Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
8. The Senses of Before and After, Order, and the Exhortation's Five Reasons to Use Reason
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[0:00] To To look before and after, then to see if to go to look under, right? And before and after are the definition of order, right? Now everybody who's spoken about reason has really seen a connection between reason and order, right? Okay, Heisenberg in his Gifford lectures, a great physicist, you know, in order to understand the world, we have to find some kind of what order, right? And we always look in science for laws, right?

[0:31] But we always couple law and order, don't we? You can't make any sense out of something you can't find some order. So Shakespeare adds then the word looking, looking. He adds the words before and after.

[0:53] Now, I gave you the text of Aristotle there, where he, in the categories, distinguishes the four central senses before, him. and then he adds a fifth sense later on, right? But that fifth sense, I don't think is fifth in order. In some way, it resembles the what second sense, so something like that, right? Four. Now, let's enumerate those senses. Now the word before here is an example, like the word to see, it's an example of a word equivocal by reason.

[1:36] And these words that are equivocal by reason, you find that especially the most common words are equivocal by reason. It was Aristotle who discovered that all the common words, in fact, are the words that are to some extent used everywhere in science because of that common, and they're used especially in wisdom because it's subject to most universal, which are also the words used in the axioms. That those words are all equivocal by reason, and so to understand those words, you have to see the meanings underlying them, and you also have to see the order of the meanings.

[2:16] And just like you have these three meanings at least coming under the word to see, but they come in certain order, right? And the order follows the order in our knowing, right? So likewise with the word before, you follow the order in our knowing.

[2:35] Now what Aristotle does with these words is not to distinguish all the meanings. He distinguishes what you might call the the central senses, right?

[2:49] And sometimes, though, to one of these central senses, you can lead back a number of other senses that are suited. Likeness to that, huh? Okay.

[3:02] So Thomas is explaining the word beginning in the fifth book of metaphysics, huh? The first meaning of beginning is this is the beginning of the desk, okay? And then, if you go down the desk here, the motion, the beginning of the motion corresponds in a way to the beginning of the desk, right? And then the beginning of the time it takes to go down here, right? So the beginning of the magnitude is the first meaning of beginning in physics, in metaphysics, and to that, is not given explicitly by Aristotle, but to that you lead back beginning of the motion.

[3:37] If you start from the beginning of the road, and the beginning of the time, right? Okay. Now here he gives us the first meaning though, not before in place, but before in time. And when you study time as we do in natural philosophy, that's explicitly in the definition of time as the number of the before and after motion. Okay. So it's more explicit that before and after in time than in place or motion.

[4:08] To that you reduce these senses. So the first sense is before in time. Okay. And very often in daily life we have that in mind. So today is before, but tomorrow, right? And today was after yesterday, right? Now to that sense, as I say, you reduce before in motion, right? And before in the magnitude of which the motion is. Okay. Now the second sense that he gives, huh?

[4:50] Well, let me say one more thing about this. Why should the before in time, the before in motion, be the first meaning of before? Well,

[5:07] compared to the others, we already know. Okay. We name things as we know them, right? We name things as we become aware of them, huh? And therefore, the order in naming follows the order in knowing, right? And the first order in our knowing is the road from the senses into reason. So the first meaning of these words will tend to be something that is the most sensible.

[5:34] Okay. Now what does Shakespeare say in Troilus and Cressida? Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs. I want to get your attention. You're getting off the airplane. You don't see me. I wave, right? Okay. That's why ambulances and police cars and so on these changing lights, right, and changing sounds, huh? Because they'll attract attention, right? Lights going on and off and so on, huh?

[6:02] That's why these crazy performers, you know, jump around the stage all the time, trying to hold your attention because they have nothing really nice.

[6:11] But almost any movie you see now, there's some some crazy chase, you know, somebody chasing somebody up and down. And so notice, time is tied up with these before and after in motion. Usually, take the motion of the sun around the earth, right? But there's a before and after there, right? So things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs. So our knowledge begins with our senses, and the senses are caught by motion, right?

[6:42] And time is tied up with the before and after in motion. So this has to be the first sense, right? Okay. Do you see that? Has to be the first sense. Now the second sense of before,

[6:56] which you might call before and being. What does the second sense mean? Before and being. Well, when this thing can be without that, but not vice versa, then this is said to be before that. Aristotle takes a mathematical example where he says one can be without two, right? But two cannot be without what? One. He takes a mathematical example because there's no motion in math, strictly speaking.

