Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
3. Wonder, Liberal Knowledge, the Divine Science, and How the Philosopher Must Love Wisdom
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/1-philosophy-1999/003-wonder-liberal-knowledge-the-divine-science-and-how-the-philosopher/

[0:00] Now he comes to the fourth and the crowning um, attribute, And notice how the third one in a way has indicated that this is something more divine about knowledge than human, right? And so that makes a transition to this being the most divine knowledge, and therefore it's being the most honorable and the best knowledge.

[0:21] Nor must any other knowledge be thought to be more honorable, for the most divine is the most honorable. And now he's going to show in what way this knowledge is most divine. He says there are two ways you could call knowledge divine. What are the two ways? Yeah,

[0:49] there's two ways we speak of knowledge as divine, just as there's two ways we speak of knowledge as human. It's knowledge that human beings, have, right. Or it's knowledge about human things, right? And some knowledge might be human in one way, not the other. But some knowledge, you know, this terrible word "humanities right? It's supposed to be human in both senses, right? Human in the sense that human beings have it, but they also have chemistry, right?

[1:18] But human also in the sense it's about human. things, right? So Aristotle's going to argue that wisdom is divine in both senses of divine. It's about God, and it's the kind of knowledge that God most of all would have.

[1:38] The most divine is only in two ways it can be said. For that which God most of all would have is the most divine of sciences. and if it were a divine thing, right? There's two ways you can call knowledge divine. It's about God, or God has it. But this alone has both of these.

[2:03] For God seems to all to be among the causes. And that kind of with this point. You've got to put that in book 12, right? This is book 1. But he's taking the common, reasonable opinion of the great philosophers that God seems to all to be among the first causes. So this knowledge, the wisdom is about the first causes, and the first cause is God, or includes God?

[2:24] Then obviously, wisdom is about God, right? That's a syllogism, right? Okay. And then, from the common opinion, you know, of Pythagoras and Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plato, all the great Greek philosophers, who either they wouldn't want to say that man is wise at all, in some inferior way, right? Either God alone is wise, or else want to say man is wise in some imperfect way, right? So he says,

[2:55] such knowledge God alone, or most of all, would have. If you take wisdom in the fullest sense, God alone would have this knowledge, or God would have it most of all, right? We have it

[3:13] some degree today. So notice the main syllogism, right? Wisdom is the most divine knowledge. The most divine knowledge is the most honorable knowledge, right? Therefore, wisdom is the most honorable knowledge, right?

[3:31] Now he takes as obvious that what is most divine is most honorable, right? But the minor premise that wisdom is the most divine, he says, well, it can be divine in two ways, and in both ways, wisdom is divine. Seems to be about God. He proves that by the middle term. This is about the first causes. The first cause is God, right? Every religion is about God, and then. He proves that God most all have this from the common opinion of all the wise philosophers.

[4:05] Now in the next paragraph he says all other kinds of knowledge are more necessary than this, but none is what better. So he's saying that this is not only the most honorable knowledge, but what best knowledge? This agrees with what he says there in the beginning of the De Anima where he says that one knowledge is better than another because it's more certain or because it's about a better thing, right?

[4:37] But in the parts of animals, he says that the criterion about being about a better thing is more important. And he gives a very good example in a very famous quote where he says, just as the glimpse he says of those we love is more to us than a leisurely view of those we don't care for. So I give students the example: you know, you working for the boss or for much, and you know, you see the boss clearly all day long, watching you the next year.

[5:09] And then they do you run down two, or three blocks to see your girlfriend or something, right? Or you see her for a window over there, right? And you enjoy more of a little glimpse of her than this long view of the boss, you know. If you even see perfectly the way below, right? So,

[5:29] so this this knowledge then is what It's looking knowledge, not practical, right? It's liberal and not servile, right? It's not a human possession, right? But the most honorable and the best knowledge because it's the most divine knowledge. But notice how he says all other kinds of knowledge are more necessary. And it's nice to see that contrast between necessary and better. I ask students, which is better, to breathe or to philosophize?

[5:59] But they all say to breathe, right? And I said, well, now why do you say to breathe is better than to philosophize? Of course, not breathing or anything else, right? I'm going to say to them, well, that shows that it's more necessary, right? But do you live for the sake of breathing? Or do you breathe for the sake of doing other things in life? If you breathe for the sake of something else, which you want to do, that you have to breathe before you can do it, then that other thing is what's better, right?

[6:30] The end is always better. So this is the best knowledge, but all the other kinds of knowledge like carpentry, cooking, and more necessary, right?

[6:49] It is necessary, however, to place the possession of this in the opposite for us of the searches in the beginning, for all begin as we have said. From wondering if things are thus, as about things that happen wonderfully by chance, and even the philomythos To read the great, you know, things like Oedipus the King or something like that, even Shakespeare's great tragedies, you see how these chance events arouse wonder, right?

