Prima Secundae
1. Thomas's Premium to the Ethics: Wisdom, Order and the Parts of Moral Philosophy; Aristotle's Opening — the Good Is What All Want
Class of 2011-01-27
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/001-thomass-premium-to-the-ethics-wisdom-order-and-the-parts/

[0:00] In the Name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, guardian angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Deo gratias. God, our enlightenment. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, in order to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand all that you've written.

[0:31] But tomorrow's the twenty eighth, I guess. That's when they celebrate Thomas's feast. Now, you know. That's when you do. We do it on March third. We have Saint Ephraim tomorrow, so we have to we have to reconcile our differences with our separated brethren. Warren Murray's saying he's having a dinner at his house there, you know, in honor of Saint Thomas, and he invites some people there who are.

[0:52] Just don't forget Saint Ephraim. You have in front of you Thomas' premiums in Nicomachean Ethics, and Aristotle's premiums, huh? Now, what's the difference between these two premiums, huh? And of course, what does the word "premium" mean? It means what? Paving the way. Paving the way is probably the best way to translate. Paving the way. Paving. the way. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[1:29] And just about every work of Aristotle has a premium at the beginning, right? And they have different things in the premiums, but the most important thing is to see what you're aiming at in this book. But sometimes it'll say something about the importance of the book, right? And something about the way of proceeding, and so on.

[1:54] And perhaps two of Aristotle's most important premia is this one to Nicomachean Ethics, huh? And the premium to wisdom there at the beginning of metaphysics. Because these premia are in a way, respectively, one a premium to practical philosophy, and the other to what looking philosophy, theoretical philosophy. One thing I've noticed when reading these two premia and comparing them to other ones, in those two premia, and perhaps only in those two, do you have at the end of the premia an epilogue, where Aristotle recalls what he's done in the premium.

[2:48] And when Thomas, in his commentary, divides Aristotle's premium he divides exactly into those parts. But in both epilogues, Aristotle recalls the last thing he did. And then works his way back to the first thing he did. So it's kind of interesting what he does. So if you look at the end of this premium here, for example, which is on page three, because I have another text of Aristotle starting on page three,

[3:24] he says, "Let this much about the hearer, who is or is not a suitable person to hear lectures on ethics, and why. That's the last thing he does in the premium, and how it should be received, how not to proceed,

[3:44] and then the first thing he does, and what we propose. Then use the Greek verb form of for premium, pave the way, which is probably the best way to translate in English.

[3:59] I used to always tell students that almost all of Aristotle's books are divided like Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and what's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet divided into?

[4:18] The prologue and the what play? And the prologue is very short, but it prepares in some way you for the kind of play that's going to be here, that's going to happen, right? Now, in Thomas's some of Thomas's other works, you'll find at the beginning of them is not the word premium, but the word prologus, huh? Prologue, right? Epilogue is the opposite, right? At the end.

[4:53] Now, what is Thomas's premium? Well, Thomas will have a premium that kind of stands back and looks at the broader picture, right? While Aristotle's premium will be directed to the book at hand, right? But Thomas, in his premium, he'll stand back and, kind of, for the help of the teacher or the help of the student, he'll kind of see this in a larger context, right? So maybe we look at Thomas's premium here first.

[5:33] So you all have that in front of you there. So it begins with a quote from the philosopher, which is Aristotle, right? When Aristotle is describing the wise man at the beginning of the premium to wisdom there in the Metaphysics, the sixth and the crowning attribute of the wise man is it belongs to the wise to order things. That's a very famous quote. Sapientis est "ordinare" in Latin.

[6:04] It's quoted again and again, right? Now Thomas here gives the reason why what Aristotle says is true, right? The reason for this is that wisdom is the greatest, huh? Perfection of reason. Wisdom is the name, right, of the greatest perfection of reason. And in that premium, Aristotle will show you what wisdom is about, right?

[6:34] And it's a property of reason to know order, right? Now that fits in also with the definition of reason that we learned from William Shakespeare. Remember that definition of reason? What is it?

