Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
9. Why Philosophy Requires Reason: Review, Error and Mistake, and Better vs. More Necessary
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[0:00] Okay. Now we have one more question, right? Let's recall where we are. We're talking about the best way of coming into philosophy, right? And the answer we gave was one should come into philosophy from its natural beginnings, right, through the use of reason, right. And that's why we asked, "What are the natural beginnings? " Right? And I gave about ten reasons there why we should come into the natural beginnings.

[0:45] And then we had two questions about through the use of reason, and one is, "What is reason? " Right? Okay. And here we've seen what it is, what reason is, what it is to use reason, and in general, why a man should use reason, right? And the philosopher, being a man, should use reason, obviously, right? But now, why in particular must one come into philosophy through the use of what reason, right?

[1:12] Let's recall it here. We saw before that philosophy is knowledge over a road, right? Anything to do with looking before and after there, right? Yeah, a road is a before and after, right? And knowledge. If you don't know the road, you can't follow it, right? So how can one come into philosophy without looking before and after, right? Okay. We saw before that philosophy is reasoned out knowledge.

[1:57] Right? How can you acquire reasoned out knowledge without using your reason? Okay. All we saw that the end was what? Well, let's take it so you're more fundamental than that. We saw that philosophy begins in what? Wonder, right? Wonder is the beginning of philosophy. What is wonder?

[2:27] Desire to know why and why. Yeah, to know the cause, right? So you obviously want to look before and after in the crowning sense, right? At least, right? Okay. The end has to be therefore wisdom, right? And wisdom is a knowledge of the what? First causes, right? Well, cause is before the effect, right? We've seen that. And first is defined by before, right? So obviously you've got to look what?

[2:57] Before and after, right? We also saw that the discourse of the wise man is the what? Largest discourse, right? In at least five, six senses, right? It's the most universal. It's about the most universal, right? It covers the largest area, you might say. It's about the greatest things, about God Himself, right? The cosmos, in the sense that God himself, seems to be.

[3:27] Um, it's in terms of the limits, right? It's it's from the largest and highest to largest, and it goes from things that are the furthest apart, right?

[3:45] But to some extent, every part of philosophy has larger discourses than the other parts of our knowledge. How could you study logic without looking before and after in the discourse of reason, right? How could you do ethics without looking before and after in the sense of better, right? How could you study emotions? You do natural philosophy without looking at the before and after emotion.

[4:18] So it's pretty clear there's no way to come into philosophy without using a reason, right? But you also said you have to come into philosophy from the natural beginnings, right, through the use of reason, right? But could you recognize the natural beginnings as beginnings without looking before and after?

[4:40] Because beginning means what? Before everything else, yeah. You can't recognize the beginning as beginning without looking before and after. You wouldn't know the natural beginnings, the first beginnings, unless you know the nature is what's first in the thing. That's before and after again, right? There's no way to avoid that, right?

[5:06] So before we do anything else, should we understand the word before? Right. You can't even understand the words we're using, right? Like the word "looking" or the word "to see" without seeing the order of meaning, right? You. Can't understand the word before. It's fishing, huh? Now,

[5:40] just make sure you didn't overlook anything. Let's look at the questions here. You have the questions. What words in the exhortation define order? We've got a text of Thomas that right. How do these same words define beginning, middle, and end?

[6:09] Before is the beginning. After is the end, and what's between before and after is the middle. Yeah. Could you make one of these, you know, crisscrossing chart, right?

[6:22] Before something, not before something. Oh yeah. After something, not after something, right? Okay. And the middle is what? Neither before nor after. No, the middle is both. It's before something, oh yeah, and after something, okay. The end is after something, but not before. Okay. The beginning is before, but not what? After, right? Okay. But there can't be a fourth part. There's neither before nor after anything because we wouldn't have any connection with the rest, right?

[6:52] Okay. Okay. That's one of those divisions where you have what? Yeah, you crisscross two contradictory things, right? But you end up with only three real possibilities, right? You mentioned how that happens before other cases, right? When you divided the looking philosophy. Did you ever see that in the Trinity? That's the way they they crisscross two divisions to give the Trinity. You ever see that? Going into number three.

[7:23] This is the way they do it. You say that the you proceed from someone and does not proceed from someone. Two possibilities, right? And then has someone proceeding from

[7:57] and does not have someone proceeding from. Who proceeds from someone and has someone proceeding from him? Who's that? The son. The son. Yeah. Who has someone proceeding from him but doesn't proceed? From someone. the father, The Father yeah.