[7:24] Aristotle gives a very simple example in the Poetics there. where somebody murdered somebody, right? And they didn't discover who had done the murder, right? The man murdered was a very great citizen, so they set up a large statue to him in the marketplace, right? One day there's a big festival, and there's huge crowds, you know, and the statue falls over, on top of somebody and kills him.

[7:48] Guess who it fell on? The man that murdered, right? And you know, at the end of Romeo and Juliet, right? You got these two powerful noble families of Verona, right, who are feuding and out to the point of shedding blood, right? Hate each other, right? And their only son and their only daughter, right, fall in love, right, and uh, finally reconcile, right, to the death of their...

[8:16] So the duke at the end you know, grabs these two guys, you know, you know, says heaven has found means to punish you for your sin. Seems to be

[8:25] some significance there, right? They seem to hate each other so much, right? They should lose their only son, the one and only daughter, right? To the love of the sons and the only son, daughter, right? Seems to be something hidden there, right? Arouses wonder, strange and wonderful things. Or about the turnings of the sun, he says, right? Sun goes up the sky, right? Different times of year, it's lower and higher in the sky.

[8:52] And he takes the the most famous example from geometry. The Greeks discovered that the diagonal of a square and the side are not commensurable. They're amazed at this right That's contrary to what they expected right And Thomas Aquinas stops on this, you know, he says that even things that we don't know the cause of, they don't arouse our wonder so much if they're familiar, right? But if something contrary to what we expect takes place, right?

[9:24] Then we wonder about the cause, right? If I let go of this glass and fell to the ground and broke, right? You wouldn't wonder why, would you?

[9:35] Even though Einstein says we don't know why things fall to ground, it's right. He does. He says I don't know why either. But if I just pulled this glass and went up, then you wonder why it went up, right? Because it's contrary what you expect. And Einstein, when he talks about wonder, mentions that same thing. That when something is contrary what you expect, when his father brought home a magnet or a string of magnets, the magnets seemed to move something without any contact.

[10:01] It amazed him, right? Because his experience of one body moving another was always through contact. Right here, this thing non-contact. Apparently, I was an Indian. In fact, I could speak English. My God, the key man. It's in wonder, right? So, at the end of philosophy, we have something better than wondering we have knowledge, right?

[10:40] Now, the last paragraph here on page five is the epilogue, right? And he recounts what he's done in the third reading first. What is the nature of the knowledge sought that has been said? It's looking knowledge. It's liberal or free, right? It's not a human possession, but it's the most honorable and best knowledge. It's the most divine knowledge. And what is the goal that the investigation and the whole knowledge overall must reach?

[11:14] And that's the first cause. Aristotle doesn't arrive at the knowledge of the first causes until the 12th book, second half of the book. Once he arrives at that, it's the first cause. That's the goal. So that's what a philosopher is a lover of. this knowledge here that he's really what it is.

[11:43] Now, um, the, next question is how must the philosopher love this, right? And there's about five things, four or five things you have to say about. this. The first and most basic thing to really be called a philosopher to have a right to the name of a philosopher, right? Not only do, you have to love wisdom, but you have to love wisdom for its own sake.

[12:13] If I love wisdom for the sake of making money, or I love wisdom for the sake of power it gives me, or I love wisdom for the sake of the honor and glory that comes in being regarded as, wise, right? Am I really a lover of wisdom? They tell the student if the man loves the woman for her money, does he really love the woman?

[12:41] And if the woman gets suspicious and says you love me for my money, in a fit of honesty, he says I love you for your money. She undoubtedly will follow back, but she no longer loves me, right? So if I don't love wisdom for its own sake, I love it for the sake of honor and glory, I'm a, right? If I love it for the sake of power, I'll love her power.

[13:06] right? That's the first thing. You have to love wisdom for its own sake to be a good philosopher in the full sense Now, if I love more than wisdom for its own sake, let's say I love candy for its own sake. If I love candy more than wisdom, would you call me a philosopher? No. Call me a lover

[13:40] of candy. When I was a little boy, I thought my father was a very foolish man because if there's money, you could fill the refrigerator with orange soda, grape soda, root beer. right It's the little one of those little corner grocery stores, you know, from the one arm man actually. In the front of the little store was this big water cooler, orange and gray, and. get enough, money to go and go buy there.

[14:14] So I said, "my father didn't know how to use his money, obviously. huh? Um, with his money, you could, you know, have the whole refrigerator full of this, and be sold all day long. and be a happy man. " right? Now, my father gave my brother Richard ten cents a week allowance. He gave my brother Marcus five cents. a week. Me, being the youngest, I gave 2 cents.