[7:28] He wants to show there's a different sense in the first one, right? Okay. But nevertheless, you can have a before in the second sense here in the sensible world, right? Take a very simple example. Bricks are before a brick wall. Okay. Bricks can be without a brick wall. But a brick wall cannot be without bricks. Okay. Now very often, what is before and being may also be before in time, right?

[7:58] See. Take the example. I'm going to write the word cat on the board. Now the letter C exists in time before the word cat, doesn't it? Okay. And I write this, and now finally I have the word cat, right? But notice C is before the word cat, not only in time, but also in what? In being,

[8:27] because the letter C can be without the word cat. If I erase this, right? But the word cat cannot be without the letter what? C. Okay. I notice C is before, in this case, in both senses, right? Okay. But suppose we had a stamp here, and bam, you had the whole word cat at once. Then the letter C would not be before the word cat in time, would it?

[9:01] Oh yeah. See. Will still be before it in what being right? Okay, do you see that? Yeah. Okay. So this is really a different sense than that, but still it's something in the sensible world, right? Or it can be in the sensible world, right, right? The same way if you take Aristotle's example there are numbers, right? Now you can have one child without having two, right? But you can't have two children without having one, right?

[9:34] Okay. So one is before two in what being right? Now usually it's before in time, but not always. You might have twins, your first children, right? So you went from zero to two all at once, right? Do for the price of what is this? Okay. So one is not always before two in time. Although it often, is right. They're really Different senses, huh?

[10:04] If you give me a loaf of bread and I take a knife and I cut off one slice and I cut off a second slice, right? Third, right? Well, here you have one before two, not only being as Aristotle's example, right? But also in time, right? I have one slice in time, shortly, long time, before I have two slices in time, right? But if I'm in the bakery and I said, "We just have that loaf sliced, " you know, and she's, it goes from zero to I don't know, twelve, thirteen slices, whatever it is, right?

[10:36] Fourteen slices, all once, right? So in that sense, one is not always before two in what time, but it's always before two in what being, right? Okay.

[10:54] Ah. Now is God before us in this first sense of in time? No, no, no. So that puzzling way of Christ saying, you know, before Abraham was, I am, right? He's not before Abraham in time, right? Because he's not in time; he's in eternity, right? But God is before all creatures in this what second sense, right? He can be without any of them, right? But they cannot be without him, right?

[11:33] So he's before in the second sense, huh? But notice we're not thinking about God when we first see this sense, right? We're thinking about, whether C can be without the word cat, or one can be without two, but not vice versa. Or the bricks can be without the brick wall, but not vice versa, right? If hydrogen, if water is H2O, right? Maybe hydrogen can be without water, but water cannot be without hydrogen, right?

[11:59] Okay. Because this is second sense. Now, what is the third sense of before, right? Well, if you look at Aristotle's examples, the third sense of before is before in the discourse of reason. Okay.

[12:18] And and discourse in both of those senses, huh? So not only do the in an argument the premises are before the conclusion, right? Okay. In in a definition, the genus comes before the what differences, right? And in a treatise of Aristotle, the proemium comes before the what the main body of the treatise, right? Just like in Romeo and Juliet, the prologue comes before the what play, right?

[13:01] Now to this third sense, though. Would be led back any before in our knowing, right? Okay. So the before and after there in the natural road, right? Led back to this sense here, right? It's not the same sense exactly, but it's similar to it, right? Okay. But notice why this is placed third,

[13:24] because this is not so sensible, is it? This is more inward, right? And so it's not as well known to us as these more sensible, right? This is more sensible than that, though, right? Because things in motion, so they catch the eye and whatnots, right? Okay. Now notice what is before in the discourse of reason

[13:48] might be before in being, but usually it's not. I give you something example here. Example from geometry: square and cube. Do you see a before and after there of square and cube? Square before cube. In what sense? Because cubes,

[14:19] squares are in cubes. Okay, so before in what sense here now? In terms of being. Yes, before in being, right? A square can be without a cube, but a cube, which is contained by six squares, right, cannot be without a what? Square. So square is before cube in the second sense here, right? Now in geometry, if you get that far, you'll find that plane geometry is learned before what?