[6:54] Large discourse. Yeah. Ability to large discourse, looking before and after. Yeah, the ability for large discourse, looking before and after, right? And before and after is what you mean by order, huh? So if reason is characterized by looking for order, then the knowledge that perfects reason will be most of all a knowledge of what order, right? And most of all for the highest perfection of reason, which is that of wisdom, huh?

[7:31] And he makes a comparison there, huh? He's talking about being proper to reason to do that. For although the sense powers knows some things absolutely, to know the order of one thing to another belongs only to understanding or reason, huh? Thomas often uses "absolute" as opposed to order, or "absolute" as opposed to relation, so on, right? Okay.

[8:01] And now in the second paragraph, he touches upon a very famous distinction, which is given again by Aristotle in the twelfth book of Wisdom. He's talking about the order of the parts of the universe, how the one part of the universe is ordered to another part of the universe, huh?

[8:23] But in addition to all of that, there's an order of the whole universe to God, as its end or purpose, huh? And Aristotle says the order of the parts of the universe to each other is for the sake of the order of the whole universe to God. This is a very famous teaching of Aristotle, huh? But it's a more general point, huh? That the order of the parts of some whole is for the sake of the order of the whole to its end or purpose, huh?

[8:59] So he says, but a twofold order is found in things. One is the order of the parts of some whole or some multitude to each other, as the parts of a house are ordered to each other. And the other order is the order of things to their what end?

[9:23] So you can talk about the order of the different parts of this chair to each other, right? Like this part here comes in at what kind of an angle?

[9:35] Acute angle? A right angle? No, slightly obtuse, right? Now the reason why this part of the chair has that order to the seat is on account of the order of the chair to something called what sitting, right? So sitting is not a part of the chair. But the whole chair is for the sake of sitting, and therefore the order of the parts of the chair to each other is an account of their order to sitting.

[10:13] In Aristotle it seems about the whole universe, huh? That the order to each other of the parts of the universe is an account of the order of the whole universe to God as its end or purpose. Pretty profound thinking, in Aristotle's part, right? But you can see it in these things, like an example of the house here, right? The order of the parts of the house to each other is an account of the order of the house to being dwelling to protect us from the snow and the other elements out there, yeah.

[10:43] For as the philosopher, huh? That's antonomasia for Aristotle. For as the philosopher says in Book Twelve of the Metaphysics, the order of the parts of an army to each other is because of the order of the whole army to its leader, meaning to the end or purpose of the leader, huh? Which is victory, right? Okay.

[11:09] I know Aristotle takes example of the army because that's a more clear example of order than than the city, right? The more chaos in the city, right?

[11:25] So if I have a chance to speak to soldiers, they tell me, you know, Aristotle compares the order of the whole universe to the order of an army. Which is nice way of

[11:40] complimenting them, I guess. Now, because of this connection between reason and order, that reason most of all is looking before and after, Shakespeare says, trying to know order. You can, to some extent, divide or distinguish the knowledge of reason by the order that it what considers, huh?

[12:09] And Thomas begins there by saying that order is compared to reason in four ways, huh? Now, obviously, you can't divide things into four, right? That's that's just shocking, right? So Thomas is obviously combining these two divisions, right? So if you read the text, you'll see

[12:34] that he has in mind, although he doesn't state explicitly, a distinction that obviously is of order in comparison to reason, the order not made by reason, and the order made by reason. Okay.

[13:01] And then he subdivides the order made by reason, starting at home with the order made by reason in its own what acts, huh? Its own acts, and then in the acts of the will,

[13:31] voluntary acts. Now the will is not reason, but it's what close to reason, right? And then he goes to the order made by reason in exterior matter, huh? Like the order made by reason in wood, huh? Or in metal, or in plastic, or okay, so in matter, huh? Exterior matter, okay.

[14:01] So he has a division into two, and then the second of these he divides into three, and that's how he gets his four what orders, right?