[14:37] a week. In those days, you could buy a corn soda for five cents. What do you do with 2 cents allowance? You go down to the penny candy store and blow the two cents. They can get by with penny candy. I can save up for a few weeks, and then get a soda, and a penny worth of candy. So my father did not use money. So if I love candy or soda more than wisdom, I am more a lover of candy.

[15:07] I love the music of Mozart, for example, right? If I love the music of Mozart more than wisdom, it's more classifiable as well a lover of music, right? Lover of Mozart. So you have to love wisdom for its own sake, and more than anything else, you love for its own sake.

[15:34] Now the third thing: if you love wisdom for its own sake, and you love it more than anything else you love for its own sake, then you are really loving wisdom as the end or goal of your life.

[15:50] Because the end is desired for its own sake, and more than else. So that's the third thing, to really be a philosopher. You have to love wisdom as the very end or goal of your life.

[16:15] Now the fourth, you can make it too, thin if you wanted to but it's more difficult to see. You really have to love wisdom as a common good. Wisdom is the common good of reason, to some extent, the common good of mankind. When we speak of a common good, we don't mean necessarily that all are sharing in it, but it's a good which is able to be shared by many.

[16:53] and should be shared by me, right? You find out, for example, that wisdom, the, knowledge of truth belongs most of all to wisdom, right? And to really love wisdom, you have to love it as a common good. St. Augustine says in the Confessions, there, right? If I love this truth because I discovered it, and me loving my honor or glory, right? Not truth, right? And I should love the truth that you discovered as much as the one I maybe I discovered.

[17:26] In fact, what you discovered might be even greater than what I discovered. So if I love the truth that I discovered more than the greater truth you discovered, my love of truth. Huh? Yeah, So we have to love truth as a common good. You read Thomas and

[17:48] St. Augustine and that seven chapters in John, right, talks, about the origin of his teaching, right? How the devil speaks from himself privately, In a sense, when you read the modern philosophers, each one has his own private philosophy, so

[18:12] you can distinguish then these four or five things. You must love wisdom for its own sake, right? You must love it more than anything else you love for its own sake. You must love it therefore as the very end purpose of this life, and for you must love it as a common good, both the common good of reason. If you study wisdom, you find out that it perfects the whole of our knowledge in some way, end of all.

[18:37] It's not a particular good, right? It's a common good of all reason, and it's also in some sense a common good of mankind. So you have to love it as a common good. Well, maybe the theoretical. But even if the moderns, you know, with the these horrible things that arose in Marx's philosophy, and so on, they were rejection of working knowledge. and that's where it begins, against working knowledge. So the first question is, what is a philosopher, right?

[19:22] And the first thing we want to see is that in original and I think true and full sense, the philosopher is a lover of wisdom, right? The second thing we ask, what is wisdom? And that's a little bit the framing stop. The third thing is, how must the philosopher love wisdom, right?

[19:43] And the fourth thing is the equivocal use of the philosopher, right? Now, I think you find this mainly in the modern philosophers. You read Bacon, for example. Bacon is always emphasizing that knowledge is power, right? And

[20:13] why is he emphasizing so much? Because he's a lover of wisdom, or because he's a lover of what? Power, right? So you got to be kind of careful there. If you call Bacon a philosopher, but he's really a lover of power, then what?

[20:33] Using the word equivocally, right? And almost by chance, right? Why call a man who's a lover of power, right? He loves knowledge for the sake of power. Why say he's a lover of wisdom? You know, this one just confuse people, right?

[20:53] Now you go to Adam Smith. Now, Adam Smith's greatest work is The Wealth of Nations, right? Smith gives the benefit of the doubt. He's not just addressing, his own wealth. He's addressing the wealth of his country of nations, right? But if that's his main concern, the wealth of nations, why call him a lover of what? And I call him a lover of wealth. You get to Hegel.

[21:24] Hegel says the end of history is freedom, and liberty. You go to Jean-Paul Sartre. The start, the absolute good is freedom, right? What supports is not what you do, but what you freely do.

[21:41] Well, why isn't such a man more a lover of freedom, liberty, or maybe a sense of license, almost? But he's a lover of freedom rather than what? Wisdom, right?

[21:55] Some of the students in this seminar this year were giving papers on Nietzsche, right? huh? Of course, it comes out every paper in the discussion that Nietzsche is really kind of irrational. Well, how can you be a lover of wisdom and not be a lover of reason? Because wisdom is the highest of the greatest perfections. If I don't love reason, I can't love wisdom.

[22:26] How can I love health and not love the body? How can I love the body and not love health? How can I love the eyes and not love twenty-twenty vision? How can I love 20-20 vision and not love the eyes? It's a good sense. of it. So, if I love wisdom, I must love reason. If I really love reason, we have to love wisdom. It's the highest, greatest perfection.