[14:50] Solid geometry, right? So you square is considered in Book One and Book Two and so on, right? And three and four, but cube is not considered until the last books there, science, right? So square is before cube, both in being and in what? Our knowledge in the discourse of reason, right? Okay.

[15:17] Likewise, if you take circle and sphere, circle can be without sphere, right? But you can't have a sphere without a what? Circle, right? The way Euclid generates his spheres, he says, imagine a circle and the diameter of the circle, and rotate the circle around the diameter to make a sphere. So you have to understand also what a circle is before you can understand what a sphere, right?

[15:47] Okay. And I guess the cylinder you rotate what? Rectangle, right? Around one of its sides, right? Okay. If you rotate a right angle around one of its sides, there that's adjacent to the right angle, right? Holds it good together, what? Cold, yeah. Okay. But is that always true that what is before in being is also before in the discourse of reason?

[16:21] No. Take example there, the very difficult one of God, right? God is before all the things in being. Is he before all the things in our knowledge? No, no. You know, sensible things, material things, before we know. Ah, but take an example even from in natural science there, which is before in being, water or hydrogen. Hydrogen. Yeah, before in being, Which is before in our knowledge. Water.

[16:50] Yeah, yeah. And notice, ah, the word hydrogen is named from water. Water. Hydrogen it generates hydro water. Okay. And why was hydrogen named from water? Because water was more known to us, eh? And hydrogen was discovered by the Lavoisier, huh? Before they killed him, right? I guess what happened to him? I'm afraid. Um. It's kind of funny, you know, the way they always attack the Church of the Galileo thing and so on.

[17:23] You know, they never attacked the French Revolution, right? Yeah. Didn't chop off the head of Galileo. Didn't chop off the head of the Lavoisier. But anyway, um, notice hydrogen is before water in being, but after in what? The discourse of reason in our knowledge, okay. And then what about the proton, right? See, proton comes from the Greek word meaning first, right? Now, first is defined by before, right?

[17:58] First means before all the rest. So first has as many meanings as before does, right? In the same way, order has as many meanings as before. Is order before after? But what sense is the proton first? In being, yeah. Proton can be without hydrogen, but not vice versa, right? Was the proton before hydrogen in our knowledge? No, it is after our knowledge. So the order in the discourse of reason is water, hydrogen, proton.

[18:29] The order in being is proton, hydrogen, water. You see. Um. So these are really different senses, right? So notice sometimes something can be before. In more than one of these senses, right? The same thing, right? But not always, right? So they're really distinct, what senses? Okay.

[19:06] Now notice a similarity again between these two meanings here, though. Because when you carry the word before over, it's because this here in some ways like that meaning, right?

[19:20] And just as this can be without that, but not vice versa, right? So likewise, this can be known without that, but not vice versa. And you see it very much like in the example I took here first, because the square can be without the cube, but not vice versa.

[19:44] And the square can be known without the cube being known, but the cube can't be known without being square. So there is a similarity there in what the order in knowing and the order in being, right? There is a likeness there, right? You got two things, and this. Be without that, but not vice versa, right? And this can be known without that, but not vice versa, okay?

[20:16] You can know quadrilateral without knowing what a rhombus is, right? But you can't know a rhombus is without knowing what a quadrilateral is. There is a real likeness of one to the other, right? There is even likeness to that first meaning because in the discourse of reason there is something like what motion, right?

[20:45] Now the fourth sense that Aristotle gives is much more unlike the first three senses. And the fourth sense gives the sense of what better, right?

[20:59] Before the goodness, you might say, but in one word, the fourth sense is better, right? So I say to the students, I say, Chaucer comes before Shakespeare in English fiction, but all the critics put Shakespeare before Chaucer.

[21:25] Well, what sense is Chaucer before Shakespeare? Yeah, because he's in the I guess 14th century. Shakespeare's in the 16th century. But Shakespeare is what better, okay? But with the Greeks, Homer comes before it seems almost all the other poets, right? Maybe not Hesiod, it's in question, but he's also what better than all the rest.

[22:00] So we go back to the words of Saint uh John the Baptist there about Christ, right? You comes after me is before me, and so on. Well, he's thinking of these different senses, right? Christ is coming after him in what Christ is man in time, right? But he's before him in the sense he's better, right?