[14:15] So he says there is an order which reason does not make, but only considers, as is the order of natural things, huh? And this is an order made not by reason but by nature, maybe ultimately by God, but okay. Now in the next three orders he'll use that same phrase, an order which reason by considering makes, right? And first in its own acts, as when it orders its thoughts to each other, and assigns the thoughts which are signifying vocal sounds, huh?

[15:01] So in the syllogism it takes two statements, right? And he orders them to a conclusion, right? There is moreover a third order which reason by considering makes in the acts of the will, right?

[15:24] So I might want money, right? Therefore I want to play the stock market or something. I want to buy a ticket to the sweepstakes or something. I want to bet on a horse. Hot tip, you know, got it from the horse's mouth.

[15:50] And there is a fourth order which reason by considering makes in exterior things, huh? An outside matter, which is a cause such as a box or a house, right, or a chair, and these other things you make.

[16:10] On the basis of this distinction of order, which is what reason is especially looking for, he now distinguishes four different what groups of knowledge, right? And because the consideration of reason is perfected by the firm disposition of knowledge, there are diverse forms of knowledge according to the diverse orders which reason properly considers. For the consideration of the order of things which human reason considers but does not make, belongs to what natural philosophy, right?

[16:49] I take the example. I say, you know, spring comes before what summer, and summer before fall. Now, if we were doing it, we might have fall followed by what spring again, right? Instead, is followed by winter, right? Yeah. Well, like it or not, you're not responsible for that order, right? In this part of the country, anyway, right? Nature sees that winter follows upon fall, right? Before we get back to spring.

[17:27] Now he says, in like natural philosophy would be what metaphysics or wisdom, right? Which considering the order made by God, he might say, huh? Okay. But whether the order is made by nature or ultimately by God, it's an order not what

[17:48] made by our reason, right? Okay. So he's not concerned here with distinguishing between natural philosophy and metaphysics. That belongs to metaphysics to do that. But he does mention both of them, right?

[18:03] The order, however, which reason by considering makes in its own act belongs to rational philosophy, or as the Greeks call it, what logic, right? But logic and ratio, logos and ratio, are the equivalent words in Greek and Latin, which considers the order of the parts of a speech to each other. That can be speech that we call a definition, right? The order of the genus and the differences, and the order of beginnings, as Thomas often causes calls the premises of a syllogism, right, to conclusions.

[18:49] But the order of voluntary acts belongs to the consideration of moral philosophy. You'll see it later on. No problem here with the with our naming and Thomas's naming, because he's going to use moral philosophy to cover not only what we call ethics, but also what domestic philosophy and political philosophy. Okay.

[19:21] And that's of course the order that Aristotle is going to be concerned with in the Nicomachean Ethics, and also in his book on what politics, right? In

[19:34] the order which reason, by considering, makes in exterior things or exterior matter, constructed by human reason, belongs to, and they called these in the Middle Time the mechanical arts. They used to distinguish between the mechanical arts and the liberal arts, right? Or the servile arts they call them, and the what liberal arts. So you see how Thomas is kind of standing back and seeing the whole life of reason in a sense, right?

[20:10] It's always after order, but sometimes an order not made by reason, sometimes an order made by reason, huh? And he subdivides the second one because he wants to get us down to the subject in a way of this here.

[20:28] Therefore, thus, therefore, it belongs to moral philosophy, about which turns the present intention to consider human acts as they are ordered to each other and to the end, huh? And there he's going back to that division that he

[20:50] touched upon from Aristotle, right? The order of the parts of the whole to each other in their order to their what? In their purpose. So he's saying, well, in moral philosophy, we're going to consider what the end of man is, right? And then the order of everything else to each other and account of that end, huh?

[21:18] And notice he uses the term human acts, huh? And now he defines what he means by human acts, right? Not just anything done by man, but something that is peculiar to man, right? I call acts human which proceed from the will of man according to the order of what? Reason, right? For if there are some acts in man which are not subject to the will and reason, they are not properly, as that specifically, called what human, huh?