[22:49] Thomas, in his prooemium to Nicomachean Ethics, he recalls this idea that belongs to wise men to order things right. And then he says the reason for that is that wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, and it belongs to reason and the order. So again, how can you love wisdom and reason without loving order?

[23:13] The love of wisdom, the love of reason, the love of order are just something irrational about reason, right? I was giving you philosophers, original sense of the word.

[23:36] Now you can see, in a way, in the Greek philosophers, they've not been exposed to the wisdom of God, to the prophets, to the apostles, right? Of course, they're writing before, but they

[23:49] didn't come around, so they're not in contact with the prophets and so on. But notice what Aristotle says, and they're all saying these great thinkers: either God alone is wise, or God knows all.

[24:05] So, if you're a lover of wisdom, you must love the wisdom of God more than the wisdom of man. And so, if we could partake in the wisdom of God, right? If God were to speak to us,

[24:27] then we would partake of the wisdom that the Greek philosophers themselves, without knowing that God had spoken to the prophets, right? Or without knowing that God came man, was going to become man, right, in the course of time, and teach us, right? But from their own principles, they had to say this is wisdom in a what? Fuller sense, right? And I know what happens when you go through the history of modern philosophy, kind of a polemic against Christianity, against theology, and it's more violent and so on.

[25:08] The link between Hegel and Marx, really was Feuerbach's. The essence of Christianity, or Vorabach's essence of Christianity, not that God became man, but that man himself is God. See,

[25:25] so this great act of humility, this incarnation there, has turned into him an occasion for pride. It's really, but if they give up the wisdom of God, they can even keep the wisdom of man? The Greeks were not really faced with that, right, because they weren't exposed, right, to the word of God, right, through the prophets. sorry, not through Christ and the apostles, right

[25:54] Aristotle died in what three twenty two B. C. , right? More than two hundred years before Christ. A lot of times, I go back to the fragment of Heraclitus, "The child is to a man, so is man to God." I say the child must learn from the man, right? But he first learns from the man by imitation,

[26:20] and then he learns from the man. In an ordinary right, Aristotle is talking about imitation there in the book of the poetic arts. He says he first learns by imitation, right? So, in a sense, the Greek philosophers are learning from God by imitation. They are learning through the works of God, meaning natural things.

[26:46] You can see how Aristotle, in a sense, is starting from nature there, right? His natural desire to know, his natural road, right? And that, in a way, is presupposed to learning from the words of God, right?

[27:07] And so, our Lord instructs us by His words and parables. He uses natural things, right? The seed fell on the ground, and some fell here, and somewhere there, right? So you have to have learned already about seeds, and he says, "I am the vine, you are the branches." You have to learn from the works of God, right, before you can learn from His words.

[27:39] So the modern philosophers, some of them, thought they were going back to the Greeks when they, well, rejected Christianity, right, and tried to, in a sense, philosophize without the faith the way the Greeks did. But is not the same thing at all, because the Greeks never rejected revelation; they never exposed it, right?

[28:09] And so they're not lacking something the way the modern philosophers are lacking. something. In the modern philosophers, they're writing after Christ It's not right, So, they reject this, they lack something they should have. So they they try to find a substitute for philosophy, right? In their philosophy, I think I was mentioning I was reading this biography of Lenin recently. You know, for one of the one of the Russian historians, he's a historian in general, right?

[28:40] But but he talks about how the man Lenin was a wonderful man, right? And Stalin made things bad. But you go back into his access to now all the records there, and you realize what an awful man Lenin was, a terrible man, you know. And the oh yeah, oh yeah,

[29:09] this this was where did they happen? You know, creating Lenin. The great prophet and apostle. Where Aristotle never called, you know, Plato the great prophet and apostle.

[29:27] Aristotle's praise of Plato was, but he's the first man to show both by word and deed that the happy life is a virtuous life. Some men had shown by the way they live that if you're virtuous, you're going to be happy. Other men had shown by their words but didn't live up to their words. Plato says the first man to show both by what he did and what he said, this is the way to be happy, to be virtuous.

[29:54] He didn't call him the prophet and the apostle. He's the, he's the prophet of apostles. There's all kinds of ways that you find language. To find language. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[30:53] Sure. It's something to see the will, you know. I always quote that passage from Sartre, you know, where he says, we're not atheistic, he says, in the sense that we would exhaust ourselves trying to prove that he doesn't exist, right? We're atheistic, he says, in the sense that it makes no difference to us whether he does or doesn't exist.

[31:37] Why do these people, you know, being in doubt, you know? Um, look at that book there, that guy who conversed with, uh, C. S. Lewis there.