[22:30] Now, when Aristotle is given those five four senses, then he comes out and he gives another sense, a fifth sense, right? If you count, you know, four, this is the fifth sense. But I think it's somewhat could be misleading to call it the fifth sense if you thought it comes down here in the order, right? I think it's kind of a distant cousin of this before and being, right?

[22:58] Because we speak of the effect as depending upon the cause, right? And what is before in being, right, or what's after in being, depends upon what is before in being. Okay. But as Aristotle points out, how can you strictly speak speak of a cause without having an effect, right? Okay. So they seem to be together, right, the cause and effect. But in this sense here, something can be without the other, right?

[23:31] But not vice versa. And Aristotle gives an example here where the cause and effect are very much together. He says, "It's true that you are sitting, right? Okay. What's the cause of that statement, 'You are sitting' being true? The person sitting. It's your sitting, right? Okay. But is any time lapse between those two? Can you be sitting without that statement at the same time being true? And when I sit down, you know, you know, it's false not to say I'm sitting, right?

[24:04] And I sit down, and a little bit after I sit down, it becomes true that I'm sitting. No. As soon as I'm sitting, that statement is true, right? Okay. And can that statement be true without my sitting? So it's a different sense than this sense of before and being, isn't it? Because here the bricks can be without the brick wall, but the brick wall cannot be without the bricks, right?

[24:32] But here you have cause and effect, right? But I can't be sitting without that statement being true, and that statement cannot be true without my sitting. And yet my sitting is a cause of the truth of the statement. Okay. I think it's very interesting when when you apply this to God, right? Because it's important to see that God is before other things, both in being and as a cause is before an effect, right?

[25:02] Okay. And some people, you know, thought God's causality is something, you know, where creatures naturally follow from what God is, right? Spinoza, you know, compares it to if you have a two, it naturally follows that God is before, right? Okay. And if that was so, then the production of creatures would be something that God is no control over, right? Just falls on that, right? So it's important to see that God is before creatures, not only as a cause is before an effect, at least before them in being, right?

[25:42] He can be without them, and vice versa. And even if God had always created something, right, he would still be before in being, right? Just like you know that example I took of stabbing the word cat, right, all at once. C would still be before the word "cat" and "being," right? But it's very clear, given there is a beginning for the existence of creatures, right? They didn't always exist, right?

[26:12] That "God is before in being as well as a cause is before in effect. But to avoid the confusion of thinking that this fifth sense is fifth in order, right? I like to call this fifth sense the crowning sense, and especially for the philosopher, that's a crowning sense, because philosophy begins in wonder, right? And wonder is an actual desire to know the cause. So the philosopher, most of all, and ultimately, he wants to look before and after in the sense of cause and effect, right?

[26:53] And you can, you know, ask about some of the other senses here. You know, if this is better than that, why is this better than that, right? Right, you know, if this is before that in knowledge, why is this before that in in knowledge, right? And so on. So this is kind of a crowning sense, the ultimate thing, to know why.

[27:18] Now I ask you my my tongue twister question: right, Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. That sort of thing. In what sense of before, right? Does one sense of before come before another sense of before? Guys, this is crazy. See, in what sense of before, right? Does one sense of before one meaning before come before another meaning? Right. This meaning comes before this, and this before that, and this before that.

[27:52] So, but in what sense of before does one meaning come before the other? Second, second, third, third, yeah. The third, yeah. See, and the reason why is that we name things as we know them, right? We name things as we become aware of them. Not to know something well, we have to be aware of it some way to name it, right?

[28:20] So the order in naming follows the order in what, Knowing. and that's the third sense. To the third sense, you reduce any before and after, and know it right. Let's go back to this sense here.

[28:44] Did Shakespeare know all these senses of before? Do you think? I notice in the in the all's well that ends well. He puns upon a meaning attached to this first sense before place,

[29:04] and this fourth sense. Right? We tend to pun on the first and last senses because of the first departure. When I was a child, my mother would put this. I see," said the blind man. He couldn't see at all, right?

[29:22] Well, Shakespeare puns upon before place and before better. It's a time when the young lady there, who's you know not of nobility, but she's fallen in love with the countess's son, right? And the countess suspects right that she's in love, you know, because she kind of forces a confession, right? And the Helena says, you know, well then before you, she kind of needed to be the countess, right?