[8:27] Who proceeds from someone but doesn't have one proceeding from him? Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, yeah. Now, why isn't there a fourth member? No, yeah. If one did not proceed from anyone, right, and had no one proceeding from him, there'd be no basis to distinguish that person from anybody else, right? Okay. So it can only be you only have three, right? Well, it's the same thing here with the word before and after, right?

[9:00] It can't be in a plot, let's say, you know, a part that's neither before anything or after anything, but have no connection with the other parts, right? Yeah. So how do these same words define first, second, third, and so on? How would you define first? That which has no no before. It's before all the rest. Yeah, before all the rest. Yeah, and second would be what? Before all the rest except first.

[9:34] Yeah. In third and so on, you'd see where it would go, right? Right. Last would mean that it's what. After. After all, right? Okay. So notice, now, that if you understand the different meanings of before and after, you can understand order, beginning, middle, and end, and first, second, last, and so on, right? Okay. um now notice first and last are something like beginning and end, right? But second and middle are not exactly the same, are they?

[10:05] No. Distinguish and order the central and chief senses of before. Well, we just did that, right? Before in time, right? Before in being, before in the discourse of reason, and before in goodness or better, right? In what sense of before does one meaning of a word come before another?

[10:28] Yeah. Why do order, beginning, middle, and end, first, second, last, et cetera, have many meanings? As before. Yeah, and they're all defined by before, right? Okay.

[10:45] Now, what is the definition of a thing? That's something we'll be taking up in logic, but do you have any idea what a definition of a thing is? It's its genus. That's part of it, yeah. But definition is never just one word, right? It's always a combination of words, which in logic they call speech, right? Okay. So it's speech signifying what a thing is, right? Okay. We get to logic word defining what we mean by speech there.

[11:10] What word is the first part of the definition of reason? That's the genus. Okay. So what word tells us in general what reason is? Yeah. What is the genus of reason? Same thing, ability, right? What words complete the definition of reason?

[11:35] Yeah. Now, why, in general, are these used to complete the definition? Because they state what it's an ability for. Yeah. Yeah. And they also state what is utmost of that utmost of that, right? Okay. What is the origin of the word discourse? Running. Running. Yeah. Yeah. So, what is the discourse of reason?

[12:04] Running from statement to statement. Yeah. Okay. But, a more broader than that, and more than that. Yeah, it's coming to know one thing through knowing other things, right? Okay. Reasoning is the most characteristic one, right? It's coming to know or guess a statement from other statements because of them. Why is discourse the act of reason most known to us?

[12:32] Because it's most like motion. Yeah, things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs. And so, discourse being a like a motion, right, is what captures our attention first, now.

[12:47] Okay, distinguish the discourses of reason well we did some of those defining and reasoning, right? And counting and calculating, right, those are some of the main ones. What is meant by large in the phrase large discourse? What we distinguished, but yeah. Okay. About the large, right? About the great or about the universal. Its limit is large, right? It's from many to something one, or from something one to many, right?

[13:20] Or then it's what long, through many steps, or between things that are far apart, right? Why does Shakespeare define reason by large rather than small discourse? Defined by the utmost. Yeah. Because the smallest contained enough, but the

[13:40] largest not contained. Yeah. How is looking defined by seeing? Trying to see. Trying to see. Yeah. What is meant by seeing, and hence by looking, the definition? Well, not. Understand. Yeah. Understand. Yeah.

[14:00] In which of the central and chief senses of before does reason look before and after? All them. Okay. What sense perfects the others in reasons looking? What is the crowning sense? Close enough. Yeah.

[14:18] Now this is important. to point this out. Why does the ability to look before and after include or presuppose the ability to distinguish things? Something can't be before and after itself. Yeah, yeah. Nothing is before or after itself. That's an axiom, right? So there's got to be some distinction between what is before and what is after, right? So, now notice you can sometimes distinguish things without seeing which is before and which is after, right?

[14:52] But you can't see that this is before that if you can't see any distinction between it. Now sometimes people, you know, think you know that these judges, you know, and awarding you know gold prize and a silver prize and whatever it is, you know, for let's say wines, you know, what it's all arbitrary, you know, what you like, you know. Just a minute now, just a minute now.

[15:11] In the best ones in California, right? Before you can be a judge, you are given what a blind tasting, right? And they give you a glass red wine. You don't see the bottle, right? Okay, taste it. What are you drinking? Oh, bright red wine. You're out. You're not a judge here, right? See, in other words, if I don't know whether this is, you know, Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir or Zinfandel, I'm not in position to judge which is better, am I?

[15:39] See, now among those who know what they're drinking, who can distinguish them, right? There may be some disagreement, but not the same amount, right? Okay. And okay.