[21:51] But natural, just as is clear about the acts of the plant soul, which are what? Generation, growth, nourishing, right? Okay. So I guess when I fall asleep at night, I'm what? Digesting my food, I guess. Okay. And you know, when I was younger, I was growing, right? Why, you're growing, right? But did I choose, you know, to do this? No, these are not really consideration then of moral philosophy, right?

[22:32] If I put too much food in my mouth or drink too much wine, that that could be subject to my will, right? Therefore, just as the subject of natural philosophy is motion or a movable thing, so also the subject of moral philosophy is human acts ordered to a what? An end, huh? Thomas is putting in there.

[23:05] Second page. Now Thomas is going to divide up practical philosophy, right? Okay. And actually, you know, the way we divide practical philosophy, and the way we divide, say, looking philosophy, and the way we divide the mechanical arts, it's all a different way in each case. Okay.

[23:43] He's going to explain now the basis for the division of practical philosophy into what we call ethics, what he calls monastic, but not in the sense in which you do monastic, and then domestic philosophy, right? And then political philosophy.

[24:01] It should be known, he says, however, that because man is naturally a social animal by nature, that man is a social animal, political animal, since he needs many things for his life, which he cannot himself alone prepare for himself. It follows that man is naturally a part of some multitude of men, through which he is given help to what? Live and to live well. Now this help he needs for two things.

[24:38] First, for those things necessary for life, without which the present life cannot be at all, and the domestic household, of which he is a part, aids man in this. For every man has from his parents generation, right, and nourishment, and discipline, and likewise also the individuals who are parts of the domestic family in each other the necessities of life, right.

[25:12] So the wife makes the pie and the man grills the steak and the thing, and shovels the snow too. Otherwise, there'd be no pie. Yeah.

[25:27] So the family's things necessary for the very being or living of man, right? Especially when he's young. But in another way, man is aided by the multitude of which he is a part for a complete sufficiency of life, so that man not only lives but lives well, right? And I couldn't live well without Shakespeare, but there's no Shakespeare in my family, which I come from. I couldn't live well without Mozart.

[25:59] But no Mozart in my family. I couldn't live well without Thomas Aquinas, but there's no Thomas Aquinas in my family. I couldn't live well without what? Wine, and there's no vintner in my family, right? So in order for me to live well, I've got to what? Be a part of a community called the city, right? And thus the civil multitude of which he is a part helps him not only as far as bodily things, right?

[26:35] As regards many artificial things, which one also does not sufficient, but also as regards even moral things, in so far as insolent youth, whom paternal admonition is not able to correct, are forced through public power by the threat of punishment. huh? My mother used to say to me, you know, get out of hand, it'll be out of my hand, you know. Now, the next point Thomas is going to make here.

[27:11] He may explain it a little more simply than the way he has in the text there, but he's saying that not every action of individual man is an action of his family, and not every action of the family is an action of what? Yeah, okay. So if President Obama or something like that sits down to relax this evening, right, and picks up his Shakespeare, right? Would you say the United States has sat down to read Shakespeare today?

[27:45] No. Would you say the Obama family is reading Shakespeare? No. But when a father makes a decision to, let's say, buy a house in this neighborhood, right? Because this is a better neighborhood or a safer neighborhood or something, then this is a action that he does as father, right? Okay.

[28:10] If I sit down, you know, to read some fairy tale to my children, right? Well, just considering my good, the good of Duane Berquist, I wouldn't sit down to read the fairy tales, sit down to read Shakespeare, right? But as a father, I choose to what? Read the fairy tale to my children because that's fits their age or something like this, right?

[28:36] Don't have a TV set, but I have some good fairy tales. Okay. But now, when I go to vote, huh? And therefore, if I was a member of the government if I was a member of the government. If I was a, then I would do some things that are what? Belong to me as a citizen, right? Okay. So that's why there can be kind of a what?

[28:59] Distinction between these things, right? What should I do concerning the fact that I'm a man? I'm an animal that has a reason. I should study geometry, you know. I should listen to Mozart, etc., etc. Right?

