things that are only apparently good, right? But when you have a natural desire for something, like you have a natural desire for food, water, and so on, right? Natural desire for sleep and so on. Well, that's a very good sign that water, food, and sleep are really and truly what good for us, right?

[14:01] So the fact that we have this natural desire to know, right, wisdom is finding out the the end of all of our knowledge, right? This knowledge, this way is preparing the way to see that. There's

[14:16] another kind of subtle thing that Thomas Aquinas mentions in his commentary, and that is that nature doesn't do superfluous things. The common rule for all natural philosophers, from the Greeks right through Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton, is that nature does nothing superfluous. So if nature gives man or the other animals a natural desire, it's for something that they need and they can in some way get. You may starve to death, right?

[14:49] But it's not in principle possible to get food, right? You may die of thirst out there and death in hell or something, right? But why would nature give us thirst if there's nothing to drink?

[15:04] So the fact that nature has given us this natural desire to know, right, is a sign that should be possible in some way. This against people who might think that it's foolish to pursue wisdom, right? Like man can't know something, right? Okay. That's like saying it's foolish to look for food, right? But there's a natural desire for something naturally good and something that is in some way possible for the one that is given by nature a desire for it.

[15:48] In modern times, especially, so-called philosophers seem to be denying. For his most reasonable, protected, reasonable people are now denying the fact that we know things.

[16:09] The Holy Father has just developed quite a bit against the modern crisis. Oh yeah. People just they used they used to overemphasize knowledge, but now they deny it. We can know it. Yeah, I just stopped by the office on the way here. You know, some obviously advertising for books, you know, kind of stuff. There is something talking about truth, you know, and why do we give up pursuing truth, you know, in the modern world?

[16:34] Well, part of it is part of it is we don't follow nature. We'll come back to that when we get to the fourth thing in the introduction to philosophy.

[16:46] Heraclitus says, "Wisdom is to speak the truth and to act according to nature." We've been here there too. So we're already listening to nature there when you talk about this natural desire. Now, starting the second paragraph, Aristotle

[17:03] is going to begin to talk about the first road in our knowledge. Now, the first road in our knowledge is the natural road in our knowledge, and the natural road in our knowledge is the road from the senses into reason.

[17:31] So, just first road is the natural road, right? And the natural road is to go from the senses to reason. I'm going to manifest my premise first. There,

[17:51] if you know what nature means, as many senses, take this common meaning of nature as what a thing is, right? Anything more fundamental than what a thing is?

[18:09] The thing must be what it is before it can be anything else, right? So, nature is always what is first to the thing. That's why the first road in our knowledge is the what natural road in our knowledge. Now, the other premise, the major premise: Why is the natural road in our knowledge, human knowledge, right, the road from senses into reason? Well, what is man by nature?

[18:42] He's an animal with what reason, right? That's what man is by nature. Animal is defined by having what senses, right? Man is not just an animal, but is an animal with what reason, right? And as you know, what is general develops before what is what particular. So, when the let's say the fertilized egg or something like that, right? What you first see is something like the plant, then cell division, right, Growth, right, and then the use of the senses, and last of all, is the reason, right?

[19:21] So, the road is naturally for an animal with reason. The road is naturally from the senses to what reason, right? Aristotle is going to talk a little bit about that road, right? We could at some time, you know, talk more in depth about the road. What Aristotle is going to talk about here is what comes first along that road, right? What comes second? What comes third? And later on, and so on.

[19:51] Now, before we start to talk about that, why do you think he wants to talk about the natural road in our knowledge and where it's going, right? direction it's. going in In order to get some glimpse of what wisdom might be about, what wisdom might be aiming at, yeah, I have a class of freshmen. Some of you, we talk a little bit about wisdom. Kind of standard question I ask them just to get them to start to think about it, see what they have in mind about wisdom, you know, a very amorphous idea at first.

[20:36] I said, "Do you think wisdom comes in the beginning of our knowledge, or in the middle of our knowledge, or at the end?" And a class of Frenchman have never thought about this thing. They kind of all spontaneously answered. at the end, right?" So unless you see where the natural road is going, right, it's hard to get an idea of what the end or goal is going to be, right?

[21:03] Wisdom comes at the end of that. So he starts off, what's at the very beginning? He's going to talk about, you know, at least three or four, four actually, and later on makes more distinctions, but four basic kinds of knowledge along this road, right? And you'll see as you go from one to the next, you're moving in the direction of wisdom, and everybody recognizes that. He says, "Now animals are born having sensation by nature, right?

