Prima Pars
72. Summa I, Q.17, a.3: Whether Falsehood Is in the Understanding; Natural vs. Reasoned-Out Understanding; the Four Kinds of Opposition
Class of 2007-03-15
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/072-summa-i-q-17-a-3-whether-falsehood-is-in-the-understanding/

[0:02] Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightenment. Guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illuminate our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, pray for us and help us to understand all that you've written.

[0:23] So I hope none of you will be like Ajax and your guardian angel will come down and say, "Go to someone else. I don't need you. I can pick these things up myself."

[0:34] They give these descriptions of Thomas when he when he's having some difficulty. You know, he'd be down on the ground praying. You know, and then all of a sudden he'd get up and all be clear. I'm not. So I guess we're up to Article Three of Question Seventeen. Okay. Whether falsehood is in the understanding, right? To the third one proceeds thus: It seems that falsehood is not in the understanding.

[1:02] For Augustine says in the book of the eighty-three questions that everyone who is deceived, right, and that which is deceived does not what understand. But the false is said to be in some knowledge, according as we are what deceived. Therefore, in the understanding, there's no falsehood.

[1:27] Moreover, the philosopher says in the third book about the soul that the understanding is always what correct. Therefore, in understanding, there's no falsehood. And you got to realize that the word intellectus in Latin and Thomas, like the Greek word nous, right? Sometimes intellectus is used for for reason, for the ability to understand. Sometimes it's used for one of the habits, right? And the same way in Greek, the word nous can can mean the faculty, the power to understand, or can mean that understanding that is almost natural, right?

[2:12] Which I sometimes call natural understanding, as opposed to reasoned understanding. And St. Thomas was actually talking about that particular passage. Thomas would explain. So there's an equivocation there in the two meanings of the word understand. But against this is what is said in the third book about the soul that where there is a putting together of things understood, like an affirmation, or negation, a statement, there true and false is right.

[2:48] But the putting together of things understood is something that takes place in the understanding. Therefore, true and false are in the what understanding. So Thomas is going to make a number of distinctions here. I answer: It should be said that just as things have being or existence through, or just as a thing has its existence through its own form, so a knowing power has to know through the likeness of the thing known.

[3:25] Now, do you see that likeness there? When I receive my soul, which is my form, I begin to be a man. Okay. And when the understanding or the knowing power receives the form of the thing known, the likeness of it, it begins to what? To know, to know. Yeah.

[3:53] Whence, just as a natural thing does not fall away from its existence that belongs to it according to its form, but it can what fall away from some what things that happen to it, right, or that follow upon its form. Just as man, from this that he has two feet, and as you can see, he has two feet. he has a foot a foot. My sister-in-law says, "How's your foot?

[4:21] Why, I cut it off yesterday." Not hover from this that he is a what man, right? So the knowing power does not fall away in knowing with respect to that of which it has a what likeness, right, or with respect to that the likeness of which it is informed, right?

[4:49] But it can fall away about what follows upon this, right, or that happens to it. Just as it has been said before, I think on the previous article, that the sight is not deceived about its own what sensible, but about the common sensibles, right? If we're talking about the optical illusions, right? Okay.

[5:15] Which consequenter in a consequential way, and we follow upon, have themselves to that, right? And also about the what sensible per accidens huh? So as a little boy, you know, we used to have what ink bottles, you know, and you'd have your ink pen, you know, and things. These things that get spilled, as kids do, you know. So we used to have, you know, like a little piece of metal that looked like a little lake of ink.

[5:42] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you'd go to your mother's white tablecloth like that, you put it there. Oh, mama! Ah! So is she being deceived by the color of that thing? She's seeing a color that isn't there. No, she's being deceived about the actual sensible. It's not ink, but it's what metal, yeah. Okay.