[15:59] Does looking before and after also pertain to what is most known to us about reason? It states the object of discourse. Yeah, yeah, the end, yeah, yeah. but as i, say anybody who's talked about reason has seen that connection between reason and order, you know. Between that text of Heisenberg, you know. okay you know, he says, you know, to us the world at first appears to be like an infinite variety, of sounds.

[16:30] and order to understand, we have to introduce some kind of order, right? Okay. Yeah. Just kind of an actual thing. Why is it necessary to add looking before and after to large discourses? What's the reason we gave for that? To manifest its terminus, its end. What

[16:51] you're trying to do, right? I mean, how do you don't really understand this thing, right? now, that's just a motion for the sake of motion, right? Okay. In what way is reason godlike? In

[17:04] ability to understand. Yeah, insofar as reason is able to understand, and and insofar as it actually understands, it becomes even more godlike, right? But it's not godlike in the sense that God is discourse. There's no discourse in God. He understands discourse, but doesn't have the discourse, right? There's no motion in God. He's Unchanging, huh? Incidentally, one time when I was teaching this, I had a student from Saudi Arabia, and he's Mohammedan, I guess, and he he objected to reason being called Godlike, right?

[17:35] Oh. And so I thought I explained a little bit, you know, what the Catholic doctrine is, right? And I showed him the text there, and the Fourth Lateran Council, you know, the one that Paul the Sixth is called attention to a lot, where the it's a correction, you know, an error there, and

[17:58] it says you can never note a likeness between the creature and God without a greater what? Difference. Yeah, greater unlikeness. Yeah, yeah. You know, there's got to be some likeness between the cause and the effect. So you you go to calm down, but I mean, Chris is cutting off my ears. You know.

[18:17] Very close. Yeah, yeah. But it's very much unlike. in. Terms of what discourse, right? In fact, you are looking, trying to see, right? You don't have anything like that in God, right? But insofar as reason, to some extent, understands, right, it becomes like God, who actually understands everything, huh? Okay. So, in what ways reason is not like God? Well, there is no discourse in God, right? There is no search, right?

[18:41] Everything is open and naked to his eyes, as the Scripture says. Okay. And once you know what reason is, you can go on to talk about what a man and a beast is, right? What do man and the beast have in common? Similarities. Yeah, they're both animals. Yeah. What does man have in addition to what the beast has? Reason. Yeah. What difference separates man and the beast?

[19:06] That's reason. What is a man? An animal with reason. What's a beast? An animal without reason. What is the chief good of a thing? From its end. Its greatest good, right? Its main good, right? Huh? Okay. What is meant by the phrase "market of his time"? One of his life. Yeah, yeah. Now, as I mentioned, time is a metonym for our life, right? Okay. And notice it's a way in which man lives in time much more than the animals do, huh?

[19:44] We're always thinking about the past and the future, planning our day and so on. And Aristotle's in the De Anima, third book, he speaks of man as the animal who has the sense of time, right? Huh. And notice that's tied up with that first sense of before and after, isn't it? Huh? Man's always looking at before and after in time. About the use of this word "market."

[20:09] Yeah. Like price or something. Well, it's the idea of mark what he aims at, huh? Oh. And the idea of marksman, right? Okay. Okay. So it's really not. It's a different sense of. Yeah, but you think of the other sense of you know go to the market to buy something, right? It's what you what. What you give your life for? Okay. But it's probably more the sense of what you aim at, right?

[20:33] The marksman. In our dictionary, they quoted this. Yeah. Shakespeare. They gave this quote. Yeah. They they interpret as like when you say a market of slaves, it means the selling of selling price, just the buying and selling of slaves. So what you do with your time? Yeah. What you're aiming at, those things you're exchanging it for your life. Okay. Now, why is the chief good of man in the market of his time the same thing?

[21:02] Well, there you have to see how good and end are basically the same thing, huh? The good is defined as as what all desire, and the end is defined as that the sake of which right something is or is done, huh? So if something is desired, men will aim at it, right? At the aim at it, it's a sign that they consider it to be good, right?

[21:24] So the chief good of man and his greatest good, and the end of his life, the end of man, are really the same thing.

[21:36] We'll come back to that one again. What is the connection between the chief good of man, or mark of his time, and what a man is?

[21:51] That's the purpose of his nature. Has a necessary connection between the two, right? Because of what man is, his chief good is what it is, right?

[22:08] We develop that again, ethics more. What proportion does Shakespeare see between man and beast and their chief goods? As the chief good of man is to man. so is the chief good of beast to be. Yes. You can alternate the proportion you want to, right?