[21:38] Now if you compare an animal that can sense and be aware to some extent of its surroundings, right, with a stone or even a tree, it doesn't seem to be aware of its surroundings. The animal seems to be much more wise, right? The tree, right, a limb of a tree, he doesn't even know you're doing it, right? Okay.

[22:03] Um, he says, from this, memory does not arise in some of them, but does arise in others. Aristotle's talking about a low form of animal life, and I think he's probably thinking of an example from marine biology. Aristotle, you know, after he left, after Plato's death, right, he left, engaged in engaged in marine biology. Now there are some forms of animal life where the animal doesn't move from one place to another; it's affixed, I guess, to the to the bottom of the ocean, right?

[22:41] And if you poke it or something, or something comes in contact with the surrounding, right, but it doesn't seem to have any memory. All it needs comes to it to know through the currents of the water and so on, right? But all the higher animals, man himself, of course, have in addition to sensing, but memory of what has been sensed. Now, who seems wiser, the animal that has sensing but no memory, or the animal that has memory?

[23:18] Now the old saying in one ear and out the other. If I had no memory, everything would be like that. Would I ever go forward in my knowing?

[23:32] It's like a sieve Pour the water in, it's out. You'd keep nothing of what you sensed, right? Somebody used to have an expression that I hear her use with the salesman who's trying to sell her something. She says, "I wasn't born yesterday." But if you had no memory, you'd be no wiser than somebody born yesterday, right? You'd be no wiser than the newborn baby downtown, right, in the hospital.

[24:03] So memory represents a great advance, right? Now, as a little boy, we had a male cat, and cat was in the kitchen, and he smelled something cooking on the stove that smelled pretty good. So he tried to jump up on the stove, and his paw hit the you know hot burner. Let him go! He fell to the ground. He never tried to do that again. He never, in my experience, ever tried to jump on the stove again.

[24:33] He was a wiser cat than I, right? But he did know wiser if he didn't have what memory, right? So you see how you're moving in the direction of wisdom, even as you go from sensing to what having memory, right? Okay. Now you

[24:52] mentioned here, but kind of on the side, so don't go on it too much. But it's kind of contrasting the sense of hearing with the sense of what sight, right? And the classic comparison is that the sense of sight is more the sense of discovery by yourself, right? The sense of hearing is the sense of learning from a teacher. That's why Thomas is always quoting St. Paul, you know, in the Latin, "Fides ex auditu,"

[25:23] right? Faith is from hearing. And let's see, don't send somebody to preach, right? How can you hear? How can you? Now, in the third paragraph, he speaks of a third stage that comes after memory, but mainly in man, and this is what we could call what experience, right? Now, sometimes we use experience in a different sense than Aristotle is using here. Sometimes the man goes through. Some sensation, they may even crush them.

[26:02] Keep up your legs, some other horrible thing. That was quite an experience, right? But that—that's really still a sensation, the memory of that sensation, right? He's taking experience here as a collection, a gathering together of many memories of the same sort of thing.

[26:27] So they say to students, huh? If a man has had one date with one woman in his life, you may remember it. Or a woman has had one date with one man in her life, you may remember it. But she would not seem, or he would not seem, to be as wise as someone who's had many, right?

[26:49] If I run one political campaign, that's it, right? I don't seem as wise as the man who's been through twenty political campaigns, right? So the man of experience, to all of us, seems to be what wise as the man of one memory, right? Get the wine expert right huh? He hasn't just drunk one wine; he's drunk hundreds of wines, right? He has all these memories of wines he's drunk gathered together in his head, right?

[27:19] He has experience of wine, right? So he seems much more knowing, much more knowledgeable about wine than the man of one memory. You see that? So again, you're going in the direction of wisdom. So the animal that has memory seems wiser than the animal that has only sensation, right? And the man who has experience seems wiser than the man of one memory, right? Okay? Here's a confirmation that it's the way to go, right?

[27:54] So in that third paragraph, he says the other animals live by images and memories, but they share little of experience. The experience has something of the influence of reason already, because experience you're comparing things, right? Bringing them together—that's what reason does.

[28:14] The race of men, however, lives by art and reason. We're talking about that. So he says, experience comes to be from memory in men, just as memory came to be from sensation, right? For many memories of the same sort of thing, perfect the power of one experience.