[6:10] But also, in the optical illusions, you're deceived about the common sensibles, the quantity of things. Okay. Okay. Now, just as the sense is informed directly by the likeness of its own sensibles, private sensibles, so the understanding is informed by the likeness of the what it is of the thing. That's a horrible Latin word, quidditas. But it comes from the word quid, meaning what, right? So it's informed by a likeness of the whatness of the thing, right?

[6:53] So the first thing you might say that reason knows as its most proper object is the what it is of something. Aristotle, of course, is more precise there in the third book about the soul, where he says that our reason's own object is that what it is is something, sensed or imagined, right? And that's why when we talk about God, we have those problems we talked about before, where we have abstract and concrete what names, even though there's no distinction there in God between His being good and His goodness, right?

[7:28] Well, in you and I, there's a real distinction between you and me and our justice or you and I and our geometry, right? Okay.

[7:40] So just as the sense is informed directly by the likeness of the private sensibles, so the understanding is informed by the likeness of the what it is of the thing. Whence about the what it is, the understanding is not deceived. Just as neither the sense about the private sensibles. Thomas is going to later on kind of qualify what he just said, right? Okay.

[8:09] But in putting together or dividing, now he's thinking about a statement, right? Where you put together an affirmative statement, or you divide in a what negative statement?

[8:22] So sometimes Thomas will call the second act of reason the what composition and division, right? Kind of following where Aristotle speaks there in the third book about the soul, where you put together or what separate, right? These things you've understood by the first act. Okay. So I understand what a man is, I understand what a dog is, and then I what later on divide and say man is not a dog.

[8:50] Or I understand what a man is and understand what an animal is, and put them together and say man is an animal, right? Okay. And you start doing that, you can get into trouble. Okay.

[9:03] But in putting together or dividing, it is able to be deceived. When it attributes to the thing who is what it is, it understands right something that does not follow upon it, or even something that is what opposed to it. For in these things, right, the understanding has itself to judging, right, has a sense to judging about the common sensibles, or my mother about the accidental sensibles.

[9:37] But there's also this difference to be observed, right, which was said above about truth, that falsity can be in the understanding, not only because the knowledge of the understanding is false, right, but also because the understanding knows it, just as it knows truth, right. So I know it's true that two is half of 4 and I know it's It's false that two is half of 3

[10:07] But in the sense, falsity is not as something known, right? But now the little thing ran more trouble than you may have thought, because the falsity of the understanding per se is only in the putting together of things in the understanding, per accident, right? Also in the operation of the understanding by which it knows what it is, there can be falsehood, in so far as there is some putting together mixed in there, which can be in two ways.

[10:49] In one way, according as the understanding attributes the definition of one thing to another, right? So if I attribute the definition of circle to man, right? I'm not going to understand what a circle is, but making a mistake, if I say, whence the definition of one thing is false about another thing. In another way, according as the parts the definition put together what to each other, when you put together things that can't what go together, yeah, not be associated together.

[11:28] For thus the definition is not only false with respect to some thing, but false in itself, right? If one should form such a definition as a four-footed rational animal. Okay. Even the old paradox: what is it that begins life on four, and then later on life on two, and finally on three at the end? Yeah.

[12:05] Okay. As if it formed, for example, such a definition, a four-footed rational animal, the understanding is false in defining, on account of it being false in forming this composition that some rational animal is what four-footed.

[12:27] So they say the plants, you know, the plants have their mouth in the ground, they take their nutrient through the soil, and then the animals are what a little bit above the ground, but man should be looking up to the stars.

[12:45] An account of this in knowing simple what it is, huh? Like if I really knew what my angel was, I wouldn't be mistaken, because no putting together there, and knowing a simple thing. There cannot be a false understanding, but it's either true or one understands nothing at all. So either you know what God is, or you don't know what God is. You don't.

[13:13] God is Himself. Okay. So. Chesterton refers to marriage as the maker of the great. He calls it the great quadruplet. Yeah. Okay. So let's look at the first objection taken from Augustine, right? That everyone who is deceived is deceived, and that which is deceived does not understand, right? To the first, therefore, it should be said that because the what it is of a thing is the proper object of the understanding.