[22:27] How does Shakespeare reason like a mathematician to some understanding of the chief good of man from this proportion? One of your examples: If three, what is three if it's half two? Yeah. I mean, it's half four. It's two. What is a three if it be the half of four? A two, no more, right? So what is a man if his chief good be but to sleep and feed?

[22:56] He'd be a beast, no more, right? So he has two ways of reasoning. You could reason from this. You could say, if man is more than a beast, right? Then the chief good of man is more than the chief good of the beast. But man is more than a beast. Therefore, the chief good of man is more than the chief good of the beast. But Shakespeare reasons more by the denial of the consequent, right?

[23:20] He's saying, if the chief good of man is no more than the chief good of the beast, then man is no more than the beast. But man is more than a beast. Therefore, it can't be true that the chief good of man is no more than the good of the beast, right? So we'll come back to that when we exemplify the two if then arguments, right? Syllogisms.

[23:40] What does the chief good of man involve or include that the chief good of the beast does not have? Yeah, yeah, right. Well, reason some way, right? But man has the beast doesn't have, right? Okay. So without knowing exactly what the chief good of man is, that's the question we ask in ethics. You realize that the good has to involve reason in some way, right? Okay. So, what reasons does Shakespeare touch upon why man should use his reason or use it more than he does?

[24:20] Well, there's about five reasons there. In comparison to what is below man, what's the reason? You know, using your reason, you'll fall to the level of a beast. Yeah. Okay. And that's why Boethius says, you know, we use the names of various beasts apart from reason, right? Yeah. And so we call somebody a pig, right? But Samuel Johnson's friends would call him a bear sometimes because he was given to angry outbursts, right?

[24:53] Okay. In comparison to what is above man. Obeying God's plan for us. Yeah. And then becoming like God, yeah, yeah. Then, in comparison to man himself, oh, man's chief good involves the reason reason, yeah. So he can't achieve his greatest good, right, without this, and he can't be what true to himself, yeah, and therefore he can't be true to his friend, right? Right. Yeah. So that's just all

[25:34] things we touch upon there, right? So Shakespeare has a lot there in 49 words. I'm just saying. Of course, as he says elsewhere and puts in the mouth of Polonius, brevity, which means shortness, right, is a soul of wit, and wit is taken the older sense there, wisdom. Brevity is a soul of wisdom, right? So, I challenge sometimes the philosophers to come up with a to show me a better exhortation.

[26:00] This is 49 words, right? 50 words or less, right? Or even 100 words. I'll give them. No one's ever come up with anything, but I mean, it'd be awfully good to beat this, right? There's some

[26:18] handouts for you today. They have some handouts for you today. For me. If you If you're finished with your thing, found some interesting things in Scripture on the road relating to wisdom. Are you familiar with what Anthony said prior to this? Memorize. Is that error is a result of a disordered movement of reason?

[26:41] We wander in error, right? What Shakespeare says, we wander into illusions. And so, this idea of knowing the road, idea we spoke about before, right? Knowledge of the road is necessary to avoid error, right? Now, Thomas will say in the proemium, right, the logic, you know. Directs reason so that we can proceed in active reason, so orderly, easily, and without what error. Okay, I think those three words are kind of well arranged, right?

[27:25] Because in seeing the order that you should follow, it becomes easier to do this, right? And you avoid error, right, which is due to a disordered movement of reason. Okay. Now our Lord is talking to the Sadducees, right? Remember that the Sadducees don't believe in resurrection, and they want to make something impossible situation by saying that Moses told us that if your brother died with no offspring, you should marry his wife.

[27:59] And so he gives an example of seven brothers who, in succession, married the same woman, but none of them have any offspring. So no one has a more claim to her in terms of having the offspring. Well, then at the resurrection, whose wife will she be, right? And so they make the resurrection thing ridiculous. And Christ says that you would have what? Planaste, right? Plane Oh, yeah. Well, the Greek word planai, something like this,

[28:30] is the same root as error, right? It means it comes with the word to wander. Oh. And we get the word planet from that, right? Because the planets seem to wander around the sky, right? Okay. So he says, Christ says you wander because you don't know the scriptures, so you don't know the power of God. You know, they'll be like the angels. They won't be doing a marriage there, so stupid question.

[28:56] But there is that's very important word then, right? Planet. But it's exactly the same etymologically, you know, in Greek as the word error. Now, if you go back to Shakespeare's Greek comedy, Comedy of Errors, right? Oh. You see some of that meaning of the word error too, and that's wander, right? Okay.

