Prima Secundae
101. Hope, Fear and Despair: Socrates' Hatred of Arguments and Whether Despair Is Contrary to Hope (ST I-II q.40 a.1-4)
Class of 2013-01-24
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/101-hope-fear-and-despair-socrates-hatred-of-arguments-and-whether/

[0:00] In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, guardian angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas, Deo gratias.

[0:14] God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, or 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.

[0:35] So I guess we're up to the fourth article here in question forty, whether desperation is contrary to what hope, huh? And just for a second, look back at the premium to question forty and the articles following questions, following that. He's beginning the consideration of the irascible emotions, huh?

[1:02] And he says, consequently, we're not to consider about the passions of the irascible. It's at the beginning of article one here, question forty, and first about hope and desperation, right? Second, about fear and audacity or boldness, as we say sometimes. Third, about anger, right? Huh? Well, notice that of course hope is put before desperation, right? And fear before boldness, right? And anger is put in third place there, right?

[1:40] Huh? But hope and fear are two of the four what? Principal passions, huh? So Thomas will have articles in various works on the four principal passions, which are joy and sadness, huh? Hope and what fear, right? Huh? Okay. So a little passage of Shakespeare, huh? From Henry the Sixth, huh? Part three, act four, scene six, huh? And there's a lot of changes of fortune there in the Henry the Sixth plays, right?

[2:17] Huh? So King Henry's back in power, right? Master Lieutenant, now that God and friends have shaken Edward from the regal seat, right? And turned my captive state to liberty, my fear to hope, my sorrows unto joys, huh?

[2:41] So at our enlargement, what are they due fees, right? But take the one line there: my fear to hope, my sorrows unto what joys, huh? There you have the four chief passions there: fear, hope, sorrow, and what joy, right? Huh? And notice how that also helps to understand the difference between tragedy and what comedy, right, huh? Because fear and pity, which is a form of sorrow, are the emotions that tragedy moves us to right, and purges, right?

[3:20] Why hope and mirth, which is a form of joy, are the ones that comedy moves us to, right? So that the chief passions are the ones that tragedy and what comedy divide amongst themselves, right? Of course, this is good, so it's going from fear to hope, from sorrow to joy, right? But if it's going the other way, your your hope is turned into fear, right, and your joy into sorrow, right, huh?

[3:49] Okay. And you see something like that in the in the constitution, the pastoral constitution, on the church in the modern world, right? I think in English, you know, when I first saw it in English, they had you know hope and fear and joy and sorrow, right? You'd say something like the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears of the citizens of this time, right? The church is sharing it and so on, right?

[4:19] I was looking at the Latin this morning, of course. They have the the words for hope and fear, but they they for sad for sadness rather and for they use luctus, which I guess is close enough to sorrow, the signs of sorrow. But but was it for fear? They had angor, angor, which I guess means a. thing held by the throat That's what's like fearful about that.

[4:50] Kind of funny word, though, you know. Yeah, exactly. What is the word? But the other one's a cousin of fear, you know. Yeah. So those are the four what principal what passions, huh? And so among the irascible ones, and hope and fear are very fundamental, right? And this helps you to appreciate the Socrates there in the great dialogue called the what Phaedo, right?

[5:20] Because in the dialogue called the Phaedo, Socrates is gets involved in the question of whether the soul is immortal or not, right? And he makes a joke saying, you know, they're always saying philosophers are talking about irrelevant things up in the sky and so on, you know. But you hardly say it's irrelevant to being dead when it dies. This question does the soul survive death, right? And then Socrates gives some arguments eventually that seem to show that the soul is immortal, right?

[5:53] And everybody's kind of resting in the discovered truth, right? Huh? And but Simeius and Cebes over there in the corner having some kind of a private conversation, Socrates notices it, right? And say, still thinking about this, or you you've gone on to something else, you know? And Simeius and Cebes said, no, no, we're still thinking about your arguments, right? And Socrates says, well, you know, share what's on your mind with the rest of us.