[14:10] On account of that, then we are properly said to understand something when reducing it to the what it is, right? We then judge about it, just as happens in demonstrations, in which there is no falsity. So in a true demonstration, which is a syllogism making us know the cause and that which is a cause, cannot be otherwise. It's based upon a true definition, right? So you really understand what the thing is, and in this way is to be understood the word of Augustine that everyone who is deceived does not understand that which is deceived.

[14:52] Not, however, that in no operation of the understanding someone is what deceived. Sometimes I kind of give a little syllogistic argument here about this kind of thing, show also the truth in what Augustine's saying.

[15:12] I'd say now it's impossible for you to make a mistake. Okay. Now, when you're making a mistake, if you are, which is possible, of course, you're thinking something is something other than what it is. Like you're thinking, for example, that a dog is a cat. Okay. Or taking a more clear number, if you say an odd number is an even number.

[15:51] Okay. That's what you do when you make a mistake, right? Now, could someone make the mistake of thinking a dog is a cat? Or make mistake of thinking an odd number is a what even number. See, right? Well, if I understand what a dog is,

[16:17] and understand what a cat is, then I would understand the difference between a dog and a cat. Because if, in understanding a dog, I didn't understand the difference between a dog and a cat, what I'd be understanding is not dog and cat, but something more universal like animal, right? So if by the word dog I'm understanding not dog particular, but animal, and by the word cat I'm understanding not cat in particular, but animal, right?

[16:57] Then there's no falsehood. I'm saying an animal is an animal. On the other hand, to make this that's no mistake. See, mistake would have to be after I understand what a dog and a cat is, but then you'd have to understand their difference. So if you really understand a dog and a cat, you can't make mistake of thinking a dog is a cat.

[17:22] Is it? The same way down here, maybe a more clear example. Can a man really make the mistake of thinking an odd number is even?

[17:34] Well, what does he understand by odd number? What does he understand by even number? If he understands only what they have in common, then when he says an odd number is an even number, all he's saying is that a number is number, and that's nothing more true than that, as the great Boethius says. But if he understands not just number but odd number, he must understand that it's a number that is not divisible into two equal parts.

[18:03] And if he really understands even number, not just number, he must know that it's a number divisible into two equal parts. So if he understands that one is, and the other is not divisible into equal parts, how can he make mistake of thinking one is the other? It's only if he doesn't understand that, right? Now, if I understood, say, by even number just what a number is, it would be false to say an odd number is is a number, right?

[18:31] Or if I just understand number by both of them, so or you understand, you can't be mistaken. So the witches say fair is foul, and foul is fair. How can they make a mistake?

[18:53] How can they, you know, deceive men into thinking good is bad and bad is good? A lot of times I use the word machine. For just about any kind of can, I call a car a machine. I call a computer a machine. Well, obviously, cars are a computer, but a machine, machine. You're not mistaken, though. See, see. Now, could I make the mistake, say, thinking that Cabernet Sauvignon is Pinot Noir?

[19:21] Of course. I probably could. But do I really understand what I'm drinking then? If I'm drinking Cabernet Sauvignon, I think it's Pinot Noir. Do I really understand what I'm drinking? You can see the truth of what the test is saying, right? Okay. But going back to the witches there, and they say, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair." Hover through the fog and filthy air. So they touch upon the two causes of deception there, right?

[20:01] Fog, the mind being confused, right? Or the appetite being corrupted to filthy air, right? And there they're thinking more in the context of human action, right?

[20:16] You're deceived because you're in the fog, or because you're filthy in your life and habits, right? Either one of them or both can can deceive you, huh?

[20:37] But never the mind is deceived. You didn't say there's some failure to understand, huh? Something you don't understand. Now the second one is I mentioned before the word understanding, huh? In Greek you have the word nous, huh? And in Latin they translate nous by intellectus, huh?

