Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
6. Coming into Philosophy through Reason: Shakespeare's Exhortation and the Ability for Discourse
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/1-philosophy-1999/006-coming-into-philosophy-through-reason-shakespeares-exhortation/

[0:00] You know, and who can explain that, right? Undoubtedly, there's some things that are explained by the economic mode of production. Some things are explained by sexual drives and so on, right? But maybe having seen a part of the truth, they boast that they see the what, the whole. See, you know. So maybe humility is necessary in the philosopher, right? Okay.

[0:30] In the great dialogue of the Phaedo, Socrates shows that they're discussing whether the soul is immortal or not, right? It's very difficult discussion, right? What you see is it's not enough to want to know whether the soul is immortal. Uh. You can easily get discouraged in investigation, and even despair of finding the truth, right? And so you need this hope of finding the truth, right? You need this perseverance in the face of difficulty, right?

[1:02] That that strength of will, right, to persist, right. But Socrates often, and there he talks about a little bit too, but more in other dialogues, that you need this fear of being mistaken, the fear of making a mistake, right? My greatest teacher there, Monsignor Dionne said to me, his principal passion is fear. I mentioned the time when I was doing my working my doctoral thesis under him, you know, and he made a suggestion, you know, really was all I needed to write the thesis by myself.

[1:39] And when he made it, I could see right away it was good. He found it place. Review evidence, he says. You know, but you know, Monsignor Dionne a new idea, you know, his first reaction was to reject it, you know, and he really helped. But it was very good because you know, so rigorous there, you know. And oh, now it's first starting out. I think Monsignor Dionne would have been a bad man for me because I would have been, you know, terrified, you know, going forward, right?

[2:08] But but you know, I teach him to be encouraging to read things, you know, and so on, and so sometimes. So I mean, there's all kinds of dispositions of the will, in addition to these natural ones of wonder, the desire to live well, right? It's necessary that hope of perseverance, right? Necessary that fear of mistake, right? The love of wisdom is necessary. Humility is very necessary, right?

[2:39] Pride is is the chief cause of deception on the part of the the will, right? And so, in looking at these natural beginnings, among which are the what natural desires, right? You're introduced to to thinking about the fact that. What are the dispositions of will and emotion necessary to be a philosopher?

[3:08] Um uh mildness, right? People get into discussion. They often get angry with each other. You don't seem like boy, anger. You know, I don't think you're being fair. You know, it's like that. And anger often gets in the way. In terms of the dialogue, they get angry and they kind of clouds their vision, right? And sometimes, sometimes you know, you get angry, and the next day you calm down.

[3:32] You see the other guy's point, you know, and you come back or something, you know. I mean, there's all kinds of dispositions of the will and emotion that are necessary for the philosopher, right? And in beginning with the natural desires, you're being introduced, right, to the dispositions of will that are necessary to be a philosopher, right? Not going to a class, you know. I mean, how many students have ever really had that wonder?

[4:00] That's you know, our civilization tends to kill wonder, right? If you study the customs of the modern world, they're opposed to wonder, really. As de Tocqueville says, the great customs are opposed to wonder. They're opposed to pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Heisenberg says modern science is opposed to wonder. Customs here. Have you ever talked about the customs? I'll show you that, but. But so you say, well, gee, with.

[4:29] But if I have a student who has this wonder, you know, maybe he gets what discouraged, right, by the disagreement among philosophers, right, or gets discouraged by the difficulty, all the things he has to go through, and so on.

[4:45] Now, likewise, when you talk about the natural road, right, and you say, "Well, are there other roads besides the natural road that you need to know, right? " And that introduces you to the whole question of these other these three roads I talked about, right? There's the natural road in our knowledge, then there's the road of reason as reason, the road from reasonable guesses to reasoned-out knowledge, the common road of reasoned-out knowledge.

[5:09] Then each reasoned-out knowledge has, to some extent, its own road, right? So you're being introduced to to the roads that are necessary, right, to be a good philosopher. By considering this natural beginning, it is a road, right? You see that, okay? And likewise, when you talk about the natural beginning, in the sense of the statements known to themselves by all men, these axioms, right? Are there other statements known to themselves that are beginnings too?

[5:46] And as the famous Boethius made the distinction between the statements known to themselves by all men and the statements known to themselves by those who are wise in some science.

[6:03] Give an example. What I mean is a perfect number or a composite number. What would you say? Is it perfect number or a composite number?