[31:50] Oh, so they're not Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but, but, but this again, the letter that Chris wrote to C. S. Lewis, Lewis, you know, had converted, right? And Chris, you can see the man is, you know, he wants to believe, but he can't quite believe yet, you know? And so he wants C. S. Lewis to kind of help him, you know, to believe and so on.

[32:08] I can see a man being in some kind of doubt in that sense, you know, without being wicked man, you know? But, um, uh, here's Sartre saying, you know, it makes no difference. We live this the way we want to live, you know, whether he does or doesn't, you know?

[32:26] And Marx, in the doctoral thesis, though, he takes Prometheus as the first hero of philosophy, right? Well, I mean, it's not Prometheus, the very legend is not Prometheus, the legend there does not deny the existence of Zeus, right? But he's being bold against Zeus, right? And that's what Marx is. He's bold against that.

[32:54] Okay, um, so that's the fourth thing I want to talk about, right? The equivocal use of the word philosophy, right? So a lot of times you have one word, people think there's one thing, but it is so, right? Can I have some clarification? Yeah. I had here, one, what is a philosopher? Two, what is philosophy or wisdom? Three, what is the distinction in order of the kinds and parts of philosophy?

[33:24] Yeah. Four, what is the best way to come into philosophy? Yeah. So we just finished the first one, was philosopher. Then we then we did four. What is the original and true sense of the word philosopher? Lover of wisdom. What is wisdom, right? That's a premium for. How does he love wisdom, right? But then I thought necessary to talk about the equivocal use of the word philosopher, right?

[33:49] Well, you know, modern times it means just about anything, right? I mean, it's free contradict people what they want to. It's not very helpful, right?

[34:03] I think what's interesting about divine providence, you know, church fathers, you know, point out, um, how divine providence used the non-conversion of some of the Jews, right? Many of the Jews? That the non-conversion of many of the Jews and the violent opposition of many of those Jews to Christianity, right? Uh,

[34:29] those Jews were at the same time a witness to the antiquity, right, and authenticity of the books of the Old Testament, many of which the church fathers used to, you know, argue that the Christ's coming was foretold and so on, right? Now, somebody, uh, might say, you know, pagan society, oh, you guys just, you know, wrote those books up, you know, and now you claim that this is foretold, right?

[34:57] But when the enemies of the Christians, right? You know, they don't understand maybe their prophecies, but when the enemies of the Christians are witnesses to the authenticity and antiquity of those books, right? Then, when the Christians argue from that, right? they have a way of doing that, right? But I think there's something about, Greek philosophy developing before Christianity, right? And independent, as far as we know, from, you know, even Jewish nation.

[35:33] um, we can see how far natural reason can get, right? Um, I mean, for Aristotle, you know, in Nicomachean Ethics, it's obvious to Aristotle that adultery is something wrong. You know? And you take this as a stock example, right? When he says that, uh, uh, although virtue lies in the mean, right? Too much and too little. There are some acts that are, by definition, already in the extreme.

[36:01] And the clear example of him is adultery, right? If you don't do too much or too little, but just the right amount. No, it's an idiot, almost wrong, right? This is kind of obvious to him, right? And, and in the topics, right? He's talking about dialectical questions and things that are doubtful that you want to discuss and try to find the truth on, right? But he excludes certain things from a dialectical question, right?

[36:23] And one of the things he excludes is that snow is white. You know, a man is in doubt about that, he needs not argument, he says, but consensus. Okay? He says if a man is in doubt that he should honor his father and mother, he's not in need of argument, he says, he's in need of punishment. So does I care about it? So when somebody comes along and says, well, it's because of Sinai to think you should honor your father and mother, you know, or that's not committed adultery or something of that sort because of Sinai.

[36:54] But here, someone who's never heard of Sinai, right, is very clear about those things, you know. So then you see, you know, that makes it more credible, right, that human reason can know that these things are bad, right? Or you like the Hippocratic Oath, right, you know, which I guess the doctors stopped taking, right, huh? But the Hippocratic Oath was not invented by a Christian or a Jew, right?

[37:20] Hippocratic Oath was invented by a Greek pagan, you might say, right? And the Hippocratic Oath, you know, was opposed to, uh, both abortion and euthanasia. And, uh, so someone says, you know, we are opposed to abortion and euthanasia because that's what your church teaches, right? Well, that's part of it, but it's not just the church that's the only basis for it. See, even with, with that, you know, we would be opposed to it, right?

[37:48] You know, I know people who come into the church because we're opposed to these things, and the church seems the only thing that was...

[37:58] Yeah, yeah, the only that was remaining firm about the evil of these things, right? So, there's something in divine providence, right? All the Jews are not converted for one reason. So the idea about the fact that philosophy began and reached its perfection in Plato and Aristotle, so they could be called the chief philosophers by Albert the Great and Thomas and Alfarabi and some of the Middle Ages.