[29:49] I confess that before you and next to heaven, I love your son. Yeah. As the Shakespeare Aristotle says there, you know that even common people will say, "What you come first of me?" You know, meaning you before this sincerity, which you love more, right? Right. Thomas says there, you know, that even common people will say, "What you come first to me," you know, meaning you before in the sense here of your love, right?

[30:22] So he says, then you know, meaning before you, right? I confess that after heaven, right, and before you, I love your son. So that's heaven the son, and then the mother, right? Beautiful though, see, you know, he sees that. As we as we read in Romeo and Juliet, you know, he makes the same point that one is not a number. but he makes it a love poem, and I don't know why he does that.

[30:54] It's precision like that, which doesn't seem to serve any poetic reason, you know. but kind of knows it coming back. What are you doing that for?

[31:04] Now, in what sense of before, and there's as many senses of after as there are before. In what sense of before and after does reason look before and after? All of them,

[31:19] you know. Even the humble historian is going to look before and after in all these senses, right? And the historian is going to first of all try to arrange events chronologically, right? Okay. And then he's going to start to see, well, you had to have this before you could have had that, right? Okay.

[31:44] He's going to try to see cause and effect of the events, right? Okay. And he's going to, obviously, his knowledge will have before and after. He's going to say that this civilization or that, you know, is better than that, right? He's got to look before and after in all of these senses. So reason looks before and after in all these senses.

[32:06] The crowning sense is the one of cause and effect. Notice that wisdom is the highest perfection of reason. You can see the connection between this definition and the fact that the wise man orders first of all, right? Thomas gives that reason in the commentary that we gave you on the *Premium* to Nicomachean Ethics, right? The quotes Aristotle in the *Premium* to metaphysics, where Aristotle says that the wise man right orders all the rest, right?

[32:43] So most of all, he's ordered. And Thomas gives us the reason that wisdom is the highest perfection of reason. It has property reason to know order, right? But Thomas, also in that text, he divides order in comparison to reason, right? He says there's the order which reason does not make, like the natural order, right? Then there's the order which reason makes in its own acts, which is one thing, and the acts of the will.

[33:13] And then in exterior matter, like the wood or the metal, right. And then he divides the knowledge of reason on the basis of which order it considers, right? So natural philosophy considers the order not made by reason, and metaphysics is also doing that. Logic is considering the order made by reason in its own acts its thoughts and the words that signify those thoughts, and ethics is about the order that reason makes in the acts of the will, consequently in our actions.

[33:43] And then what he calls the mechanic arts, the servile arts, right? Concerned with the order made in exterior matter, like the art of carpentry and metalworking arts, and so on. So the fact that you can distinguish the knowledge of reason by the order it considers, right, is again a sign how much this is tied up with what reason is.

[34:13] And I sometimes say, if someone wanted to, you know, say to say a better definition of reason than the one given by Shakespeare, right, they have to look before in this sense down here. So they have to use his reason in the way Shakespeare defines reason in order to find something better. Or if he says there is some definition of reason that should come before this in our knowledge, he'd have to look before in this sense, right?

[34:39] So in a way, it's kind of a ascent, right? He's looking for something already admitting that this is what Shakespeare says So Shakespeare belongs to glory of giving us, I think, the first definition of reason. He gives us a definition,

[35:03] but notice this is an example of a discourse because we're defining, right? We're coming to know distinctly what reason is through ability and through discourse, through large, right, and through looking and through before, right? We have to stop at each one of those words and say, "What do you mean by discourse? What do you mean by large? What do you mean by looking? What do you mean by before?

[35:29] " Right? And then you see an awful lot, but from those things you can really come to understand much more fully and distinctly what what reason is. Do you see that?

[35:41] So Aristotle or St. Thomas never gave a definition of reason. Ah, not like this. No, no, no. But I notice in the De Anima there that Aristotle he doesn't originally call reason nous, which means understanding, right? He calls it the dianoetike ability, right? Which is knowing one thing to another. Oh yeah. Okay. So it's in those pages. I don't know if you reproduce those ones for the introduction to logic, there, but the one from the.

[36:14] Posterior Analytics of Aristotle right, has the same word he uses to describe reason in the De Anima Okay. Because we're going to have all Aristotle's works, you know. Okay. But you can piece these together.