[6:19] Obviously, it is. But you have to know what a perfect number is, right? A perfect number in arithmetic, it's a number that is equal to the sum of everything that measures it. So the first perfect number is what six, right? Six is measured by one, by two, and by three, but not by four or five. And one plus two plus three equals six, right? Four is not a perfect number.

[6:48] It's measured by one and by two, not by three. And one plus two don't add up to four, right? So if you know what a perfect number is, it's going to have to be measured by some other number besides one, right? Because one times anything adds up to it. Okay, so it's got to be a composite number, obviously, right? A number is measured by some other number, not just by one.

[7:17] But you see, I'm, I'm a man learned, a little bit learned, right? In arithmetic, right? See, most students don't know what a perfect number is, right? But if you know what a perfect number is, then it's obvious that a perfect number is a what? Composite number. Yeah. You see that? So, what Boethius actually says, it's per se known, right? Per se notum, sapientibus, right? But meaning not sapientibus, necessarily in the full sense of being wise, but per se known, known to itself, right?

[7:53] By those who are learned in some, some science, right? You see what I mean? See, but everybody knows what a whole and a part is. You can't live without, you know, you can't eat or drink without experiencing whole and part, right? But you can go through life without learning about what a perfect number is.

[8:12] So that every perfect number is a composite number is known to itself by the wise, right? By the learned in geometry, arithmetic. But the whole is more than a part is known to itself by all men. See. So in, in studying those axioms, those statements known to themselves by all men, you are led, you're being led into the general consideration of what statements known to themselves, because they're the foundation of all reasoned out knowledge.

[8:42] Now, are there other statements known to themselves besides those naturally known? Are there other roads in our knowledge besides natural roads? Are there other dispositions of will and emotions necessary to be a good philosopher besides those? What natural desires of wonder and the desire to live well. You had a question. You going to ask? No, just it was an observation. I was thinking of in terms of you know, playing with the theology and just seeing you know all the problems we've had in the beginning of the church, all the sex and the breakups and everything because people have chosen to go off with their private understanding or their biased perspective on their understanding of God and problems of reformation.

[9:27] And just thinking of the built-in senses today, you know, the sense of the people, common sense, and God gives to the church some protection even against even the greatest idol that could still go off base if they're not touched. Have you seen that analogy? Yeah, the word heretic comes to the word chosen, right? The heretic, you know, he chooses what he's going to believe, right, rather than following the common faith.

[9:54] But there's always a, a um you know. A common way there, right? huh? And then each of you guys goes off in his private way, right? Private interpretation, right? Private thought. Okay.

[10:20] Okay. So now we've seen a little bit of what the natural beginnings of philosophy are, and why we should come into philosophy from its natural beginnings, right? Okay. I

[10:43] got some was written. Good. Now we come to the second part of how we should come into philosophy, right? We should come into philosophy from its natural beginnings through the what use of reason, right? Okay. And we're talking about reason now as reason. We're not talking about reason insofar as it actually knows something, because that's already brought into the natural beginnings. And for this purpose, I like to use that Shakespeare, right?

[11:28] I like to use Shakespeare's education to use reason, right? Okay. Now, let's talk about it in kind of a general way today. I'm going to give you know a

[11:48] questions for understanding Shakespeare's exhortation, right? Okay. But make sure we don't miss anything, right? Okay. Let's look at the exhortation kind of generally here.

[12:04] Now, the exhortation is written in what is called blank verse, which is the accepted term now for this kind of verse. It's very common in Shakespeare's tragedies, right? Shakespeare makes fun of the term, but okay. Now, what is blank verse? Do you know? It doesn't rhyme. It's unrhymed iambic pentameter. Okay. It's unrhymed iambic pentameter. Now, what's an iamb? you know Five syllables? Well, pentameter is five. Iamb means what?

[12:58] I can't remember if it's short, long, or long, short. I think it's, or the accent. I am sorry, accent on the second. Yeah, it's two syllables with the accent on the second, right? Okay. That's the most common meter, also that we sometimes fall into in daily life, right? It's closer to daily speech, right? Okay. If you want a little mnemonic device that I thought of years ago for the four main meters, my mnemonic device is

[13:38] "at." Okay. I always try to remember where the accent goes, right? So you have two basic ones: in the iambic and the trochaic. Yeah, the second two syllables. It's like the word "it" has two letters, right? In the anapest and the dactylic, you have three syllables. Okay.