[28:37] And now he's going to start to compare experience with the next step he wants to talk about: science or art, right? Let's see what the differences are.

[28:48] And experience seems to be very much like science and art. For science and art come to men through experience. What's the difference that he sees in this fourth paragraph between experience and art or science? What's the first difference he sees here in this fourth paragraph? Later on, he's going to see another difference too. What difference does he see in this fourth paragraph?

[29:22] What's the transition from experience to the beginning of art or science? Yeah, experience is still a knowledge of many singulars, right? Many individual things. just as sensing and memory are knowledge of singular. But when I see many things of the same sort and I see something common to them, I begin to separate out what they have in common. So, if you took an aspirin and your headache went away, right?

[29:55] And I remember that. You took an aspirin and your headache went away, right? I started to compare. These many memories I have of people taking aspirin and headaches going away, I might see something kind of general there, right? Aspirin is good for headaches, right?

[30:15] For experience makes art, as Polus says, he's a character in one of Plato's dialogues. Speaking rightly, but inexperienced, what? Chance, Beginner's luck, right? He has no experience sometimes, by luck or by chance, he does something better than the man of, you know, for instance. So art comes to be whenever one universal understanding. I know it's universal as something one common to many, right? Set of many, right

[30:46] comes about whenever one universal understanding about like things comes to be from the many things kept in the mind by experience. And he gives an example from the old medical art, right? Aristotle's father was the court physician at the court of Macedonia, right? Once Aristotle became known at the court of Macedonia. He became an instructor of future Alexander the Great. His father was the medical physician for King Philip in Macedonia.

[31:24] Now you're going to notice here in the fifth paragraph at the bottom of page one. Aristotle's not, not going to jump and say. Now art or science is clearly superior to experience, right? Like experience is clear is superior to memory, right? And memory, the animal has memory to the animal that's only sensation, right? It's going to be much more nuanced here, right? And in fact, in terms of this first difference between the two of them, the experience is a knowledge of singulars, and art or science is a knowledge of universal.

[32:04] He's going to point out that the man of experience, in doing something, right, and something practical, sometimes succeeds better than the man of art or science.

[32:16] He's going to give us a reason for that: the fact that when you do something, you're not doing universal; you're not curing man, curing this man right here, right? This individual, man, right? And experience is closer to the singular it's the knowledge of the singular.

[32:35] So he says, as far as doing is concerned, experience does not seem to differ at all from art, but we see the experience succeeding more than those having reason without experience.

[32:51] The cause is that experience is knowledge of singulars, while art is of universal. That's the first difference we talked about. But all doings and makings are about singulars. The doctor does not cure man. Except accidentally, He cures Calus, this individual, right? Or Socrates, as some one of them is so named, happens to be a man, right? So he says if someone has reason without experience and knows universal, but does not know the singularness.

[33:23] he many times makes a mistake in medical treatment, for it is more than singular that is treated. When my wife was giving birth to the first baby, you know, after she gave birth to the first baby, they give these women a standard dose of Demerol, which is kind of a painkiller and makes them, you know, release some of the discomfort and so on. When they gave the usual dose to my wife, she got violent headaches.

[33:55] So the second baby, she gave birth to the second baby around the standard dose. she says, just give me half of that, right? " And that was just right for her, right? Huh? So she was, in one sense, a better what?

[34:11] Yeah, she was a better, you know, treater of herself than the nurse or the doctor who has a standing one, right? But they give everybody the same thing, right? And in the case of this woman, that's too much for her, right? You see that?

[34:29] I remember when I was a freshman in college, and I was in a general requirement course, general psychology course, right? And the man who taught the course, he would go in the afternoon to the local mental hospital, right? And remember him saying, he says that there really aren't enough psychologists on the staff to get to know the patients individually. So he says, what happens, he says, is that when a patient comes in, they classify him or her, and then he or she gets the standard treatment for whatever the universal ailment that they're under.

[35:10] He said he found in many cases it made them worse. You know, that's an example of what Aristotle's talking about, right? And notice you as an amateur psychologist, if your friend is depressed, right, or if you're a mother and a father and your little boy or girl is depressed about something, you as a friend, as a mother and father, who knows this individual in particular, might know exactly what to suggest, right, That would pick them up out of this place.

[35:39] Depression, right? You might know it better than the what? Yeah, at least all the you know, classic cases, all these cases and so on.