[29:18] But that suggests the necessity of seeing an order before and after a road to follow, right? In order to avoid error. Hmm. And that develops into Thomas's order of those three words. Okay.

[29:37] Now the other the other word is is a different origin. That's the word mistake. There's a kind of two main words in English: error and mistake. But mistake is the idea I think of. You know, you're missing. You're going to take something, right? Hmm. Oh. What's the cause of that? The mistakey. What's the

[30:01] cause of the mistake? Wrong judgment. Yeah. Yeah. Um. Oh. Okay. So you don't grasp. You don't grasp. If I I take, I want to take the truth, and I take the falsehood instead, right? I take this rather than that. What's What's the cause of that? Well, what is suggested by that, sir? You know, I made a mistake.

[30:32] You missed. Yeah, you missed. Yeah. Shakespeare has used the word aim, and Shakespeare the word aim often has a sense of to guess, right? Oh. And when you aim at something, you don't always hit it. Sometimes miss it, right? Yeah. Okay. So you're guessing, you know. You sometimes hit and sometimes you don't, right? Okay. But why should I mistake and take

[31:02] the wrong one? Because you thought it was the right one. Yeah. What was the cause of my deception, actually? The appearance. Yeah. Yeah. A bad aim. Yeah, and this is very important. You know, Plato and Aristotle talk about how likeness is a cause of deception, right? Oh. Right. And you wouldn't be deceived if the false is not like the true, right? And the bad is in some way resembles the good, right?

[31:32] Okay. And you don't see the difference, right? So these two words suggest a couple of different things. That an error or a mistake is result of a disordered movement of reason, and if it proceeds from ignorance of the road to follow, right, of the order in which you should proceed. But the word mistake suggests that the likeness is the cause of deception, right? Now, what faculty of man is named from likeness?

[32:16] Imagination. Yeah. Yeah. And so one of the main causes of deception is what is called false imagination, right? Was tied up with the idea of likeness, huh? And

[32:34] there's a passage there, and was it one of the English poets there? Where he says that the imagination delights in the likeness of things and reason in their what differences, right? Okay. But looking before and after, you're you have to be able to distinguish things, right? To differentiate them, right? So the imagination, if caught in the likeness of things, but doesn't see the what difference, right? And reason is perfected more by seeing the difference.

[33:09] And reason is helped also by seeing likeness, huh? Look at the fourth tool as a dialectician. The third tool is the difference, and the fourth tool is likened, right? And as you say to Monsignor Diana, you know, you know, he puts the tool of difference when he feels likeness, right? Because to see the likeness without seeing the difference is apt to be what he's wanting to mistake, right?

[33:41] Let me give another little thing here now. Sometimes I say using the word wise now, not in the book sense, right? Superiority, knowing one man

[34:02] is wiser than another because. That the other man does not see. Now, am I saying the same thing twice there, or is there no difference? One man is wiser than another; he's superior. No, I don't mean wiser. Because he sees what is before after what the other man sees, or because he sees it before and after the other man does not see him.

[34:56] There, what other thing? You said before that you can you can see a distinction without seeing the before and after. So he might see. Yeah, it's what is before, but he might not see the before and after. Yeah, yeah. Let me exemplify the two. Let's take a very simple example. The first philosopher, Thales, said that water is the beginning of all things. Okay. So he saw nothing before water, right?

[35:26] Okay. Now, if Lavoisier discovered that before water is what hydrogen, then Lavoisier seems to be wiser, right? The one man saw nothing before water. The other guy saw that ah something before that, right? Okay.

[35:48] Or take another example, right? Sometimes we want to do something, but we don't see the consequence that we're going to do. Or maybe we see, you know, the consequence that we're going to do, but not the consequence of the consequence.

[36:04] And the more prudent man, right? He can see the what consequence of the action, right? Okay. And therefore, he's what. Wiser, right? In this matter, okay. Um.

[36:28] I mentioned how when I was in graduate school, there the logic professor came in and he had that text from Thomas's commentary on metaphysics. And he was distinguishing between what the private road, the special way of proceeding in each science, and the common road, right? The common road is before the private road. Now, we didn't see anything before that, right? And Monsignor Dionne came in and distinguished the three, right?

[36:55] Yeah. So the one man didn't see any road before the road of logic, right? Common road, and the other man saw the natural road, right? Before that, right? So he seems wiser, right? Okay.

[37:12] Now, what's the difference between that and the second part? Now, huh? Let's take a simple example from English fiction here. uh, John Dryden, who became a poet laureate of England, right? He describes how, as a young man, there were more plays of Beaumont and Fletcher performed than plays by Shakespeare. Now, I don't think you hardly ever see a play by Beaumont and Fletcher. I don't remember reading one.