[14:07] Those are the four main meters: iambic, trochaic, anapestic, and dactylic. But here you have two syllables, right? Here you have three syllables. That's why I remember it. Iambic and trochaic have two syllables, right? Now, if you remember what the iambic is, you can remember all the rest. Because the iambic, you have two syllables with the accent on the second syllable. Trochaic, you have two syllables with the accent on the first syllable, right?

[14:42] In dactylic, you have what three syllables with the accent on the what first line anapest? It's the reverse, right? Okay. The anapest would be the last one. Yeah.

[14:59] Now, as I am trying to teach, you know, posted here, so that's by my device, you know. Now, the iambic meter, as I say, it we sometimes fall into it in daily speech, right? And in speeches, they'll sometimes use a little bit of iambic meter. Four score and seven years ago, the Gettysburg Address. That's in iambic meter, right? Four score and seven years ago, or when Roosevelt said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," that's iambic meter, right?

[15:39] Okay. So it's the most natural one, right? And the thing I noticed in Shakespeare is he often used the trochaic meter for witches or fairies. Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog in filthy air. That's the trochaic meter right? Something very mysterious about that. Thomas seems to use that Adoro te devote Seems to use the trochaic a bit, right? Something very mysterious. in the Eucharist.

[16:19] What, what did you say? Thomas in the in the Adoro te devote. Somewhere it seems to be to be in the Trochaic meter. So uh, now pentameter means you have what Five iambs huh So we get to the pentagon. Pentagon, right? Okay, we have a ten-syllable line then, right? With the accents on the second, the fourth, the sixth, the eighth, and the tenth, right? Now, occasionally, you know, the poet will vary things, right, to avoid monotony and so on.

[16:52] But I mean, that's basically what you're doing, right? Ten-syllable lines with the accents on the even number, right? Two, four, six, eight, ten, right? Okay.

[17:04] But they're unrhymed, right? Okay. Now Shakespeare's sonnets you have what iambic pentameter, right? Okay. But the first and the third line rhymes, and the second, the fourth rhyme, right? In each of the three couplets or quartets, rather, and the couplet at the end they rhyme, right? Okay. But this is more like daily speech, right? Okay. So it's written in unrhymed iambic pentameter, right? Now the exhortation is on seven lines, but the first line begins on the what?

[17:48] Seventh syllable. And the seventh line ends on the six. Six, yeah. So you have equivalent to six lines of iambic pentameter, right? But you can't, you know, arrange in six lines. Right, you got to keep them in seven lines, okay? Okay. Now that's all. That's kind of intrinsic to what we're concerned with here, just so you kind of see the structure, right? Okay. Um, I want to play around with the numbers there.

[18:20] It starts on the seven, which is symbol wisdom, right? Ends on six, which is a perfect number, right? That'd be pretty accidental, right. Mhm. It's sort of playing around. And he's got it on seven lines, which is a symbol of wisdom, right? And there is exactly forty-nine words in there, which is seven times seven. Aristotle says intellect is best, right? So for the Pythagoreans among us, for the Straussens among us it's like, you see numbers, right?

[18:50] Yeah, I, put those things out right, but it's pretty accidental, you know. Okay, You never know, you know. how some of these poets are, you know. You know, Shakespeare's a master of English language. He's a command of English. What he does, apparently, his vocabulary is huge. Right. I mean, I've heard the numbers and I forget them now, but it's just incredible. Shakespeare's vocabulary. Hardly ever any man ever had the vocabulary?

[19:14] he had. Incredible. They have such an understanding of these words and a feel for them, right? Now, you might divide the exhortation into two parts, right? Oh, you don't have one do you? No, no. Okay. And the first part is the lines. Here you can. Let's do another one. This is with questions. But I don't have any questions today. The meter, the things on the top there.

[19:47] The first part, he says, "What is a man if his chief good, right, and market of his time be but to sleep and feed, a beast no more?"Now, that is based upon a proportion, a likeness of ratios,

[20:10] and in a way you can reason from this proportion in a way like the mathematician does. Now, if a mathematician, for example, just use a Hamlet's or Levy, if he can see that a is to b as x is to y, he can see a proportion, right? That a is to b as x is to y. He can reason from this proportion in some very obvious ways.