[21:05] But as I say, both of these words are used to name the ability to understand. Okay. That's one meaning. And then the fundamental habit of the mind, right? Which I like to call natural understanding, huh?

[21:34] But which Aristotle and Thomas just call nous or in Latin intellectus, right? Um. Now sometimes I go back to the proportion of weightiness. You've heard me use that before. The proportion of weightiness is this:

[22:04] reasoning is to understanding as motion is to what? Rest. Now, when you're reasoning, your mind is always in motion, going from one thing to another, right? That's why Shakespeare used the word discourse in defining reason, reasoning. But as the word understanding etymologically shows you, the mind is what standing still.

[22:39] Now, most of the time we have to reason out something or to think out something before we understand it, right? Okay. But as you know, there can be rest before or after emotion. So now I'm at rest, right? This is before the motion you're about to see, okay? And now there's a second rest, right? But it's after my motion, right? Now, is that true about reasoning and understanding?

[23:17] Is there both an understanding before reasoning, just as there is an understanding after? Both not the same sense. Yeah, but before I get to go back to these words,

[23:36] a lot of times I say, "No, you have to think about something before you understand it." And sometimes you think about something and you still don't understand it. So it's not so much a question about there being some understanding after thinking about something or reasoning, right? That there's some understanding after the motion of reason, right? Okay. Now that understanding after the motion of reason, Plato and Aristotle have a beautiful word for it, and the Greek word is episteme,

[24:13] which comes from the Greek word for coming to a halt or a stop. So episteme names a understanding after reasoning, after thinking, right? Now we don't have any word in English. The Latins would translate episteme by scientia, but it doesn't have that etymology. Okay. Now, because of the lack of a single word in English, I translate episteme by reasoned-out understanding. Okay. I use a a speech rather than a name, right?

[25:00] Which I think captures what it is. Okay, because I don't have one word for it. Now, but is there an understanding before reasoning, right?

[25:20] Well, I argued that there must be for the following reason: if reason understood nothing before it began to reason, there was nothing to reason from. Right. So there must be an understanding before reasoning. Now, what shall I call that understanding? You see, well, Plato and Aristotle, Aristotle rather, just calls it nous, right? And Thomas just calls it intellectus because it doesn't involve any reasoning, really, to speak of.

[26:02] But because I call episteme, I don't have a word for it. I call it a reasoned out understanding. Then I call this natural understanding. So natural understanding

[26:19] is what we come to understand naturally, rather than having to think it out, reason it out. And it must be something that was kind of hidden to us at first, right? And people are more aware of the process of thinking out something and coming gradually to understand it. So they're more aware of this understanding that comes after thinking out something and reasoning it out. And it's kind of this otherwise part hidden.

[26:43] And that's why the great philosopher Aristotle, when he takes up the virtues of reason in the sixth book of Nicomachean Ethics, he takes up episteme and art in the sense of right reason about making, which everybody knows is kind of cooking, the art of carpentry, and all the other arts. And then what foresight, right? Everybody knows that there's someone who got foresight, like Winston Churchill. I just read another biographer of the book about him.

[27:14] Was over there in England. He had a man of foresight, then prudence, another word for it. But those are more known. There are those three virtues of reason: episteme, right, like geometry, at least

[27:29] foresight or prudence, like the foresight of Churchill or George Washington or somebody, right, and the art of the carpenter and so on, right. And then after that, he takes up the two virtues of reason that are about beginnings. Nous, as he calls one of them, right, which is about the beginnings of our knowledge, right, the axioms and their parts, and then wisdom, which is about the beginnings of what all things, or the beginning of all things, huh?

[27:59] But nous and sophia, Greek, are not as well known to us as episteme and art and foresight. You see that? So I use two words, but as they say in Aristotle's text there in the third book of the Soul, and in the Latinization, he used the word intellectus to name that natural understanding, right? So it's not the

[28:35] understanding in the sense of the ability to understand, right? To the second, it should be said, explaining Aristotle's text there, that the understanding is always correct, according to the understanding of the beginnings, right?