[29:17] But that's concerning the end, which is the good of Duane Berquist huh? The good of his mind, right? Huh? His mind won't be good without Euclid, okay? His emotions won't be good without Mozart.

[29:33] We'd be disagreeable to be without any wine. But then you see, the good of the family, the common good of the family, is really the what? Children, right? Huh? So you're considering now a different end and the things you might do, right? But not everything that the father does does he do for the good of his family, right? He has some Time a little bit to himself, okay.

[30:04] And even a president, right, or a senator, is not always doing everything for the good of the country, even if. he okay. But Thomas is going to make this point, right?

[30:22] It should be known, however, that this whole, which is a multitude of citizens, or the domestic family, so the city or the family, right, has only a unity of order, by which something is not simply one, right? And therefore, a part of this whole can have an act which is not an act of the whole, as a soldier in the army has an act which is not that of the whole army.

[30:53] And I'm trying to give this across to students. I used to take this example: if a student from, let's say, Holy Cross, beats up a student from Assumption, should another student from Assumption will go over to Holy Cross and find some Holy Cross students beat him up? Is that the just thing to do? See, I don't think so. See, or if an Italian, you know, kills an Irishman, I'd say, right?

[31:25] So an Irishman find an Italian, he can kill. See, no, see, that's obviously unjust, right? And you wouldn't say that that what that Italian did or what the Irishman is going to do is an act of the Italian community, or vice versa, right? Okay. Um.

[31:49] But if I hit you with my fist, right? In hitting me back, do you have to hit my fist? They might hit me in the jaw or something, some other place, right? And I said, well, I didn't. My jaw didn't hit you. My fist did, and you, and you, you know. But you see there the difference in unity of the man, right, and its parts. So that you could hit me another place than my fist, right?

[32:20] Or in the case of you know, some of your family did something for my family, doesn't that right? Someone else in my family did the big guy in our family could go beat the little guy in your family? That doesn't make any sense, right? Okay.

[32:38] Nevertheless, he says the whole itself has some act which is not private to some part, but of the whole, Has the striking together of the whole, what army, right? And the drawing of the ship is an act of the multitude drawing the ship.

[32:57] So he goes on to compare these two differences, right? There is, however, another whole which has unity not only in order, but in being put together, right, or bound together, or even in continuity, by which unity of something is one simply, right? And therefore, there is no act of the part which is not of the what whole, right? Whether I hit you with my fist or kick you, in the case, it's an act of a, an aggressive act of a.

[33:35] And likewise, in things composed or bound together, the act of the part is chiefly of the whole. And therefore, it is necessary that the consideration of such a whole and its part belong to the same knowledge. However, it does not belong to the same knowledge to consider the whole which is only a unity of order and parts. And hence it is that moral philosophy, and I put in parentheses because of the change in meaning, there, right?

[34:05] Which we call this practical philosophy, as the whole now, right? and we use the term moral philosophy as kind of a synonym for ethics, right? Which is the first part, right? I guess I try to explain that in terms of the the philosophy of doing is divided into three parts. The first of these considers the acts of one man ordered to an end and is called monastic, right?

[34:28] Well, that could be misleading here, right? Especially to think of monastery as being a community, right? Now he says we but we call this part what ethics today, right? So ethics is considering primarily the end or purpose of an individual man, right, and what he should do to achieve that end, right? The second, over, considers the acts of domestic multitude. What's the end or purpose of the what family, right?

[34:57] What's the end or purpose of marriage, and it's called what the domestics, huh? But the third considers the acts of the civil multitude. What's the purpose or end of the city, and is called what politics, or we call it sometimes political philosophy.

[35:18] So in the books that have come down from Aristotle's school, there is a number of books called ethics, right? Eudemian ethics and so on, and and the Nicomachean ethics is the most famous. There's also a book called domestic, right? From Aristotle? Yeah, no, they don't think it's by Aristotle, it's by somebody in the school, right? Yeah. And then there's a book called the politics, right? It's political philosophy.