[20:43] If a is equal to b, then x is what? Equal equal to y. If a is more than b, then x is more than y. And if less, less, right? Okay. Now Shakespeare is going to reason, right? In that way, right?

[21:12] And you can argue this way in terms of better. What is the proportion underlying Shakespeare's. Is that what you meant when you were speaking about how the natures of things are like numbers? That comes out when he says more. No more, because numbers are said to be more or less, right? Now, what's the proportion underlying here? Right. Well, you could say that the chief good of man

[21:53] is the man as the chief good of the beast is to what? The beast. Yeah. Now, the fact that you can supply the fourth term is a sense you see a proportion, right? You see a likeness of the ratios, right?

[22:28] Now, instead of using the phrase "chief good of the beast," which would be too pedantic, like me, right? Ah, he says to sleep and feed, right? Okay. As if that seems to be the chief good of the beast, right? We had this beast around the house, moppet, this cat. Moppet seems to sleep and feed, and she purrs when she sleeps, and she purrs and gets some food, and that seems to be her chief good, right?

[22:59] Okay. So, it'd be more clear if you use the word chief good than the beast, but I mean chief good is to sleep and feed, right?

[23:12] That's the chief good of the beast. Now, you can now what alternate the proportion, right? Like in math, if you in math, two is to three four is to six, then the first is to the third is the second is to what? Fourth, right? You can alternate the proportion here now and say now

[23:41] the chief good of man is to chief good of the beast to sleep and feed as man is to the what? Beast, okay. See that?

[24:02] Now you've got to reason a bit, like you know, with the rigor of math, right? Once you know that a is to b as x is to y in math, if a is no more than b, then x is no more than y, right? So if the chief good of man is no more than the chief good of the beast to sleep and feed, then man is no more than any what?

[24:26] Beast, right? Okay. Okay. Now, which is more known to us? That man is more than a beast, or if the chief good of man is more than to sleep and feed, which is more known to us? Man more than beast. Yeah, yeah. Because you will run into men who live for nothing more than to sleep and feed and maybe sexual pleasure, right? Okay, they seek nothing more than the beast, right?

[24:55] But you put them in a cage, you treat them like an animal, they would protest, right? Say, so it's more known, it seems, that man is more than a beast, right? And that his chief good is more than the good of the beast, right? But then you can reason, right? You can reason either way. You can say if man is more than the beast, then the chief good of man must be more than the chief good of the beast.

[25:22] Or you could argue that way around, and then then say man is more than the beast, therefore, right? Or you can argue that way around and say if the chief good of man is no more than the chief good of the beast to sleep and feed, then man is no more than the beast. But man is more than a beast, therefore, this can't seem to be no more than that, right?

[25:41] Okay. Now, notice you're you're seeing there that there is a necessary connection between what man is and what the chief good of man is. Is determined by the very nature of man, what he is. And between the beast and what the chief good the beast is, right? Okay. Now, notice Shakespeare's phrase there. What is a man if his chief good and market of his time, right? Now, chief good means the greatest good, right?

[26:16] But he identifies that with the market of his time, right? Now, market could be taken in the sense of the end or the goal, right?

[26:30] And what Shakespeare is seeing there is what Aristotle saw before him—that the good in the end are basically the same thing. The good of a thing is its end or purpose, vice versa.

[26:45] Top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel used to be a dance band called the Marksmen And this I suppose because of the hotel, this famous hotel, Mark Hopkins, there the Marksmen But notice the marksman is the man who aims at the target, right? And this Aristotle, he talks about the end of man. He talks about the soul, right? The target, right? The end, right? So he's seeing that the chief good of man and the market or end of his life, right, are the same, right?

[27:16] It's a very profound. He sees that. Now, notice when he says "market of his time," he means time. There is a what metonym for the life of man. And you all know what a metonym is.

[27:38] Metonym is the name of one of the figures of speech, like metaphor, irony, and so on. And metonym, what you do is give the name of the container to the contained, or vice versa. So, since my life is contained or measured by time, right? Time is used as a metonym for my life.

[28:04] Now it's very profound that Shakespeare uses time as a metonym for our life more than he would use for the beast, right? Because there's a sense in which man lives in time more than any other thing in this world.

[28:20] Because he's always looking before and after. and speaking of before and after he's in time, right? And you're always planning your day, your week, your life, right? Ranging events in time, right? In the third book about the soul, Aristotle says, "Man is the animal has a sense of time. "

[28:40] So man has history and biography and so on. And if he's suffering from amnesia, he'll be in trouble, right? So your life is over, right? So the market of his time is the end or purpose of his life, right? Time being metonym for his life, and that's the same as the chief good of man, right?