[37:51] I read a few of their plays in the books, but I never see them on the stage. You do, okay? But there were more plays of Beaumont and Fletcher performed than of Shakespeare, right? But Shakespeare. So he saw the plays of Fletcher. He saw the plays of Shakespeare, right? And as these years went by, began to realize, hey, but Shakespeare is much better, right? Begin to realize, as he said, that Fletcher was just a limb of Shakespeare, an arm or a leg, right?

[38:21] Huh? Okay. So notice when he was seeing Fletcher and Shakespeare in the early part of his life, right? Um, he had seen both, right? Heard both, right? But he didn't see right away that the plays of Shakespeare were better than the plays of what? Fletcher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see, you see the difference between that and Thales who sees nothing before, right? It's not that that it's like if someone had had

[39:01] had some knowledge of water and had some knowledge of hydrogen, but didn't realize that water was what H two O, right? Okay. He sees what's before water, but he doesn't see it as before water, right? Do you see that? Okay.

[39:24] Suppose I was here with one of my sons, and you see us as two different individuals. Don't realize that I came before him, right? You know,

[39:46] I could know two individuals without knowing which one is what older, for example, right? Huh. And I always talked to so and so. You know, you get yeah, yeah, yeah. Some people look look their age. Some people look younger than their age, right? And so on. And I always thought that so and so was older, and so on, something else, and you you find out, right? See, so it's not like you were ignorant of who was before and who was after, but ignorant of their what.

[40:16] Of the order, right? Okay. So you have somebody who who can tell the difference between wine and beer, but doesn't know wine is better than beer,

[40:31] right? Or someone who can recognize Mozart and and Haydn, but doesn't know Mozart is better than Haydn, right? See, okay. So sometimes one man sees what is before after the other man sees, right? And so in that case, he's going to maybe eventually see that before and after the man doesn't see, right? But sometimes somebody sees both, but doesn't see that one comes before the other, right?

[41:08] In one of those senses, right? I look at you people here, maybe not altogether sure, you know. Are you before him in time, or, or you know, So I'm not altogether sure about that, right?

[41:30] See, most couples that I know, the man is older than the woman, right? But I know a few marriages where the woman is a year or so older than the man, right? It should be that way, but I mean, I say sometimes I know some marriages that sort, right? But I personally know a couple and and distinguishes the husband and the wife, right? Without seeing that which one is older, right?

[41:56] Especially when you know doesn't look their age, right? So let's say the wife is older than the husband; she's before him, right? I see what is before, I don't know that it is before, right? In time, right? Okay, let's go on to a real example What about the wine and the beer. You see what I mean?

[42:38] See the difference, right? But in a sense, I right the statement through Shakespeare's definition of reason, right? Reason is the ability for large discourse looking before and after, right? So if one man succeeds in seeing something before after what the other man sees,

[43:05] if there are quarks before protons, I don't know. Then the man who sees the quarks might be, you know, wiser in that sense, right?

[43:26] You could distinguish between maybe the ocean and the moon, right? Without knowing if it's true that the moon causes the tides or something, right?

[43:45] So it's not so repeating it. It looks like at first, right? And seeing the various senses of these words, right? A man might know the various senses of the. Word to see, right? But not see that the word meaning the act of the eye comes first, and then to imagine comes second, right? And then to understand, right? You know, when I ask students in class, sometimes I'll say, "What it means the word to see?"

[44:32] And the only meanings I usually talk about is what see the eye, and then they'll put the second one to understand, right? Well, because those meanings are so far apart, it's easy to to see they're different, right? But they would sometimes, you know, speak of seeing up in the sense of imagination, right? But they haven't ordered the meanings yet, right? See, so I think when a man sees that the first meaning of to see is the act of the eye, the second is to imagine, and the third is to understand, right?

[45:01] Then he sees it before and after among meanings that someone else might not see, right? Okay. Nowadays, you hear people talking all the time about establishing your priorities. That's kind of a you know fashionable word now. But prior is what the Latin word for what? Before. Before.

[45:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, what does it mean to establish your priorities? What does it mean? To order things according to the importance. Okay. But is it only that? See. No, some things are unimportant, but they need to be done anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, in one sense, it means the better things, right? But sometimes you have to do the the more necessary things first, right?

[46:05] I say to students, for example, which is better, to breathe or to philosophize? That's one of my favorite questions. I know they're going to say to breathe, right? Okay. And I say, now, why do you say to breathe is better than to philosophize?