[35:52] Um, no, it's a man that's been down in the US Congress for twenty years. He could get a piece of legislation through Congress better than a political scientist who studies comparative government, right? He knows the difference between the American form of government and. English form of government and the French, German, and all these ones, right? But you don't get a piece of legislation through government in general.

[36:16] You get it through the US Congress, or, French National Assembly, or English Parliament, or something, right? I know I've got to kind of, you know, you know, come those pieces together, as LBJ would say, you know.

[36:41] So that's the first difference in terms he gives between art or science, and experience. That one is a knowledge of singulars; the other of universal. And he doesn't try to reason that difference to say that art or science is superior. In fact, he reasons to a certain superiority of the man of experience. Now, when I was a student in Quebec, sometimes an American, indigent American students, would get a job teaching conversational English.

[37:19] Right, it's not through a formal course. right, We had a bunch of secretaries in there, and other people who have to learn some English, right, to conduct business in those days. And but, despite being a kind of informal course, you would from time to time get a question about the English grammatical rule. And these young American students realize they don't really know the rules. So what do they have of English language?

[37:49] Yeah, but they have the experience of English, right? And they might speak English better than you know someone who studied English in a formal way and knows the various rules of English grammar, right? That rule is something universal.

[38:06] When I was teaching college, my wife, that was used to teach grade school, and of course, the most common mistake in spelling on a student's paper is "I and E." You think one before "the other, right? And of course, reading all the time for a living, I recognize right away the word is dispelled, right? I said to Rosie, Isn't there a rule about that?" "Oh, yeah, i before E except that just means or it sounds like, "A is a neighboring way.

[38:35] I couldn't, you know, come out like that with universal rule, but that's the beginning of the art of science of English grammar, right?" You study, you know, Latin. You notice how they might put the adjective after the noun, right? And in English, we tend to put the adjective before the noun, right? You may not formulate that universal rule, right? You just do it automatically because you have the experience of writing in English.

[39:04] But now, in the first complete paragraph of page two, he's going to reason that, nevertheless. The man of art or science is more knowing than the man of experience, and he's wiser than the man of experience. But this is in terms of another difference between the two, and that is that experience tells us only that something is so, but the man of art or science, if his art or science is somewhat complete, knows why it is so.

[39:48] So he says. Nevertheless, we think that knowing and understanding belong more to art or science than experience, and we hold that the artists are wiser than the. Experience. So that wisdom follows knowledge, and all it's more a matter of knowing than doing, right? Now, the reason for this, this is because the men of art or science know the cause, while the others do not. Experienced know that it is so, but do not know why it is so.

[40:22] But these know why it is so, and the what cause. So someone might know from experience that knowledgeable people in wine on they store their wine bottles on their what side, right? You know that this is done, right? But they don't know why. why. The reason why they often explain is that when it stands up, the cork dries out, and then eventually air can get in and spoil the wine.

[40:56] right? And it lays on its side, like it's into the cork, the cork expands and makes a nice seal. Um, and the tea drinker. Now I know from experience that if you leave the water in contact with the tea leaves, say for seven minutes or something like that, you're going to get a bad tasting wine. Tea. Okay. Now your first kind of you know attitude with this as well gets too strong.

[41:30] That's not what happens. It doesn't get too strong. In that case you just dilute the wine. What actually happens is that there are different chemicals released after, especially seven minutes, chemicals that are disagreeable in their taste compared to the ones. So the chemist is a man of art or science, right? Who explains how different chemicals, right, for reasons he knows, are released at different times, right? So he knows why something that I know is so, and therefore he seems to be wiser than me.

[42:08] He seems to be illuminating. We think we're wiser than the ancients because we think we know why it is day and night. The ancients knew as well as us that there's day and night. Everybody from experience knows it's day and night. Not everybody knows that the Earth is turning on its axis.

[42:32] Now, again, even without going through the full text with students, sometimes I'll ask students this question. I'll say, "Who do you think is wiser, the man who knows the way things are, or the man who doesn't know the way things are?" Of course, obvious answer is the man who knows the way things are. And then I say, "Now, among those who know the way things are." Who's wise?

[42:59] The man who knows the way things are, but not why they are the way they are, is the man who knows why. Aristotle begins the answer: the man who knows why. So this is the reason why art or science seems to be what more knowing man of art or science and more like wisdom because he knows why he knows the cause. So notice the nuanced treatment of Aristotle there.