[29:07] So basically, then he's he's reasoning on the basis of this proportion, right? Now, in the second part of the exhortation, he's going to say what it is that man has more than the beast, right? And that will be reason, right? And therefore, you can kind of guess that man's chief good is going to involve reason, right? But it's an ethics that we see what use of reason is needed.

[29:32] Our chief good, right? Now, notice the strength of this argument, right? And again, it's similar to mathematics, right? What is a three if it be half of four?

[29:55] What is a three if it be half of four? A 2 right? You see, right? See how profound it is, right? Half of four is to two, as half of six is to three, right? So, what is a three if it be half of four? A two, no more. But obviously, three is more than two, right? Okay. Okay. Well, Shakespeare's saying something like that, right?

[30:25] The chief good of man is to man, right? Like half of six is to three, and the chief good of the beast is to the beast, like half of four is to two, right? So it's absurd to say that three is no more than half of four. That case would be no more than two. But there you see the likeness between numbers and things, right? Okay. So, if you add to body life, you get a plant, right?

[30:56] And you add to body and life sense, you get a what? Animal, right? And you add to body, life, and sense reason, and you get a man. You subtract reason from a man, you get nothing but an animal, right? Subtract sensation of an animal, you get nothing but a plant, and subtract life of the plant, you get nothing but a body, right? Okay. So the natures of things are like what numbers, right?

[31:24] And you add or subtract the one, and you have a different number, right? You add or subtract a difference, and you have another what? Kind of thing, right? Huh? Okay. You add reason to animal, and you got no longer an animal in the sense of a beast, right? Okay. A beast is just an animal, right? Three is not just two, though, is it? It's two plus one, right?

[31:49] So it gets a new name now. It's three. It's no longer two. Okay. Because I say even the man who regards the good of the beast as his chief good, right? He still thinks he's more than a beast, right? And he would be indignant if you said, "Well, what's between the cage, right, with the animals, you know, or if we can save your life for the life of the dog, we'll drop a coin, right?

[32:20] You can be more than a beast, right? " This he'd be indignant at this thing. But now, in the second part, he's going to say what it is that man has more than the beast,

[32:40] and that's going to be what? Reason, right? Okay. Now, Shakespeare has the elements here of a definition of reason, huh? Okay. But what words there pertain to? The definition of reason. What's the most basic word that he gives there that pertains to the definition of reason? Discourse.

[33:12] No. Oh, looking. Oh, before and after, looking before and after. No. Capability. Huh? Capability. Yeah, yeah. Notice, reason there is a capability, and I take the liberty of shortening it to ability, right? Okay. Why large discourse and looking before and after are not an ability; those are names of acts, right? Okay. Okay. But reason is an ability for some act, right? And so you define ability for some act by saying it's an ability, and then stating the act for which it is an ability.

[33:54] Okay. So he's saying that reason is the ability for large discourse, looking before and after. I gave you the page and the senses of before, didn't I, or did I? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So you should, you know, consult that when we talk about that.

[34:33] So this is Shakespeare's definition of reason. It's the ability for large discourse, looking before and after. And this is, I think, the the first definition really of reason as reason, right? Okay.

[34:53] Now, as we said before, the distinction between things is like numbers, right? And reason and nature are like distinction there between two and three. Reason has something of what nature has, but it's not just nature, right? Okay. Just like there's in a way there's a two and three, right? But three is not just two. Something in addition, right? Okay. And so we can consider reason as a nature.

[35:25] There are some things that reason actually knows, right? There's a road that reason actually follows, right? Okay. But when we say you're defining reason as reason, we're talking about what reason has in addition to nature, right? Okay. Beyond nature, right? Okay. Just like we say three is not just two, but it has two in it, right? What's an addition, right? And as per reason, what's it has an addition that it's half of what six, let's say, right?

[35:54] Okay. So. Thus, in general, you're talking about an ability. We always distinguish abilities by what they're for, right? An ability is never known by itself.

[36:17] I always give this example, right? Home example. Burcus goes down to the employment agency, right? Looking for a job, right? Okay. He's going to try to match me with the jobs that are available, right? Tell me a little bit about yourself. Well, I got a ability. What you got to say? Say what? Are you able to play the piano? You've got a job here as a pianist, right?