[28:52] About which one's not deceived, from the same reason by which one's not deceived about the what it is. For the beginnings, meaning the axioms, are known to themselves at once when their parts are known, from the fact that the predicate is posited in the definition of the subject. So once you know what a whole is or what a part is, it's kind of obvious that the whole is more than a part, right?

[29:20] Once you know what before and after is, it's kind of obvious that nothing is before itself or after itself, right? Or once you know what a beginning is, that nothing is a beginning of itself, right? There's always some distinction between the beginning and that which it is the beginning, right? So that Aristotle is referring to. To there,

[29:46] do good and avoid evil. He's talking about there. Everybody knows that. In fact, even says in the Ethics and the Philosopher, guy doesn't think you should honor your father and mother. He doesn't need an argument. He says he needs punishment. That's kind of the foundation of of ethics, but also of episteme, right?

[30:16] Okay, now we come to Article Four, right? This is about the opposition of true and false, huh? Now you may recall when we talked about God being one. Thomas had some general articles on one, many, and so on, and he asked whether one and many are what opposed in some way, right? And do you recall in what way one and many are opposed?

[30:53] Well, if you go back to God being I am who am, right? You can talk about the opposition between being and what non-being, right? Okay. Now, this is a very important thing in philosophy and our thinking to know about opposition, right? That means so.

[31:21] There are two places where Aristotle talks very explicitly about the kinds of opposites, and one is in the Categories, right before he talks about before and after. And the second place is in the fifth book of Wisdom, fifth book of Metaphysics, where again he talks about opposites right before he talks about before and after. Okay. Now, the juxtaposition there of those two is not by what chance, huh?

[31:57] And later on, Thomas will talk about the distinction of things, right? Sometimes he'll speak of formal distinction and material distinction. Now, what the hell does that mean, huh?

[32:28] Well, material distinction is based upon the what continuance. Okay. Now, continuous quantity, at least the fundamental kinds, not time, but you know, line and so on, it is part outside of part, right? And one part is here, and one part is there, and so on. So, if I talk, let's say, about the beginning, the end of this line, it's two points. They're distinguished by their what? Place in the continuance, right?

[33:12] Okay. And not really different; those two points are they in kind, right? A different kind, but they differ in their position in the continuance. And likewise, they differ from the point right there in the middle, right? Okay.

[33:31] And that's kind of the distinction between all of us around the table. I want the distinction between these chairs, right? Because wood is continuous; can be cut up and so on. You have many chairs of exactly the same kind. But now, formal distinction is based upon what? Opposites. Okay, and it's more a difference in in kind. Okay,

[34:00] based on opposition. This becomes very important to understand these things. when you get to the Trinity, right? Because we believe that the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit are really distinct. But is it by material distinction or formal distinction? Yeah, because there's no body, nothing continuous in guys altogether simple. Okay. But now, as a formal distinction, what kind of opposites are they? Yeah, yeah. Now it's amazing that when Aristotle distinguishes the kinds of opposites, he distinguishes four kinds: contradiction, right?

[34:49] Lack and having, contraries, and then relatives. And when Thomas is exploring the basis of the distinction between the Father and the Son, for example, he shows they can't be distinguished by the opposition of contradiction or lack and having, or by contrariety. You have a reason for each one of those, and so by way of elimination, they must be distinguished by relatives. Okay. Now, when Aristotle talked about relatives, there's a chapter on relatives in the Categories, huh?

[35:27] He doesn't use the word relative or relation. The Greek is pros ti right? Pros ti, which in Latin is translated very literally as "ad aliquid towards something," right? I am a teacher towards you, right? You are towards me a student, huh? Or I am towards you shorter or taller or something, right? Okay, you get the reverse. Um. Now, if you looked at the at the text of Saint John's Gospel, he says.