[43:27] In terms of the first difference, he doesn't try to reason that wisdom or that art or science is superior to experience. In fact, he resists ascending priority. But from the second difference, he resists superiority.

[43:45] So this is introducing us to the idea now that wisdom, the wise man, knows causes. Right? He knows why things are the way they are. Right?

[43:57] Now that's so important a point for what he's developing in the beginning of this proemium. He wants to stop now, right? And manifest in the next three paragraphs in two different ways that the man who knows why, the cause, would be considered by all of us wise, right? And the man who doesn't know why, who doesn't know the cause.

[44:28] Now the first kind of example he uses in the second complete paragraph here, page two, he compares the chief artist with the subordinate artist, and you could take you know any example you wanted to of this of the arts. Whence also we think that the chief artists about each thing are more honorable and know more and are wiser than the handicraftsmen, because they know the causes of things made.

[45:01] The latter are like inanimate things; they make, but they do not know what they make. As fire burns, inanimate things make each of these by certain nature. The reason in knowing the causes. Let's take an example of this. Just take the medical doctor and the pharmacist, right? And the medical doctor would be the chief artist, right? And the pharmacist is subordinate, right? And we all would think that the medical doctor is wiser and more knowing than the pharmacist.

[45:37] And the sign of that is that he commands the pharmacist what to do. He gives them a prescription, which the pharmacist is supposed to follow, right? Now the pharmacist, as pharmacist, doesn't have to know why you need that medication. He may, you know, put this up, but then he has a little bit of medical art himself, right? But as pharmacist, he has to be able to follow the prescription and make the medicine or select the medicine, right?

[46:06] That he gives to you, right? But we all think that the doctor is a little bit higher, in the profession, a little more honorable, right? Than the pharmacist, right? Because he knows why you need that, right? You see that?

[46:21] So this is what Aristotle is doing. He's taking something we all recognize: the doctor is being wiser and more noble, more honorable in his profession. But you can see that he's the guy who knows more why than the pharmacist.

[46:36] Take the military art, right? So Napoleon is the chief artist, right? In the military art, there. And let's say you're the head of the cavalry, right? And you're under strict orders to not charge until you hear the trumpet. To get the sign from me, Napoleon. Now, as head of the cavalry, you have to know how to lead the charge. But you have to know why you shouldn't charge until the trumpet.

[47:07] But the great Napoleon, he's got a battle plan to win the battle. And there's a time in which the cavalry charges. Before that, or too late, it'd be too late. or, too early, right? So he knows why this is the best time for them to do, right? Sometimes the general doesn't know what he's doing, but if he's really, you know, the man to do that, right? The famous uh poem we used to memorize, when I was a kid.

[47:37] You know, battle, of the Crimean War, right? Charge of the Light Brigade There is not to question why. There's but to do and die. The general's got to know what they're doing in that case, right? I used to work in the factory with my brother Mark. see, and being my older brother, he was kind of in charge, right? Sometimes he'd tell me to do something, and I'd say to him, you know, why?

[48:02] I mean, why do this stuff like that? He said, Hey, you're not paid to think, he says. You're just paid to do it. But you're thinking this deck, right? You know, you're playing me. You know, that's true, right? I'm not paid to think, right? You know, just to do this right.

[48:20] Sometimes in grade school, you have someone teaching the children how to print and how to write, and sometimes if you have a large class. They'll get a you know, somebody who has no education really in these things is kind of an assistant, right? And the chief teacher, you might say, right, tells everyone what to watch out for the children, right? I remember this one example when you are printing, like the letter C, right?

[48:53] Well, some children will start the C at the bottom, and go like that. Other children will do it like this, and the chief teacher, tells the assistant, make sure they form their C from the top. This is printing right. Now, it doesn't really make any difference as far as printing the letter C, whether you do this or this. But why was the teacher insisting that they do this?

[49:19] from The top down and around rather than from the bottom up. Yeah, yeah. Now, if I start to write the letter cat. I mean the word cat, right? If I start at the top, I do like this. There is a break there, right? So, in other words, she knows the reason why, right? The other person doesn't.

[49:56] That's Aristotle's first main example. The second one is from the ability to teach. So we think of the teacher as being wiser, right, than those he teaches. At least he knows what matters about what he teaches them. Now, can one teach fully if you don't know why? The students say, "Why?" You say, "Well, you get to be my age, you'll see." Well, then I am kind of asking for you to believe me, right?