[6:22] And Simeius and Cebes each comes in with a objection to one of the arguments of Socrates, right? Now, all of a sudden, every so Socrates no longer seemed to be what good, right? And now they fall into a kind of what despair, right? And they say, how can you trust an argument? It seems good one moment, and then the next moment or later moment doesn't seem good at all, right?

[6:50] I mean, how can you how can you trust arguments, right? And and of course the only way to know whether the soul is immortal or not is to some kind of argument, right? So if you can't trust arguments, you must also despair of finding out the truth about this, right? Now what does Socrates do at this time, right? Well, the guy who's narrating what happened at this last thing, he said, I never admired Socrates more than now, right?

[7:21] So he tries to lead them out of their what despair, right? And there he gives a magnificent comparison there between the way that a man might become a hater of arguments, and the way a man becomes a misanthrope or a hater of what mankind, right? And this is something what unnatural to to be a misanthrope, right? Like Timon of Athens, the famous play there, Shakespeare. But if a man trusts somebody, they shouldn't trust, and he's let down by this man, right?

[8:03] Or if he trusts somebody more than he he should, right? He's let down, right? Then you might say, well, you can't trust men, you know, they're all you know, out for their own good, you know, they don't care about your good, right? And so on. And

[8:19] but maybe the misanthrope, you know, is a man who's what naive and doesn't understand people, right? And if he understood people, he'd realize that there are a few people that you can trust completely, right? Maybe you can trust your mother, right? Completely. She's going to stick with you no matter what, huh? Maybe you can trust John Paul II or Benedict XVI, you know, completely. But there's very few men you can trust completely, right?

[8:49] There's some men you can't what trust at all, and most men are in between. You can trust them to a point, some more, some what less, right? So it'd be someone who's not wise about men, right? Who would trust someone he shouldn't, or trust someone more than he should, right? And then Socrates says, "Well, it's the same about arguments, right?" And he's really kind of anticipating what Aristotle does, the father of logic, as we call him, right?

[9:25] There are some arguments you can trust completely, and there are some arguments you can't trust at all, and there are some arguments you can trust up to a point, but not completely, right? Some more and some less, right? And if you look at Aristotle's art about arguments, right? You know, the Prior and the Posterior Analytics are about arguments you can trust completely. Sophistic refutations about arguments you can't trust at all, and in the book on places, the Topics, as they call it in English. And in the argumentative part, even of rhetoric, right?

[10:04] You have arguments that are good but not necessary, right? Ones in dialectic you can trust a little more than the ones in rhetoric, right? But Socrates is kind of anticipating this, right? And so he says in the Greek there that we need technai peri logous huh? Technai is the Greek word for art. We get the word technical nowadays, right? And peri about logous huh? Arguments, right? And so he kind of leads them out of their what?

[10:33] Despair, right? Huh? Don't blame arguments, you know, but blame you for not understanding arguments, right? See, but it's beautiful to compare to the misanthrope, right? Because it's probably easier to see there's something wrong with the misanthrope than if there's something wrong with the guy who doesn't trust arguments, right? And well, then Socrates, after he kind of restores their their hope a bit, right? Then he replies to the arguments of Simmias and Cebes, right?

[11:03] And the argument of Simmias is much easier than the argument of Cebes, right? And so bang, bang, bang, down goes Simmias right? And now there's you know just whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, it's not going to be as easy to answer Cebes, right? Huh? So at this point they're getting, you might say, overconfident, right? Over hopeful, you might say, right? That they're going to, you know, do these things, and it's going to be what much more difficult to what answer Cebes, right?

[11:33] Although Socrates does manage to to do that too, right? But he's giving them a little bit of of fear, a little bit of caution there, right? Now that's what the teacher can do, right? Huh? If he sees that the students are getting discouraged, right? Then he could what? Try to encourage them, right? Give them some hope, right? That they can know the truth, right? Huh? But if he sees that the students are what?