[36:06] En arche en ho logos, huh? In the beginning was the word, so okay. And the word was what? Towards God, right? He uses the very word that tells us, right? Saint John. That the distinction between the Father and the Son, or between the logos, as he calls him there, and the Father, is that the logos is towards the Father, right? So that's confirmation of this. But Thomas arrives at it by either argument, right?

[36:44] If they're really distinct, it's by material or formal distinction. It can't be by material distinction because God is altogether simple. He's not a body and so on, right? And then the formal distinction can be of four kinds, right? Now he's going to eliminate three of those four, right? But now the greatest opposition is that of contradiction.

[37:09] And this is the opposition between being and non-being. Okay. There's two very famous axioms that are based upon this opposition. That something cannot both be and not be. It's impossible to be and not be. And so they make it more precise and say it's impossible to be and not be at the same time, the same way, right? But basically it's impossible to be and not be. And the second axiom is that you must either be or not be.

[37:44] So sometimes I, you know, play Hamlet, come out on the stage, and I'd say, to be or not to be. That is the question. And then kind of paraphrasing it a little different, it's a question because you can't both be and not be. And because you must be one or the other. See? Or if I said, you know, to eat or to breathe, that is the question.

[38:14] Well, it is, Because you can both eat and breathe, and you better do both, right? Okay. So contradiction is the greatest opposition of being and non-being, right? And if you take contradictory, strictly speaking, everything must be one or the other, right? Either you see or you don't see. Either you're a chair or you're not a chair. Any other possibility?

[38:47] Either you're a dog or you're not a dog. Either you're God or you're not God. Okay. Either you're a sinner or you're not a sinner. No, they don't. You know what's going on? Okay. So that's very interesting opposition, right? Now the next kind of opposition in Latin, I call it privation, right? But in English, the word is lack, right? Lack, and then the the having.

[39:18] Now lack and having are not as much opposed as being and unbeing, because they share a common what subject, right? So to not see could be said of the chair there, but the lack would imply what that you don't see, although you're the kind of thing by nature that is able to see and should see, right? So like the opposition between blind and sight, let's say, right?

[39:48] Now strictly speaking, there's an exception to this, right? Not everything has either sight or is blind. That's only man and those animals that are apt to have sight, right? and By nature, should have sight, and then they either have sight, or they're blind, right? Okay. Strictly speaking, the chair is what? Not blind, right? Although you can say the chair does not see. You see, it can't see.

[40:19] It sees, and therefore you're forced to say it doesn't see, right? I can't say it sees, but I I don't have to say it's blind, is it? Okay.

[40:34] Now, the third kind of opposition is even less, and they are called contraries. Now, contraries are sometimes said to be the forms or species, right? Furthest apart in the same genus. So they're not one is not just the lack of the other. Although, as Aristotle points out in many places, one of them tends to be kind of lacking in comparison to the other. But it's not simply the lack of the other, right?

[41:07] So if you take something like, let's say, virtue and vice, okay? The vice is lacking something it should have. But is vice really the lack of virtue?

[41:22] No, no. Vice is something real. So the man has got the vice has got a real habit, a real inclination to do things he shouldn't do. It doesn't mean he not have the inclination to do good things. He's got a real inclination to do bad things. And therefore, as I often say to students to kind of bring this out, it's easier to make a just man out of a boy than to take a criminal from the jail and make him a just man.

[42:06] He's going to resist you more because not only does he lack the virtue of justice, but he has a real inclination to the opposite of this, right? Okay. Or it's easier to bring up a woman to be chaste, let's say, as a little girl, bringing her up the right way, meeting Jane Austen, so on, than

[42:35] to take the prostitute, right, and make a chaste woman out of her. You know, that was kind of a standard example. The Paris prostitutes always falling back into their ways sooner or later, right? Okay. Because they have a real what inclination on you, they've acquired a habit. So you see the difference there between those those two, right? Um. Yet the vice seems to be something kind of lacking in comparison to virtue.