[50:27] But that's not teaching in the full sense. I was teaching in California there at St. Mary's there, and this one student was leading a somewhat immoral life, right? He was driving the priest crazy because what's wrong with you know fornication? What's all those other things? And so, and so they weren't so good at giving the reasons why though they knew these things were bad, right? So he'd come to me because I'd give him the reason why these things are bad, right?

[50:52] So he regarded me as wiser, right, than the man who knows that is bad but can't explain why it's bad. So sometimes you know the system of living your parents know things, right? You should listen to them because they're experienced, right? But they don't seem as wise. as the teacher could explain why it's good and why that's bad, or why this is better and why that's worse, right?

[51:18] Now the last. way he reasons in the fourth, complete paragraph on page. 2, he's making kind of a contrast here, right? Put in the form of either argument. Does wisdom consist in a knowledge of the singular, and that is so, or in a knowledge of the universal, and why so? Got to be

[51:53] one or the other, right? Now, if you say it's about singular, and that is all, what absurdity follows? No, but he's doing something different. here. It's a different argument, right? If you said that wisdom consists more in knowing the singular, and that is so, than the universal, why it's so? Then sensation would be wisdom.

[52:31] Because what's most authoritative as far as singular? If I remember your eyes, color your eyes. sometimes I'll go wrong, right? I look at your eyes, right? Trust the senses, don't

[52:48] you? Go back and look at something, and it's a little different than the way you remember it, right? Okay? So experience is based on memory, and memory is not as authoritative as the senses. Are you sitting? Nothing more authoritative than the senses. You can have all kinds of theories while you are sitting, but that you are sitting, nothing is more certain than the senses. So if wisdom consisted in knowing the singular, and that is so, sensation would be wisdom, but nobody thinks that is wisdom.

[53:40] Now Aristotle goes in the next part here talking about different arts or sciences. huh What threefold distinction does he make? here We're kind of going into different arts and sciences.

[54:19] Yeah, Which seems wiser, Carpenter or Shakespeare? He's using the word art and science here, roughly for any knowledge of universal, right? And why it is so? right But with more precise distinctions he says he made it in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics.

[54:54] But that for the sake of which we have now made a discourse is this: that all hold what is called wisdom to be about the first causes and beginnings. And he's going a little bit further than he wants to go here. It says first causes, right? So as has been said before, the experienced man. Seems to be wiser than any of those having sensation. The artists are scientists and the experienced, the chief artists and the handicraftsmen, right?

[55:23] The looking science is more than the making, right? I know in our own age, which is a very practical age, you might say that's still harder to see, right?

[55:34] But notice how they made Einstein man of the century, and see if it's justified or not. Time magazine, right? That man of the century, Einstein, right? You're thinking of Einstein in terms of his knowing, not in terms of his what doing or making, yeah? Even the popular books, like Picken Barnett, The Universe of Doctor Einstein, right? They admire Einstein because he seems to have understood the whole universe.

[56:05] Einstein says, "I'm not concerned with details. I want to see the whole universe." So even there, you see a little bit of the, theoretical, right? Looking knowledge is having more the character of wisdom, right? But notice he kind of draws back to the idea of first beginnings and causes, and says, "Thus it is clear that wisdom is about beginnings and causes."

[56:31] Now in the second reading he's going to push this further, right? And say that wisdom is aiming not just at any causes. as every art or science aims at some causes. Wisdom is going to aim at the very first causes.

[56:49] He's also going to point out that wisdom is about not just universal, but what's most universal. So wisdom is going to be about what is said of all. That's one thing. But most of all, about what is a cause of all, right? And again, it's nobility and excellence from speaking about the first causes, not from speaking about what is said of all. But that's anticipated in the first reading, right?

[57:15] And the superiority of art or science or of experience is not in terms of knowing universal, but knowing the cause, okay? So any questions then about that first reading? huh? Well, you have the natural desire, spoken of briefly at the beginning, right? As a paragraph, and almost the whole rest of it is in terms of the natural desire role, right? Yeah, yeah. But the chief conclusion is that wisdom is about causes, right?

[58:14] The man who knows why. Who's the chief artist, right? Or the teacher, or whatever? He's a man who knows why he's wiser. Obviously, wisdom less than some of the analogies of. Causes, okay? And

[58:37] now he wants to say in