[36:42] Are you able to, you know, type 100 words a minute or something? You've got a job here as a typist, right? So the ability, right, it's got an ability for something, right? So how do you know that I have the ability, say, to walk? I see you walk. Yeah, you don't really see my ability to walk. You see what I do through my ability to walk, right?

[37:10] How do you know someone has the ability to play the piano? You sit down, you see him playing the piano, right? You don't actually see his ability; you see what he does. to his ability. You see the guy on the athletic field striking people out, and then you're imagining what grasps his ability, right? But through what he's doing that, and we know that we have an ability through the act which is ability, and that's how we distinguish one ability from another, right?

[37:39] Is the ability, for example, to walk, and the ability to see, are they the same ability? Well, if walking was a form of seeing, maybe they would be, right? Or if seeing is a form of walking, right? But if walking and seeing are quite independent, right? Then it seems that the ability to walk and the ability to see must be something quite distinct, right? And it's possible, of course, is in that case, you know, even to have a man having one ability not the other, right?

[38:10] Okay. So the blind man can walk, and the man who's paralyzed can maybe see, right? Okay. But even before that, you might recognize that seeing is not a kind of walking, is it? And hearing is not a kind of seeing. Vice versa, right? So the ability to see and the ability to hear. So you have to know the existence of an ability and distinguish one ability from another, and then finally define the ability by what it's an ability like before.

[38:42] So Shakespeare is going to define reason here. Ability is a genus, right? You could complete the definition by saying what the act for which it is an ability.

[38:57] Now the first word is discourse, right? Reason is the ability for discourse. Now, discourse maybe is not so familiar a word in English now, right?

[39:16] Discourse comes from the Latin word, right? For running. That's where we get the word course in English, right? Course, right? You're taking five courses in college, right? Sometimes. But it goes back to the idea of running. Discourse. We speak of the current, electric current, the current of the stream, right? Okay. And it's interesting the way that word is carried over, and

[39:51] see it maybe more clear in English the word course. One of our state documents says, "When in the."Course of human events. right It also has a circular form. The word "course" has a beginning and an end. A racecourse might yeah Yeah. Okay, but the idea that it comes from the Latin word to run, right, or to run from one place to another, right. But then we tend to carry the word "run" over to not just the act of the legs, which it means originally, but to human action, right?

[40:27] And then we carry it over even to the movement of the mind, right? Okay. Now, let me take an example. here. It's an English word.

[40:39] You know, this play, Romeo and Juliet, right? Okay. Now there's a young man in a great hurry. There, his name is Romeo. Right. There's a wise old what? Franciscan, right? And you know the words he gives advice to Hamlet. He says to Romeo to Romeo. He says,

[41:02] "Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast. Okay. Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast. That's ten syllables, right? Wisely and slow. That's four. They stumble before they run fast.

[41:34] Um, what does he mean when he says that to fire to Romeo? Is he talking about running in the first sense of the word, running with his legs?

[41:47] It looks back to that, right? Because when a person runs up the stairs, sometimes you know you see your mother somewhere. They do they stumble, right? We we stumble.

[41:58] Um, what are you talking about here? It's a course of action. Yeah, yeah. Like you would in the course of action, right? There it's applied to what? Action in general, right? Was borrowed from the word to run, right? So it looks back to that first meaning of run, right? But now it has a sense of act and haste, you know, repent of leisure, right? It's this morning, right?

[42:22] Wise and slow. But then, finally, we carry the word "run" over, and we sometimes apply it to the mind. And so you hear professors say sometimes. Now I'm going to run through this once more. Yeah. Right. Okay. And notice that the same with the Latin word "course," right? You've got the race course where you're probably running with your legs, right? Then you have "within the course of human events," where you talk about the course of action, right?

[42:52] And sometimes also, you know, the tragedy is a likeness of a course of action that is such a shame. Okay, but then we have, in, in, in, as I say, an assumption. The student normally takes five courses, right? A semester, right? So the mind is running or going from one thing to another, right? Okay. So discourse names an act of reason that is like a what? Right.

[43:20] Yeah, it's like a motion, right? It's going from one thing to another, right? Okay. Now, the nearest thing to that though is not running with your legs, right? Although we often borrow words from the legs, we talk about steps, right? Mm-hmm. First step, second step, right? It's not even running in the sense of of action, right? Mm-hmm. Um, but it's more like when I go to the art museum, right?