[35:45] What Aristotle did is write the greatest things, right? So he wrote about the city, right? Maybe to his assistant there to do the book on domestics, right? Just like he wrote the books in natural philosophy and animals. And left the book on plants to one of his students, right? He picked out the best, right, for himself.

[36:08] So you see what Thomas is doing here. He's giving a kind of a what premium to the whole of what practical philosophy, but also situating it in the whole of the life of reason, which is knowing especially order and this distinction of the four kinds of the orders they have on the board here, right, and distinguishing our knowledge by the order that it considers, right. So natural philosophy and later on wisdom or metaphysics, first philosophy, is concerned with the order not made by reason, made by nature and by God, and then the order made by reason in its own acts is considered in logic, in the acts of the will in practical philosophy, and in matter by the what mechanical arts as they're called or

[37:01] the servile arts they're called sometimes, okay. First one is natural philosophy, and yeah, it's in the text here before before he came in, at the bottom of page one there, right? Yeah. So after he distinguishes these four orders, then he distinguishes the knowledge of reason by the order that it what considers, right? So everybody's

[37:36] a copy of that now. Okay, I'll give you a copy. Thank you for this. Okay. So let's look now at Aristotle's premium to the Nicomachean Ethics. So the first of the two things I reproduced here. The second thing that begins on page three there is the time when he draws a line around the purpose of man, right?

[38:31] Which is also in Book One, right? It's not until Book Ten that he gives his final consideration of the purpose of man. Now, as we said before, there's going to be three parts to this premium, and the first part is going to be saying what it's aiming at, right? Aristotle is going to bring out what's most essential there. It's aiming at the end or purpose of man, right?

[39:07] So he's leading up to that, huh? And then he's going to say some things about how we should proceed in this science, huh? What you should expect me to proceed in what way? And then finally, who is or is not a suitable here. You may have to exclude some of you people if you're not a suitable here,

[39:28] either because you're you're too inexperienced in life, or because you're leading a disordered life, huh? So if you have no experience of the things that ethics is about, you won't be able to understand the book, right? And if you're leading a disordered life, won't do any good to know it, so because the end or purpose of this is not to know, but to to act in accordance with this knowledge, huh?

[39:56] So let's look at Aristotle's beginning point. Here, first paragraph. Every art, he says, and every science, and likewise every action and choice, seems to aim at some good. Now, as Thomas will explain in his commentary, Aristotle is giving a kind of induction, right, from the whole of human activity. Every art, right, like the art of carpentry, right, is that seeking some good? Good to have chairs, huh? Should we be sitting on the floor here, right?

[40:38] Or it's good to have a bed. Good to have a table sometimes, right? Good to have a house. How about the art of cooking? Does that aim at anything good?

[40:54] Well, Aristotle says it aims at making the food tasty, not healthy. Important to think. Yeah, but the medical art aims at health, right? Okay. So if you go through inductively different arts, every art seems to be aiming at some good. Why do they make these ballpoint pens? Why do they make these computers? Why do they make this car? You know, huh? Good to have a car. Thomas says, you know, you can travel without a horse, but for travel away, you got a horse.

[41:29] Now you got to have a car, right? You shouldn't have said that as a man, because didn't the points require you one foot? I think that was part of their rules. Not any horse. So I always thought that was a strange example. I don't know. He's

[41:47] complaining he was not living well. He's not traveling well. Okay. So you could you could break this down, right? He says every art, he's you could, and maybe the class, you know, Aristotle would, right? You know the, as far as you know, these are like almost what Aristotle's notes, right? So it's very condensed, right? And you know, some people I know, when they give a public talk, they might have an index card with the points they want to touch upon, but they're going to expand upon those, right?

[42:18] And that's why it's a joke there. But this one professor wasn't too good. He's going to be my board, right? I said, oh, you'll probably go back to the stuff we talked about the first semester. And so I said to my cousin Donald, Do you have any notes? Yeah, I said I got the whole course on one index card. So then he's got good those phrases and so on, you know, and and you can.