[46:25] You couldn't do anything else. Yeah, yeah. I say most the reason you're giving there, right? You're saying you can't do anything else in life if you're not breathing, right? That shows that breathing is before philosophizing. Even what sense of before? Second. Second sense, right? Which is this can be without that, and vice versa, right? You can breathe without philosophizing, but you cannot philosophize without breathing. That shows that breathing is before philosophizing in being.

[47:00] Doesn't show it's better, right? See. And then we show later on that the end is what's better, right? And is breathing your purpose in life? You can only do it for so long, but you breathe so you can do other things, right? Eat or something, right?

[47:24] So that it's not the best thing in life, right? You are confusing the second and the fourth sense, right? Aristotle says, "Is the opposite of the worst the best? "

[47:49] No. No saying: "The corruption of the best is the worst. " Well, let's see. Which is worse, to kill a man or kill a dog?

[48:06] To kill a man Yeah. And therefore, we could argue that a man must be better than a what dog, right? Okay. What's the exception to that? That's generally true, right?

[48:30] Which is worse to be mistaken about who won the game or to be mistaken about God? Mistaking about God. Yeah, so therefore, knowledge of God must be better than knowledge of who won the ball game, right? Okay. Has any exception to the rule that the the better is the opposite of the worst? Wait, say it again. Yeah, is it that the opposite of the worst, right, is is best, right, or the opposite of the worst is better?

[49:02] Is there is there an exception to that? Would you be worse for me now to stop philosophizing or to stop breathing? Stop breathing. Yeah, yeah, but that's because breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense, right? Right. So if A is before B in the second sense of before, right, then the loss of A is worse than the loss of what? B. B.

[49:44] Even though B is better than A. So if I stop breathing, I'll stop philosophizing, and everything else I do, right? See, we get breathing is not better than philosophizing, huh? I breathe for the sake of philosophizing and doing other things, right? Which are one of my end or goal or purpose in life, right? When I was a little kid, I used to ask him, "Do eat to live or live to eat?

[50:09] " Right, and some questions about the way some people live, right? We need to live or live to eat, right? But even those days, no one, you know, asked you, do you, you know, breathe to live, or do you live to breathe? It's pretty clear you breathe to live, right? And so, when A is before B in the second sense, right, it is necessarily true then that what the loss of A will be worse than the loss of B, right?

[50:41] But A will not be better than what B. You see that? See, that's why we get very careful with the the second and the fourth sense, right? Because notice where the student is arguing, right? He's arguing. I give him the choice, right? I say, question: Is it better to breathe or to philosophize? And I know they're going to answer to breathe, right? Okay, but then you ask them to defend that answer, right?

[51:21] Why is breathing better than philosophizing? Well, if you're not breathing, you'll be philosophizing something else, right? So they're arguing that because to stop breathing, right, is going to be worse than stop philosophizing. Therefore, breathing must be better than philosophizing, right? See, now if there was not that before and after the second sense,

[51:49] then you could argue, you know, that the loss of this is worse, right? Therefore, it must this must be better. Give another example here that's controversial. The student can see. I say, which is better, to live or to live well?

[52:20] Yeah. But notice, to live is before living well in the second sense, isn't it? You can live without living well, but you can't live well without living, right? So, which is worse, to not live well or to not live? Worse is to not live. Yeah, yeah, okay. There's life, there's hope, as they say. See, so to to to stop living to die is worse than to not live well.

[52:54] But living well is better nevertheless than just living, right? In the sense of the end. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's that's the exception to the rule that the opposite of the worse is is better, right?

[53:20] Matter and honor or dignity versus necessity. Aristotle says about wisdom, right? He says every other knowledge is more necessary than wisdom, but none is better. So he sees a distinction there between the necessary and the better, right? That's what this hinges on. Yeah, yeah. I say when I say to the students, you know, I say which is better to breathe, philosophizing or say to breathe, right? And then I ask them for the reason, and I point out to them that their reason shows that breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense of before, not in the fourth sense.

[53:56] See, but you can say in their defense that if two things don't have before and after in the second sense, right, then the one whose loss is worse is what. Better,

[54:21] better. Give a theological example here, right? Which is better, charity or faith? Charity. Yeah, okay. Which is worse, the loss of charity or the loss of faith? Loss of charity. No. Loss of faith. No. See, if you lose faith, you can't have hope or charity. See, so the loss of faith is worse, right? See, then the loss of charity, but charity is better than faith, right? See, t here is order among them, right?

[55:03] The same way with with hope. There, hope is is in between. Hope is is better than faith, but faith is more necessary, right? And the loss of faith would involve the loss of hope and charity. Okay. So you can't argue from the fact that the loss of faith is worse to faith being better. That's a mistake.