[43:05] So the contrariety is not as great a what? Yeah, they have more in common. They have common only the same subject, right? In other words, the virtue of justice and the vice of injustice are both in the the will. Okay, just as blindness and sight are in the same subject, but they're also in the same genus. They're in the genus here of what having, right? This is a common genus.

[43:33] Like blindness and sight, only have a common genus. Blindness is really non-being in a subject, non-being of something in a subject capable, right, of having.

[43:46] Now you can see how Thomas wouldn't have too much trouble eliminating these three from being the basis of the formal distinction between the Father and the Son, since God is I am, who am, and both the Father and the Son are God. Obviously, the distinction can't be based on being a non-being or upon lack in having, because then one would be, or even contraries, because one involves a kind of lack, right?

[44:14] Okay, and then they have a difference in form. When you have one and the same nature. You know the famous words there in Saint Paul. There, He was in the form of God, right? They took on the form of a slave, right? Well, the form refers to the what nature of God. Okay, Aristotle explains. He takes up the word nature. How the word form comes to mean what a thing is, right?

[44:39] And Saint Paul uses that same meaning that Aristotle does. So contrariety is a diversity of form, okay, diversity of species. So obviously that can't be the basis for the distinction between the Father and the Son. Then they would be the same nature and the same form. So he can eliminate those three, and then he's left with what the relatives, right? The relatives are the least opposed of all, because they have a common genus.

[45:10] They're relatives, right? But one posits the other. See, see these other ones. You know, something could be just without someone else being unjust, right? But can someone be a father without someone else being a son, or vice versa? Okay. So Thomas says this opposition is different from the other three, right? And sometimes he divides these three against that one, following the rule of what? Yeah, but this doesn't stand out, right?

[45:44] Aristotle gives the four, right? In this, you know, actually the category is in this order right here, you know, but but Thomas will, you know, Aristotle students brevitate, right? Does right away into four, but then he he divides it. Thomas does it sometimes. He divides right away into four, but then this is obviously quite different from the other three. So that's the way it goes. Okay, relative again.

[46:12] It's a common genus, but what's the, how's that? But the but the also one posits the other, right? Okay. In other words, if I am a father, I've got to have a son. Yeah, yeah. The vice versa. Or if I'm double, there's got to be half out there, right? Well, these one tends to eliminate the other, right? Like blindness, lunacy, sight, and so on. Interesting. It's kind of an interesting corollary.

[46:40] I was mistaken once. I I thought at least as far the church has defined something I don't know, but I thought that St. Bonaventure said in baptism if you don't follow the order, of the Holy Spirit to say I baptize you in the name of the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Father, it's invalid. I thought that, but he doesn't say that. Yeah. And he said because the reason why it wouldn't be invalid.

[47:02] He says because the names themselves posit the order. So he says that's why it wouldn't be invalid if you did it unless the church has decided otherwise. they'd said. that's invalid I don't know.

[47:16] So it's a little brief thing on the opposites, right? Okay. Now we mentioned how the most universal things, right, are things like being, thing or something, one, and true, and also good, right? Okay. But each of these most universals has an opposite. So being and non-being, something and nothing,

[47:57] and one and the many, and true and false, and good and bad. So if they all have an opposite, what kind of opposite is it? Okay.

[48:17] On the case of being and non-being, it should be kind of obvious which opposition it is, right? Okay. What about something and nothing? How are they opposed? Isn't it being and

[48:35] non-being? It seems to me that I remember a text of Thomas where he talks about that, but seems to me that something and nothing are more or less like being and non-being. They don't have any common subject, right? I remember as a little boy thinking about nothing and said, "What if there was nothing? Absolutely nothing." Because you don't mean to think this thought, but but obviously you

[49:03] know. There's no something there, right? Wouldn't that be something? Yeah. Okay. Now, in terms of the one and the many, that's one, right? Which is what kind of opposition is there between the one and the many?

[49:31] Well, no, but see, what does one add to to being or something? Indivisible. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not pure negation, right? In a sense, what one means is undivided. being Okay So the opposition is one of what?