[42:47] I guess you know I've heard all the cases of our you know students have reduced a guy's course to an index card and said, Now, did you really say any more than this to the semester? Dow Jeffery says, No, I guess not.

[43:02] Yeah. So you could expand upon this and go through each each art, right? And you know the art of the what, the painter or something, right? The art of the auto mechanic, right? all these arts, but they all seem to be what aiming at some good, right?

[43:23] Then every science, right? In geometry, are you aiming at some good? Yeah, to know the truth about triangles and squares and other marvelous things like that. Okay. In natural philosophy, trying to know the truth about natural things, right? So every art or every science is aiming at some good, right? And then he touches upon foresight. Thomas says, because foresight directs what choice and action, right? And he touches upon the will, right, which chooses these things.

[44:01] And likewise, every action, every doing, what you're doing, you're doing it for some purpose, right? It may be nothing more than your amusement, right, or or to distract yourself or something, right? But in every choice, is regard to some good, right? Why did you choose to have steak rather than chicken, or chicken rather than fish, or something, right? And anything better than salmon, right? Some good out there, yeah, right.

[44:33] So they all seem to aim at some good, right? Whence he says it has been well said that the good is what all what desire.

[44:46] Okay. Now another way you could translate that. Translated into foolish, fully English. Fully English, not foolish. English It says the good is what all want Let's say this word, quanta Okay. The good is what all want. That's a nice alliteration. What and want.

[45:26] But you could also translate it with the Latin word desire, right? Now this is kind of the beginning of thinking about the good. This is really the first definition of good, and it's very important to see that that is what we all, to some extent, see as the first definition of good, right? Aristotle is giving it here in the context of of ethics, he writes. He takes this from man.

[46:07] But you know, if you go back to the the famous dialogues of Plato and so on, you know, Socrates was talking to a boy, like he talks to the slave boy of Meno, right? And the boy is going to give you kind of the first notion of the good, right? Now, if you read the dialogues of Plato, it's kind of marvelous that he represents men as they will in conversation usually proceed.

[46:36] And when Socrates asks them what is something, what they give is examples of this thing, right? And so when he asks Meno, say, what is virtue, Meno gives him examples of virtue, right? And when he asks Euthyphro what piety is, he gives him examples of piety, right? When he asks Theaetetus what is science, he gets examples of science, right? But

[47:08] you'll find that it's invariably what people do at first. They give examples rather than a definition. And so sometimes Socrates will try to say, well,

[47:21] you're giving me examples of this, but you really haven't told me what this thing is, huh? You've got to bring out what's common to all these things. Why do you call them all virtue, right? Or why do you call them all sciences, right? What do they all have in common, right? But this is because of the natural way of knowing, right? Which is from the senses into reason.

[47:45] So the senses know examples, right, to some extent, and reason has to compare the examples and separate out what they have in common, huh? And that's the way you start to approach the what definition, right, huh?

[48:02] So if I asked a little boy, you know, what what is water? He'd say, well, that's water, you know, that's water, you know, and you know, and if there's a stream out there, that's water, right? He'd point to examples of it, huh? So if Socrates asked the the slave boy or the little boy today, what is good, the boy would give examples of things he considers to be good, huh?

[48:24] So he might say, candy's good, right? And and pizza's good, maybe he'd say, right? Okay. And then you say, well, is the only things you eat that are good? How about baseball? Oh yeah, baseball's good. Football, yeah, that's good, yeah. How about vacation? Yeah, that's good, you know. So he goes on giving examples of things and that he considers to be good, right? And then Socrates would say, now, what do these all have in common?

[48:57] Are they all sweet? Well, the pizza isn't sweet. Are they all edible? Well, no, you can't eat the baseball. It's not a taste, but anyway.

[49:10] So. What do they all have in common? See, why do you call these things all good? And if the little boy reflects upon them a bit and so on, maybe gets a little help with Socrates, but he seems to call the things that he wants good, right? And the things he doesn't want, they're not good.