[38:24] But this developed independently of revelation, right? Human reason can know some things, know them well without revelation. Now if you talk about the soul, you must be, you know, in the basic Christianity, right? And Aristotle's got a whole book there about talking about the soul, right?

[38:55] So, next time we should, um, talk about, um, the, um, How. How many copies do you need? many copies do you need Give me seven copies. Now, we're going to be talking next about what philosophy is. I'm going to just, not do any text. so this is going to be a little bit ahead of myself. okay? This wouldn't be considered in the next class? Well, I might get to that, but for now, consider that.

[39:49] I'm going to talk about what philosophy is, and then we're going to talk about the distinction of the chief kinds of philosophy and their parts, right? Okay. And in this, proemium of Nicomachean Ethics, a lot of interesting things in there, but Thomas eventually is going to divide practical philosophy, and that's one of the chief kinds of philosophy. He's going to show why ethics and domestic philosophy and political philosophy, why they're not the same thing exactly, right?

[40:34] But in the beginning of this, he kind of situates practical philosophy in the whole of our knowledge, right? And he begins with a quote from metaphysics, right? So we're going to use that for a number of reasons. He's going to talk about, you know, it belongs to the wise man to order things, as Aristotle said, right? Then he gives the reason why, because wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, and belongs to reason in order.

[41:02] And then he's going to divide order into comparison to reason, and then he's going to divide human knowledge by the order it considers, right? Now, this is not the main text for distinguishing the chief kinds of philosophy I'm going to give you that on my own, right? Okay. Um, but it's interesting for a number of reasons, huh? Okay.

[41:30] That's one text that you can look at. but as I say, it does give the division of practical philosophy into the chief kinds. Now, this one page here, seven copies. you said? Just because that's a symbol, of wisdom. You've got a seven? right? Four, five.

[41:52] These are the three main texts. on wonder from the first from the Greek philosophers. The one from Aristotle you've already seen. but I just reproduced some of those. All right, to deal with this, right? But read the text here from Plato's Theaetetus and Socrates. Make sure we're talking about. Now, another text here, which we'll be looking at eventually. Um, let's see.

[42:35] This is where Thomas shows how order is defined by before and after. Then the famous text of Aristotle's Categories explains the word before. It's a very fundamental text right Notice it belongs to the wise man to know order, right? Most of all, in general, for reason in order, right? Take that text. We'll eventually look at these.

[43:10] Now, as we said, you can't love wisdom without loving reason. It's ridiculous to want to be wise and not want to use your reason, right? So, because the philosopher is seeking the highest perfection of reason and in general the good of reason, it belongs to the philosopher to urge people to use reason, right? But the best short exhortation to use reason was written by William Shakespeare. Okay, so I'm going to give you Shakespeare's exhortation, and then a little proemium by myself to make you start thinking about that exhortation, just memorize.

[44:06] Okay. It's got the proemium and the possible division of proemium Now, as you can be looking at these texts, but we're going to be bringing them in at the proper moment, right? Because what I'm going to do next time is the second question: what is philosophy, right? A lot of people think the question "What is philosophy?" is answered by, say "the love of wisdom," right? Well, you could use the word philosophy in that sense, but Plato and especially Aristotle use the word philosophy not to name the love of wisdom, but to name the knowledge that a lover of wisdom would pursue.

[44:53] So, philosophy doesn't name a kind of love; it names a kind of knowledge, right? And what is that kind of knowledge? So, I'm going to talk about that without a text, as Aristotle and Shakespeare do, right? And then, as we talked about that. Then we're going to talk about the two chief kinds of philosophy: speculative philosophy and practical philosophy. And there are what, parts right? Speculative philosophy, is mathematical philosophy, natural philosophy, what Aristotle calls first philosophy,

[45:41] And then practical philosophy, like Thomas, was talking about there, is ethics and domestic and political philosophy. Then there's a third kind of philosophy, which is the tool, and that's logic, right? So we'll talk about that a bit. But Thomas does touch upon a little bit those parts of philosophy. we divide philosophy in comparison to order, right? A lot to be learned from that division,

[46:13] but not really the proper division of kinds of philosophy, right? Here we get Monsignor Dionne's notes there in French, right? One time I went up to see him, right, and I asked him about this text, and all of a sudden he goes into my question? Right? He's working his whole course. He's talking about my question. But now there's another reference there, right?

[46:49] But here's a text that brings out the fact that you can divide the knowledge of reason by the order it considers, right? Shows how tied up reason is with order, right? And you'll see that Shakespeare defines reason by order. He defines reason as ability for large discourse, looking before and after, as Thomas says in that text

[47:20] of the history before Charles Tucker. He says that order means before and after reason. So, order is the definition of reason. Reason is the definition of memory A lot to be thought about. there I always give you know I start off with thoughts I give the Shakespeare's exhortation to use reason. and I give this text the proemium and I have another text, where I have questions to ask about the exhortation That actually is an amazing.