[36:35] I don't know why Shakespeare has that. I mean, I don't know why. or why so wise. Yeah. Because generally speaking a man, is not a good philosopher and a good poet. They're just so different. Shakespeare himself said, "The lunatic, the lover, and the madman, all compacted imagination. " He speaks. You know, compares the poet to the lover and the madman. They're all compacted imagination. But the two main exceptions in history to this are Plato and what Shakespeare.

[37:12] If I was going to classify, I would say he's a philosopher, but he has some poetic gifts that you see in the dialogues. If I was going to classify Shakespeare, I would say he's a playwright. Right. But he has some philosophical gifts on it. They're very unusual people, those two guys, you know.

[37:35] Now, just to maybe compare a little bit with the exhortation now, having defined reason, then you can define man and beast, right? If man is an animal with reason, right, and the beast is an animal without reason, right.

[37:58] But now this is an exhortation, which means an urging, right? You are urging people to use reason, and Shakespeare is telling us what reason is, and what it is to use reason, right? Because he defines reason by what it's ability for, looking before and after and that's the use of reason. Large discourse. But he also touches upon about five reasons why we should use our reason or use it more than we we do, right?

[38:31] Okay. Now, these five reasons could be divided into three. Right. They look at what's above man. Look at what's below man, and look at man himself, right? Or if one uses the word before an after, before man, look after man, and look at man himself. Okay. So, what's above man is God, right?

[39:07] What's below man is the beast. Of course, man. himself, right? Okay. Now, what reason does he give for using reason in comparison to the beast?

[39:26] If you don't use reason, you'll be no more than beast. Yeah, you fall to the level of beast, right? Okay. That's a darn good reason for using reason, right? Okay. So, if one does not use reason,

[39:51] one falls to the level of beast. That's one of five very good reasons, right? Okay. Now, in regard to what is above man, he gives two most excellent. Reasons for using reason. What are the two reasons that he gives in the in the exhortation? God doesn't give anything uselessly. Okay. So, in a sense, we'll be what obeying God, right? With his purpose, right? Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not the capability and godlike reason to fust in us and use, right?

[40:44] So you'd be, you can say obeying God, right? Obeying God's plan for us. Okay. What's the other reference to God? That reference is through the pronoun, right? Sure, he that made us—that's referring to God, right? Sure, he that made us with this reason, given to us to what not fust in rusty, moldy, right, like a use. What's the reference to God? Godlike using his God. Yeah, yeah.

[41:14] Now, you're saying you're going to become in a way like God if you use your reason or use it well, right? Now, in what way is reason godlike? Because when you study God's knowledge, God doesn't have any discourse. God knows all things, by knowing himself. He understands everything. at once. He naturally understands everything. So, reason is godlike insofar as it's what able to understand, right? And it becomes more godlike as it actually understands, right?

[41:50] Now, it never understands everything the way God does, but as it becomes more actual, it understands more, right? Okay. Thomas is always quoting St. Paul: "Things which are from God or by God are ordered." Right. He's always quoting that text in Judith, right? Text uses the word before and after, right? God's arranging things. So, insofar as reason can what look before and after, right? Resembles God in his what ordering things, huh?

[42:21] Okay. And we saw when Aristotle talked about wisdom there in the Metaphysics, he spoke of it as being what godlike, godlike knowledge, right? Now, in the same way, when he gets into practical philosophy, and he says he's talking about achieving happiness for one man, he says it's lovable, he says, right, to help one man be happy, right. So if I help my my friend to be a happy man, or help my my son to be a happy man, or my spouse, right, that's lovable, he says, right.

[42:56] But it's more godlike, he says, to help a whole city be happy, right? Okay. And Thomas says, well, God what works for the good of the whole universe, right? He intends good of the whole universe, right? We can't do that, right? But it's more godlike to aim at the good of the whole city than just the good of one individual, right? Okay.

[43:23] So in both practical philosophy and in looking philosophy, we're trying to be like God so far as possible, right? And that's a definition that Plato gives of philosophy in the Theaetetus*. Right. Philosophy is becoming like God so far as possible for man.

[43:48] Okay. So that's a very good reason then for using reason, right? So there are two reasons in reference to God, right? In using your reason, using it well, you become in some way like God, and you obey God's plan, right, for you, His intentions for you, and giving you reason, right? Okay.

[44:15] Now, in reference to man, there's many two reasons, but one's more explicit here than the other. But there's two reasons here in reference to man.