[49:32] Yeah. So, in a sense, the little boy, the first notion he has of good is the good is what all want, right? Okay. So that's kind of the place to begin your thinking about the good, huh? Okay. You could also say the good is something that's wanted. Okay. That's another way of saying it. Now,

[50:27] if you go now back to Socrates in the dialogue called the Euthyphro, right? He asks Euthyphro who's going to prosecute his father for impiety. This guy must know something about what piety is, if he's going to prosecute his own father for impiety. And Euthyphro says, "Oh yeah, I know what it is." But when Socrates asks him what it is, Euthyphro gives him examples, right? And so Socrates has to get him to try to bring out what they have in common.

[50:57] And Euthyphro comes up with something like this: that the pious is what the gods approve of, right? Now, this is certain problems because the gods don't all agree as to the same things. But even if we admit Euthyphro that there's something that all the gods approve of, right? So you give us your first definition of the pious. The pious is what all the gods approve of, right?

[51:31] Or we who don't think there are more than one god, we wouldn't have that problem, right? We say the pious is what God approves of, right?

[51:41] Or you might say sin is something that displeases God or something, right? Okay. But then Socrates asks another question, right? And as Heisenberg said, right, to ask the right question is often to go more than what halfway to the truth, right? I'm trying to emphasize the point that Heisenberg is making.

[52:14] I used to say, let's represent by a line the time and the effort it takes to get from ignorance to knowledge, right? Now the average person might think, you know, where along this comes the question? So it comes at the beginning, doesn't it? Right? And then the long thing is to. No, no, Heisenberg says, huh? If you just take mathematically the middle point here, right? Asking the right question

[53:02] is to go more than halfway. That's an interesting point. Now it fits in very well with what Socrates is doing too, because Socrates, when he has a conversation with the slave boy, and Socrates, you know, has made this strange statement to Meno that learning is just recalling what you already know. And Meno says that's an interesting idea, but do you have any proof? And so he takes the example of the slave boy and he says, "has he ever studied geometry?

[53:43] Well, the slave boy was born in the house of Meno and had never been applied to geometry, right? Never studied it. And so Socrates asks him, you know, 'How do you double a square? What would be the side of a square twice as big? ' And he says, 'You double the side. ' And so he doesn't know. But then Socrates starts to ask the slave boy questions, and he recognizes his mistake.

[54:08] And out of the answers the slave boy eventually comes the way to what double a square. if you Read the dialogue, right? So Socrates, says, I didn't teach him, right? The way to double a square came out of his answers, came out of what he knows already. Therefore, learning is just what calling, yeah. Now, without going into all the difficulties during Socrates' position, right? What's interesting about that is that Socrates is only asking questions, right?

[54:38] And by asking questions, the slave boy seems to discover the way to double a square by himself. And therefore, it's all coming from the slave boy. But actually, the questions were from Socrates, and by asking the right questions, you're almost there at each step. And so he arrives at the idea, right? Okay.

[55:05] So he'll do it. The slave boy will say, "Let's see this original square. " And Socrates says, "Now, couldn't you put another square here, exactly like the original one next to it? " And he says, "Yeah. " Another one below it, just like that, right? Another one, fill out the corner. And how many times bigger would this be? And he says, "Four times. " And then he takes what the diagonals.

[55:33] The slave boy can see that each one is being divided in two. So this one right here is twice as big as this, right? So all these steps he goes through are very simple, right? But eventually, the slave boy sees as Meno really that the diagonal of a square is going to be the side. Of a square twice as big. That's kind of a marvelous thing, to you start to think about it, you know.

[56:00] It comes out of what the slave boy can see right away when Socrates asks him these simple questions, right? You can see right away this is four times as big, and this is half of that, right? Half of four is two, and therefore the diagonal must be the side of a square twice as big, right? This square right here is half of these four, and therefore twice as big.

[56:23] Marvelous, marvelous.