[50:13] No. What? Yeah, yeah. I just look back for a second, just to refresh your mind a bit on that. That was the last thing taken up about God, right? Yeah.

[50:29] And before he showed that God is one, he took up, you see, in general, what's Article Two of Question Eleven, right? So look at by the article that the answer should be said that one is opposed to the many, but diversi modo, right? For the one which is the beginning of number, that's not the most universal meaning of one, and it's often confused with that, right? That's behind Plato thinking that all things are numbers.

[51:10] That's a big mistake. But the one which is the beginning of number is opposed to the multitude which is a number as the measure to the measured, right? For the one has the notion of a first measure, and number is a multitude measured by one, as is covered in the tenth book of metaphysics. That's not the one I'm asking about. Okay. The one that is convertible with being.

[51:37] Now, what does convertible mean? What does it mean to say that being and one are convertible? Means that all being is one. Yeah, it means that every being is one, and everything one is a being, right? Okay. The one which is convertible with being is opposed to multitude per modum privationis. Privation is the Latin word for for lack. Okay. The undivided to the divided, right? Okay. This is because we tend to know the simple to the composed to the one to many in a way, right?

[52:16] So it's interesting, yeah. Being and non-being, and and I think also something and nothing seem to be opposed in the first way, but one and many in the second way. Privation of. Now, what about true and false?

[52:37] Okay. Good and bad, also. Well, gotta be careful there, see. Oh. Because the first meaning of bad is a lack. Oh yeah. You know that's why Augustine says sin is nothing in the man whose sin becomes nothing. Now Augustine doesn't speak as precisely as Thomas does, right? Because strictly speaking, if nothing is like non-being, that's not what the bad is. But the the bad is not having what you're able to have and should have.

[53:11] That's what the bad is. Okay. That's the first meaning of bad, right? Now there's a second meaning of bad. The thing that has such a lack, right? And the third meaning of lack of bad is what causes such a lack, right? So it's because blindness is bad, right? That's bad to be a blind dog or a blind man, right? And because it's bad to be a blind man or blind dog, it's bad for me to poke your eye or something, right?

[53:46] You see. But the fundamental meaning of bad there is blindness, isn't it? Right. And the other senses are said to be blind or to be bad because of that, right? But what is blindness? It's a lack, privation, right? Okay. Now, if you talk about a bad human act, what does that mean? See, a bad human act is not simply a lack, is it? So that's bad in the second sense.

[54:17] But you have to understand the bad in the second sense by going back to the first sense. What is the lack which the bad act has? You can speak of having a lack, right? What is the lack that makes the bad human act bad? What is it?

[54:43] Yeah. In other words, a good human act should be a reasonable act, right? So a bad human act is an unreasonable act, right? It's lacking the order or the measure that reason should give for this, right? Okay.

[55:03] So if I drink before I operate on you, catch you up. That's a disordered act, right? If I drink before I lecture, you know.

[55:25] Or if I eat or drink too much, right? You see? Okay. So the lack of order, right? The lack of measure is the first meaning of bad there, right? Then my act is set to bad because it lacks that measure order, right? And then you're bad because you led me into that excess or something, right? You see, or you're you're there's an occasion of me to to eat or drink too much, right?

[56:02] and Guinness is falling off a bit, and this is coming out. You know that you know not everybody's drinking their their Irish beer for St. Patrick's Day. This is weird. I never drank green beer of you.

[56:16] Maybe that has something to do with taking a ball from drinking beer. I don't know. There's something like ten, twenty percent. I know a little drop off of Guinness. So scandalous. Higher

[56:33] is no more. Okay. I think it's kind of interesting to see, huh, that being a non-being and perhaps something and nothing are opposing one way, right? One and many in another way, and now perhaps we'll find out that true and false are another way, huh?

[56:55] We take a break now. You want to? Yeah, sure. Time to take a break. Good. Before we look at this further, I go here.