[44:27] What is if you compare the two parts of the exhortation there? what is? It's like something within us will corrupt. We don't use it to flush. Yeah, that's tied up to reason here, right? You know, he didn't give us reason to mold us, right? Gave us reason to use, right? So we're obeying, right? The chief good. Yeah, yeah. The chief good of man is something more than the chief good.

[44:54] good of the beast. We saw that in the first part of the Proemium*. And therefore, the chief good of man must involve something that the beast doesn't have, right? And that reason is we learned in the second part, right? Okay. So you can see the chief good, meaning the greatest good of man, the chief good and the end or purpose of man

[45:17] requires the use of reason, right? Now there are many uses of reason. Of course, in ethics, we'll be more precise as to what use of reason, right? Especially as the end of man, huh? But at least we know this in the exhortation that man's greatest good, his chief good, right, his very end or purpose, must involve the use of reason, huh? Okay. That's a awfully good reason, right?

[45:51] Now the last reason is suggested by the words "What is a man?" right? But I sometimes bring in the words from the *Polonius*. This above all to thine own self be true, right? It must follow as a night the day that canst not then be false to any man. So a man is true to himself only if he what?

[46:17] Uses respect, okay. Thine own self be true, it must follow as the night the day that canst not then be false to any man. Shakespeare has an awful lot to say about being true to yourself, right? And when somebody really is true to himself, and when he's not,

[46:40] do you know the Two Gentlemen of Verona? In the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the one of the Gentlemen of Verona is betrothed, right, to Julia. His name is Proteus, well named, you know, mythology. And you know, a betrothal in those days was what a much more serious thing than you know being engaged is today, right? It was like you know solemn promise to marry, right? And he's confirmed that intention of marrying her with twenty soul confirming oaths, as he learned in the play, right?

[47:20] Okay. And Valentine, of course, is his best friend, right? Now Valentine's gone off to the court to kind of finish his education, get some polishing, right? And he falls in love with the daughter of the duke there at the court, Sylvia, right? Well, finally, the father of Proteus says, "I, think you know, I'll give the Proteus to go to the court and spend some time there and get some things."

[47:43] So Proteus goes to the court, and Valentine tells him about his love for Sylvia. Wow, he sees Sylvia. Wow. And so Shakespeare has these various soliloquies, right? Where Proteus is, you know, undergoing the temptation, right, of what being false to Julia, he's betrothed to, and false to his best friend Valentine by pursuing what Sylvia, right? And Valentine has a plan to elope with with Sylvia, right? Because the father is not going to allow this marriage, and Proteus reveals this to the duke, right?

[48:29] Gets included there, right? And Valentine is banished and so on, right? But anyway, in that soliloquy, one of them, Proteus says, "I can't be true to myself without being false to what Julia and false to Valentine, right?" Okay. So I sometimes give you know students that part of the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and then the words of Polonius, right? "This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night of the day thou canst not then be false to any man."

[49:06] Like Proteus is saying, "I can't be true to myself without being false to his betrothed and his best friend." Right? I say, who's right, Polonius or you know, is is Proteus really being true to himself, right?

[49:26] Well, he's got this this emotional surge, right? Let's we're going to call it for for Sylvia. But he had what chosen, right? Julia is his bride. He had chosen Valentine as his friend, right?

[49:45] So when is a man true to himself? When he's true to his emotion or to his choice? His choice is higher. I take example sometimes an alcoholic, right? And sometimes alcoholic realizes that he's making a mess of his life, the other people's life, and so on. So he joins, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous, something like that, right? After due deliberation, he considers that he has to give up drinking, right?

[50:13] Okay, so he's chosen to give up drinking, right? He sees the harm he's doing to himself and his family. But they can be tempted sometimes to have a drink, right? They have an urge to have a drink sometimes. Now, when is he true to himself? When he gets into that urge to have a drink and goes into the bar, or when he adheres to that choice he made and calls his buddy, he's going to hold his hand, until he gets over the temptation, right?

[50:40] When is he true to himself? Well, I ask the student the question: which is more me, my emotion or my choice? Yeah, yeah. And I take an example or a sign of that from the courtroom. Other things being equal, which do we judge more severely: a crime of passion or premeditated murder? Premeditated. Yeah, because the man seems to have more chosen to do this, right? Then the man comes home suddenly and finds his wife in bed with somebody, you know, kills him as they do in Italy quite often.