[48:03] idea isn't it I have a standing challenge for anybody to make as good an exhortation to use reason as Shakespeare does Shakespeare uses, just forty-nine words. You know, fifty words, even a hundred words, no one can ever even come up with them. But they do. I mean, you know, it'll be extremely good. You know, to me, in a sense, reading Aristotle's Nicomachean, ethics is kind of an exhortation.

[48:35] for that reason, right But you know, you're not reading through the ethics but it is you know, nice concise. What is a man? His chief. good and market of his time Sure, he that made us with such large discourse looking before and after gave us not that capability, and godlike reason to fust in us unused He actually tells you what what reason is, what man is, what a beast is, and many reasons why man should use his reason and use it more than he does.

[49:12] Really key text. I don't know where Shakespeare gets his wisdom Nobody knows, but, you know, I've learned more from Shakespeare than from any of the modern philosophers.

[49:28] Doesn't say much for modern philosophers. Right? That always had been more from Homer than from Shakespeare, right? I mean, so, more from Aristotle than from Homer, right? Well, I don't really compare the notes to Aristotle, right?

[49:51] But in case of, uh, moderns, it should be worse. To learn more from Shakespeare than Monty Python. To learn mainly from Monty Python is to make mistakes, right? And sometimes considering a mistake is, you know, helpful, right? But you don't have much in the body.

[50:44] Yeah. See, Heraclitus says, we should not act and speak like those asleep. For the waking, there's one world, he says, in common. When we fall asleep, each goes into his own world, right? Of course, the word ideot, Greek, comes from the word for private, right? So the idiotic philosophy is a private philosophy.

[51:15] That comes out in our discourse there about the devil, right? He's the father of lies, right? And he spoke from himself what is private to him, right?

[51:29] If you have a chance sometime, you know, to study some natural philosophy or stuff, that's incredible what he does, right? He finds, um, in the beginning there, he gives a logical division of what his predecessors say, right? And all you see is disagreement at first, right? And then he finds a common thought, common understanding among this group of them, and then a common understanding among that group, and he finds a common understanding among all of them, right?

[51:57] Kind of marvelous what he does. And he's, you know, following the advice of Heraclitus, where he says, those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common to all. As much as the city is strong in its law, and even more so because the law of the city is divine law Yes, incredible. And then Aristotle, after he does that, then he finds a common basis among all men about becoming, and he becomes strong in that way.

[52:31] He makes that the cornerstone of his knowledge. No, I first started, you know, you know, again to teach more and more the first book of physics there, and I started to read more in the Greek and straight friends there of Platys. It's amazing how, how careful is Platys. I don't know where you got a answer of yourself, right? It's exactly what that Platys said.

[53:11] Well, in a sense, as I say, go back to the fragment of Peri Hermeneias, as a child is to a man, so man is to God. And then I say, now, a child must first learn by imitating his father. That's even how we learn the life of him. Then later he can learn more perfectly from his words and father, right? He has to learn through imitation. So, in a sense, man has to learn from God as a child of man, but he first has to learn from God by imitating.

[53:43] And that's why Aristotle is always saying that art imitates nature. And, uh, it's true even in logic, right? Two dogs get together, what do they produce? Cat? They produce a dog, right? Two cats come together, they produce a horse? A cat. Right? Two horses come together, what do they produce? Horse, right? So when two statements come together, what do they produce?

[54:47] Same when calculating, right? Multiply or numbers, what do you get? Number, yeah. And he says they put numbers in, and what do you can, what do you grind out? More numbers. Right? But you're in the picture, right? Put two dogs together, you get a dog, right? That dog got another dog, get another dog, right? I'm a grandparent now, so, you know.

[55:13] In fact, we got one parent. Look, we learn all kinds of things by imitating God's, things of God's name. And then we, what, get on with the position to learn these words when he speaks to us through the prophets. Through the apostles, to himself, right? Coming, coming man, right?

[55:47] You couldn't understand Christ unless you first learn the natural things, right? And that's what I was saying earlier about the parables, right? You know, the seed, you know, and an alma mater to cast seed, right? And dividing of the branches, all these things, we suppose that you learn something through the things that God has made, right? Through the natural.

[56:20] The next question then is, what is philosophy? Now, if, wisdom is going to be obviously the most, most of all right to the name philosophy, right But not considered the only kind of philosophy or part of philosophy.