[55:38] So what was I think it was the original? You were phrasing a question originally. Well, the students I asked them which is better to breathe or to philosophize, right? Yeah. Something even before that, even before you started giving examples, you was just giving a simple. Then we would plug in these different examples, like breathing and philosophizing. Is the worst the opposite of the best? The worst necessarily opposite of the best.

[56:08] That was the thing. How to plug these in? Trying to plug them in. that's why Like I said, you know, you know, would you rather, if you had to choose, would you rather be blind or deaf? You don't want either one. I mean, but if you had to, you'd either be blind or deaf. Deaf, yeah. See, so if if to be deaf is not as bad as to be blind, then seeing is better than what?

[56:34] Hearing. Yeah. See, but notice, t here is no order of the second kind between seeing and hearing. It's not that you can see without hearing, but not vice versa, or no, t here is no order of that sort between the two, right? So, if the loss of hearing is not as bad as the loss of sight, then sight must be better than than hearing, right? I am

[57:05] still thinking that is the worst, the opposite of the best. So the worst is not always; the opposite of the best. Well, I am saying that if t here is not an order of the second kind, right. Then the opposite of the worst is best, huh? The opposite of the worst is is better, right? Right. See.

[57:31] Aristotle distinguishes the three kinds of government. There, you know, the good and the bad, and you have monarchy, olig—excuse me, monarchy, aristocracy, republic, and then the the bad ones: democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny. Tyranny is the worst. Monarchy is the best. Democracy is the least bad, and republic is the least good. See. Um.

[58:00] So this is kind of a common rule, right? You know. Which is. Which is worse? We've got the virtues and the vices, right? Huh? Some vices worse than others. Yeah.

[58:31] And then the virtues they're opposed to then must have what? No better. Yeah. Yeah. Which is which is worse? Let's say injustice or or stinginess. Injustice. Yeah. So therefore, justice must be a greater virtue than liberality or generosity, huh? Right. Hmm.

[59:04] I mean, that's a good good rule, huh? Yeah. But but the exception, you know, and it's a very important exception, is that though. When. This is before that in being, right? Right. Then the loss of it is going to be worse, right? Even though it is not better than the other. Because it's more necessary Yeah. Yeah. That's the key to the exception. Hmm. But you can't even think about these things without knowing those senses of before, right?

[59:36] See, the first thing I do is accuse students of equivocation, right? Because they're arguing that that breathing is before, in the second sense, right? I say, I say, which is better? I said, pile of bricks or a brick wall.

[59:54] Why Why do you pay more for a brick wall or a brick house than a pile of bricks? Is it worth more? Huh? Why, because in the case, it's. Yeah, yeah. You're going to pay more for a brick patio than a pile of bricks, right? Yeah. You know. So brick and the bricks are for the sake of the patio or for the sake of the brick wall, right?

[1:00:16] So the end is always better than when it's for the sake of it, huh? Okay. But. You can have bricks without a brick wall. You can't have a brick wall without bricks.

[1:00:29] So let's restate that thing. So the opposite is the worst... The opposite of the worst is better. That's the stated rule, but exception is in sense number two. Yeah, where you have that order, yeah. This is before that being. Yeah.

[1:00:47] You find this strange thing, Thomas? You know, where infidelity is in sense the worst of sins, right? So why not, you know, despair or, you know, the vice opposed to charity and so on? Say, well, you lose faith, you lose hope, and charity, right? You see, you know.

[1:01:09] There's some exception to the exception. When our Lord said it would be better for him if he wasn't born, seems to be saying it'd be better for him not to live than to live.

[1:01:30] Only because of the eternal misery. So that's the opposite of living well. Eternal misery. Yes, eternal misery would be one of these. Yeah. Yeah.

[1:02:20] Is that an exception? I have to think about that a little bit more. You know. Example: What they consider to be charity, they consider to be charity too. You know, instead of with someone like Judas, though, you know, you know, Judas, he despaired, right? Judas of

[1:02:54] of forgiveness, right? He despaired, right. See why? Peter, you know, didn't do obviously, as awful a thing as he did, right? He didn't despair of being what forgiven, right, for his denial of Christ, right? You know.

[1:03:23] So isn't despair worse? Than hatred of God, right? Some sense, huh? Or envy of God, or something like that, right? Pride, you know. You kind of cut off, right? You know. You know?

[1:03:54] Let me just ask a kind of a very, very banal question. that we've been talking about, but, um, Regarding the things that you've been handing out to us, yeah. I wanted to, first of all, emailing you at your email address would be pointless.