[51:20] The judge dismisses it, right? There was a case in California that's kind of funny. The guy was in the cement business, right? You know, with the trucks, you know that. And one day, just happened by chance that he was near his home, so he thought he'd drop in and have lunch with his wife and surprise her. And when he drove up, he saw this beautiful, nice convertible in front of the house.

[51:44] I wonder who that is. And he started going the house. He could hear the the voices from the bedroom, right? So he's embarrassed. So he kind of backed out and came back into his truck and go go go away. And then he had second thought and he backed up the truck and emptied the cement. and the guy's convertible. Well, I remember the count? It came to the courts, fine, you know, but the judge dismissed the case on the grounds that was justified.

[52:06] But actually, he was justified he'd come home and you know kill the guy, right? So it was a good decision of the judge's part, you know, maybe. But the point is, we hold you more responsible for the what. The choice, right? You know, and that's why you know we say I think it's kind of a common observation you know people have made that if you get angry with somebody, right, and you say some hot words to that person, you don't want to see them again or something like that.

[52:39] You are more able to go back on that than if you write them a letter, you see. And that that really finishes it, right? I see. You stopping and taking the time, and you seem to be what really you know more choosing, right, to break off with this person rather than just expressing your your moment momentary frustration with this person or something they've done, right?

[53:09] So, but no, it's choices tied up with reason, right? So, which is more me, my reason and my choice, or my emotions? It's interesting when you ask students, you know, which is more me, reason or emotion? They'll sometimes identify at first with their emotions, right? See, but then they don't really start to think about it, right? They begin

[53:38] to see well, maybe that isn't true, right? And that's why, as they say, they regard the premeditated murder, right? You thought about it, you chose it, right? Is even more responsible than you are for the murder crime of passion, right? Or you, and but also the simple thing you know when you're in the bar and your friend is about to get into a fight with somebody and you see all kinds of trouble coming if he has a fight with this guy, you say, Joe, get control of yourself, right?

[54:10] Well, something's in control, Joe. But when anger is in control, Joe, Joe is not in control of himself, right? But when his reason is in control, then Joe is what in control of himself, right? That's a sign, right, that we think that reason is more than the emotion because when reason is in control, I am in control. When anger is in control, I wasn't quite in control of myself, right?

[54:42] You see what I mean? It's not just the crazy philosophers who think they're more reason than emotion, right? But even the man himself, right?

[54:54] You see that? So I think Polonius is right, right? That if you're really true to yourself, you'll be true to your friend, right? It's a little bit like you know you get the example sometimes of temptation to adultery, right? Okay. So here's a man who's who's chosen this woman, or a woman who's chosen this man as their spouse, right? And then later in life, they meet somebody who's physically attractive to them, right?

[55:28] And they feel an emotional drawing to this. Now, are you true to yourself when you follow your emotion with this person you you met somewhere, or when you follow your choice? So and so as their spouse.

[55:45] But which is more me? That emotion, that feeling, or that choice I made, right? The thing I've chosen is more me, right? It comes up, in the discussion, you know, of the, you know, taking the vows, right? You know, that something done out of the vows is is even more meritorious, right? That something done spontaneously, right? Because you, in a sense, more chosen this, right? It's more you.

[56:16] You're more in it than the other case. So this above all to the known self be true, right? If you're not true to yourself, you can't be true to your what, spouse or your friend Proteus is not really being true to himself. So that's What play is Polonius in? is that Hamlet? Hamlet, yeah. You got to realize what Shakespeare does, huh? He he sometimes puts words of wisdom in the mouth of someone who does not exemplify them, right?

[56:59] Oh. Polonius, for example, says that brevity is the soul of wit. Oh. Meaning brevity is the soul of wisdom. It's very true. Aristotle said that, and Scripture says that, and so on. But as Hamlet says, Polonius is a tedious old fool. So you have people, you know, who who exemplify the opposite of what they they they say, right? I think he does it partly because it's amusing to see that, right?

[57:27] But also because he wants to avoid being too pedantic, like a teacher, right? Appropriate for them. So I see him do that a number of times. He's

[57:41] extremely wise words in the mouth of someone doesn't exemplify it. So I think these are five, you know, most excellent reasons. Any one of them is sufficient, right? But if you take all five of them together, you understand them, and then they're kind of overwhelming, right?