[56:41] It's the last one to be fully acquired. The other kinds you have to acquire before that. Even the word that they use now, the metaphysics word. Metaphysics comes from the Greek word, what? Meta ta physika What it means is after the books of natural philosophy. That's what it means. So the 14 books of wisdom, or Aristotle calls first philosophy, are meta ta physika. They're after the books of natural philosophy.

[57:08] And the books of natural philosophy are after the books of ethics. If you want to acquire all of these well, then you have to do the logic first.

[57:27] You have to do ethics before domestic philosophy before political philosophy. He nerfed all the politics because he had a family there. It's better to have an uncle, right? In two senses. And a father in Socrates' sense, right? He makes his community of wives and children, right?

[57:56] Everybody calls father, hi daddy, hi daddy, hi daddy, hi daddy. You better have a real uncle than a father in that sense. He knows a lot of good people.

[58:08] It's kind of amusing, you know, when Aristotle talks about the age which the man and woman should be married, right? Apparently the man should get married around 36, the woman at 18. But the reason he gives for that, right, is that when she's no longer fertile, unable to, to, you know, to conceive, right, he kind of lost interest in generating children, right?

[58:32] So, I mean, it's kind of like us probably thinking of what age you should marry at, right? Speaking primarily of the chief good of marriage, which is children, right? And we're so used to, you know, co-education, all these little things, right? And men and women, you know, tend to get married much closer in age, right? My father was, uh, 5 years older than my mother, right? So that became for me an Signifier You should always be about 5 years older than your wife.

[59:04] Finally, I mean it's a rule, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I say herself I mean, you know, I should get married when I was 36, and my wife should have been 18. You know, so that I mean you can see something there right you know. that that uh herself thinking primarily, of what not the companionship so much. right Um we talked about that too. This is important to that, but primarily, of the children, which are the chief good of marriage right?

[59:34] And that can truly really change that, right? Because it says there, you know, that children must be considered the chief blessing of marriage, right? You know, now I got a joke here, because every time that children get on your nerves a little bit or something, you know, or, you know, some problem with children like that, you know. you know,

[59:51] children must be considered the chief, I mean, you can accept that those moments of crisis, right? You know, and you can accept it in, you know, when they're behaving themselves, the kids too, right? You see? I mean, Aristotle kept that

[1:00:05] He did say, If he's thirty-six and she's eighteen, he's out of college, out of graduate school, maybe whatever, you know. You know, they're going to split apart, right? You know, And then the idea that, the main thing in marriage is companionship, right, and friendship between the husband and the wife, and it should be some friendship there, right? That's not the main thing. But if friendship was the main thing,

[1:00:30] then I would go to church with my best friend without, you know, say we're going to be friends throughout our life. Why would we do that? You get this, like Hamlet and Horatio go to church and say you know we promise to be friends.

[1:00:47] I just, just you know, we're going to be friends throughout our life. right The reason why you go to church there and have all this, you know, not the essential part of it, but all these people there. so, is? To try to what strengthen the bond between them, so the good of the children, right?

[1:01:06] You can say that Hamlet is closer to Horatio than he is to what Uh, Ophelia. It's there, right? He's not going to go to church and marry Horatio, He's not going to have that kind of solemn ceremony because you know the city and that kind is interested in stability, right? Hamlet and Horatio have fallen out later in life, right? I think it's unlikely if you have somebody really close to you, you grew up in you know, high school have common interests, really common interests, right?

[1:01:42] It's just instability in that friendship, and some ways it's more stable than marriage, right? You know, but the harm done by the breakdown of the marriage is tremendous to the children. It's quite, it's quite interesting, you know, what they say about some of the psychologists who talk to these children, you know, who their parents separated, right, They've been divorced, you know? Even years later, they still want them to get together.

[1:02:07] but they somehow feel they're torn apart, by the fact that their mother and father, aren't alone together, right? It's kind of amazing thing to see that that affects somebody even years later on when they're married in their own family or something. right? They still feel something that happened, there, right?

[1:02:24] The meeting of the mother and the father, they immortalize each other in that one child. And I always say to people that the phrase "two in one flesh" is more found in the child than in the marriage act. The marriage act is transitory and? So on, right? And you can, you know, divorce, but if they divorce, they can't go say I'm gonna take my part out of the child, and you say your part of the child will go our ways, right?

[1:02:52] No, you are joined forever in that child, and you can't split. Yeah, I mean, that's to me, the main reason. It doesn't make any sense to separate from somebody who you are joined forever in this child. You know, you immortalize yourself, right? You got to think twice about who you married to, You know. You're going to be immortalizing yourself in a permanent way, and you can't think of it.

[1:03:26] We have to respect ourselves for seeing this, you know. Whatever you say about 36: 18, right? Have to work out the years, right? But the idea that the woman was that was what he gave her. It seemed, you know, the priority of that. You know, she was looking exactly the opposite. He saw it.