[12:02] You know, too hopeful, you know, and so on, and they don't see all the difficulty of the thing, right? Then he might try to what? Inculcate a little bit of fear, right? Huh? You know? And I know my old teacher Kasurik, you know, said that when he was at Laval there one time, he was following a class of Monsignor Dionne, right? Huh? And he had some questions about some of the things that that Dion had been saying, you know?

[12:33] So he decided to go see him in the office there, right? After class, right? And in the office Monsignor talked much differently than he did. And in the class, he said, and Kasurik said, well, well, why did you talk so differently in class? Of course, it's a business of the professor to encourage students, right?

[12:55] But Kasurik was not a man who needed to be encouraged, right? He's a man you had to kind of do what? Restrained and limit somewhat, right? Huh? And I remember when I first met Monsieur Dionne before I went to Laval, right? he came down, you know, the years way down to Saint Paul, the Twin Cities there, and then they question him what he's talking about, thinking about, and so on.

[13:17] And Kasurik was saying, you know, that Dionne was maintaining, you know, that logic was more important for wisdom than natural philosophy, right? And that's not true, you know. How do you know about the unmoved mover? You know, if you don't know about the unmoved mover and that he's not a body, you don't know that the soul is immortal. You don't even know there are immaterial things, right?

[13:38] You know, he goes over these things with me on the phone. You know, getting me ready to so he's gung-ho, right? See, well, the minute I I brought it up, it was Dionne of course he pointed out distinctions to Kasurik that he hadn't seen, right? Because the way that Dionne was talking about was the way in which what logic has this what universality, and it's an immaterial science, and the way wisdom is, right?

[14:05] And so in that way, it's disposing for it, right? But another way, natural philosophy disposes for it when it argues that there exists these immaterial things, and so on, right? So Kasurik hadn't seen that, right? He'd seen it, you know. So,

[14:21] and I remember the time I always the time I went my the outline of my thesis what I was planning to do for my thesis, right? And so he was very gentle with me, and he asked me what I meant by this and what I meant by that, and a few things like that. And finally, he said, "No, more serious objection," he says, and he proposed a change in the order, right?

[14:40] And the minute he proposed that, I could see that that was it, right? In fact, once I had that, I quit the thesis myself, you know. And he said, "Oh yeah," he says, "not good the way it is." So, I don't have any evidence, he says, what I am saying, you know. So you know, kind of cautioning you, you know. Warren R. Used to say, you know, Monsieur Dion's principle of passion is fear.

[15:04] And but you know that was good in a sense because if he came up with a new idea, you know, his first reaction was rejected, right? And you had better be able to defend it and and do it before he would accept it, right? Huh? Okay. So that's what you need in a good what teacher, right? Huh? Sometimes he has to what encourage you, right? Huh? That's why Katsurik was good for me in the beginning because he encouraged me to do these things, right?

[15:29] But then to kind of make you a little more cautious, and Dion even more so, right? Huh? But there is kind of a balance of hope and fear, and you can't say which needs to be encouragement to it depends upon where the student is, here, right? Huh? You know. And but there

[15:54] you see a little connection there, right, between the principle of passions, right? That you are talking about hope and fear, very important, right? Now the other thing, like in the is in theology, right? Huh? And in Thomas's commentary on the Psalms, is one place where he says this, right? That if you hope in God but have no fear of God's justice, right? You'll come become what presumptuous, right?

[16:19] Okay. On the other hand, if you have only fear of the divine justice, right? And no hope in His what mercy, you would what despair, right? So you'd have to kind of what balance it, right? Okay. But now it would belong to the confessor or someone of that sort, right? To know when he has to what do one or the other, right? He's got a woman who's had an abortion and she's despairing.

[16:48] You know, he's not going to. you're going to hell. No, no, That's not going to be helpful right away. You know. You know, you might have to give her what hope in the divine mercy, right? Okay. But if you have someone who's careless and so on, right? And you know, as most sinners, I guess, they go back to the same sins again, the dog returns to his vomit.