[43:51] And I look at one painting, and then I look at another painting, and I look at another painting, right? Okay. Or I go to a concert and I hear the first movement, and then the second movement, I hear the third movement, I hear the next piece, right? You know. So it's not only reason that goes from one thing to another, right? Even among our knowing powers, right?

[44:13] Mm-hmm. But my eyes can go from one thing to another, right? Can look at you and then look at you, look at you, right? Okay. Um, and you know we put our our eyes over the figures in the columns and so on, right? Mm-hmm. Going down the page, right? You see that sometimes, right? Okay. Um, but now there's another sense of discourse that presupposes that reason can go from one thing to another, right?

[44:41] But is the discourse that distinguishes reason from what the eyes do? Okay. What is that discourse that distinguishes reason in its movement from the eye going from one thing to another? There's a similarity, right? The student takes a course, right? The professor shouldn't be talking about the same thing every day, right? Hmm. You know, he's going from one thing or one topic to another maybe, right? Yeah.

[45:10] It's very much like being in a museum and going from one painting to another, right? Okay. But there's a discourse that is peculiar to reason, right? And it's more than just going from one thing to another, right? From one to through another. Yeah. It's The years of imagination have the ability to go from one thing to another, right? But reason is also able to come to know something through knowing other things, right?

[45:45] And the act which is so characteristic of reason that it gets its name from reason, namely reasoning, right? In reasoning, you're coming to know one statement through what other statements? You're coming to know the conclusion through the premises, right? Okay. But in defining, you're coming to know one thing to another, right? One comes to know what blank verse is through unrhymed and iambic, and what unrhymed right?

[46:18] One comes to know what an iamb is through syllable and accent and second and so on, right? Okay. So reason is the ability to know one thing through knowing other things,

[46:39] and that separates reason from senses because I don't see one pain through seeing other things. I can look at you and then look at him. I don't see him through seeing you. I can hear one movement, the first movement of Mozart's symphony, and I can hear the second movement, right? I don't hear the second movement I'm hearing the first movement. But when I define, I come to know what something is I didn't know before through things I know already.

[47:10] All right. Sometimes I ask students, you know, what is a perfect number, right? In arithmetic, they don't know, right? But they know what a number is, right? They know what it is to be what measured by something, right? Measured evenly, right? They know what it is to be what equal, right? And I put all these things together, and I say it's a number that is equal to the sum of everything it measures.

[47:37] Oh, that's right, right? Okay. So they're coming to know what something is that they didn't know through things they did know already. Okay. So defining and reasoning are two kinds of what discourse, right? In the sense of what coming to know the unknown through the known, right? Counting and calculating are two other ways, right? When I count, I come to know a number through through the one, right?

[48:12] When I calculate, add, subtract, multiply, divide, I come to know a number I didn't know through some numbers that I didn't know, right? Okay. So Shakespeare is telling us here. In the Middle Ages, sometimes discourse was used as a synonym almost for reasoning, right? If you want a discourse that separates reason from the eye and the ear and the imagination, which are the closest to it, right?

[48:41] The knowing powers, you'd have to say knowing the reason is the ability to know one thing before or after another. Even the senses can do that, right? But reason is the ability to what? Come to know something unknown, right? Through things that are what? known And that's seen especially in reasoning, right? Which is so characteristic of reason that it's named from reason. Reasoning is not just going from one statement to another, right?

[49:12] But it's coming to know a statement, which in logic we call the conclusion, right? Through at least two other statements, which are called the premises, right? Calculating is coming to know a number you didn't know, two numbers you didn't know, right? I get to the checkout counter in the grocery store, and I know the things the cost of everything I put into my basket, right? But I don't know yet the cost I have to pay, right?

[49:38] I can come to know that number by adding the numbers. Very fast, I'm having to be there. See, I just got it up, right? Okay. You see that?

[49:53] So that's the first thing. I think we got. We're running short now. Five twenty. Stop here. Oh, yeah. So, reason is the ability to come to know one thing through another. Okay.

[50:08] I get the one together. Okay. But as you think about, I'll give you. There's another one which has a list of the questions here. You know, we can. So we should be studying. Just a few things in mind for this education. Do I need a copy? Sure, sure. Do you want one piece? Yeah. I'll

[50:45] keep one for myself, so I can do