[17:10] as it says in Scripture. Then you might have to inculcate a little bit of what healthy fear of the divine judgment, right? But you have to get a certain balance of these two, right? Okay. That's kind of interesting, right?

[17:29] Why in the case of tragedy and comedy is kind of you know emphasis just upon the hope in the one case or in the other case upon the what the fear, right?

[17:42] So it's very important to see these things. Again, if you go to the great Mozart, right? I've spoken before here about the symmetry of the last five symphonies.

[18:01] The last five symphonies have the symmetry A B C B A, right? The symmetry that you have in Midsummer Night's Dream, right? Where it begins in the court and then it goes to the house of but the peasants who are going to prepare something for the wedding feast. Then it goes to the forest and then back to the what peasants' house and then back to the what court.

[18:30] Yeah. So you have that kind of symmetry, that beautiful one, right? And I've spoken that symmetry in regard to the parts of the Mass that are sung, right? So you have the Kyrie and the Gloria and the Credo and then the Sanctus and then the what Agnus Dei, right? Well, the Kyrie and Agnus Dei are prayers of asking for mercy, right? The Gloria and the Sanctus are more praise of God, right?

[19:01] And then C, the odd bird, right, is the Credo, which is really a confession of the faith, right? So it's A B C B A, right? Well, Mozart's last five symphonies, huh? 36, 38, 39, 40, and 41. Did you know there's no 37th symphony of Mozart? Huh? I remember myself, and I'd heard the thirty-sixth, and I'd heard the thirty-eighth, and I'd say, what's that thirty-seventh is? I'd really like to hear it, you know."

[19:29] I thought, "Oh, there is no 37th symphony." That he had written an introduction for Michael Haydn, the brother Joseph, right? He wrote an introduction to one of Michael Haydn's symphonies, and they thought the symphony was by Mozart, and so they thought that was the 37th symphony, and then they realized it wasn't by Mozart. But they never changed the numbers, right? So the last five symphonies are 36, 38, 39, 40, and 41, right?

[19:55] Well, 36 and 41 are in C major, and they're a Imitation or likeness of magnanimity, right? Which is one of the virtues that Aristotle talks about in the Ethics, right? And then the thirty-eighth symphony and the 40th symphony are about what? Courage, right? But there's two things in courage. One is to approach the dangerous, right?

[20:25] The other is to sustain blows, okay? And so the thirty-eighth is more approaching the evil, right? It's had a sense of power than the thirty-eighth symphony, you know. Makes Beethoven look feeble compared to what Mozart does to the thirty-eighth, huh? By the fortieth, it's more like patience, you know, courage in the sense of patience, right? But the odd one is the thirty-ninth, right? Which is in E flat major, right?

[20:52] Huh? It's more like joy or something, right? But if you take the two beginning and the two last, right? Huh? The courage is in the sense about what? Fear, right? And magnanimity is about what? Hope, right? So fear and hope, right?

[21:12] Now Thomas also says irascible seems to share in reason more, right? Because you do one thing for the sake of another, which is a reason, right? As opposed to concupiscence, which is kind of an immediate thing. And so that's part of Mozart's, you know, more rationalist music, right? Than that of any other composer, you know. But so you can see that in the proemium here, right? Hope and then desperation—that's kind of it's the opposite of hope, right?

[21:43] And then fear and boldness, right? But fear is put before danger, right? And then anger is put last, right? You see the order there is is not accidental, right? And there's not really a question here on desperation, but it comes in here in the article we're looking at now today, right? Article 4, whether, you know, this is the opposite of hope, right?

[22:14] To the fourth, then one proceeds thus. Article four. It seems that desperation is not contrary to hope, right? Well, to one thing, one thing is what contrary, as is said in the tenth book of the metaphysics, huh? So there's a consideration of contrariety there in the tenth book of wisdom, right? We won't go into the reason for that, but just recall that for a moment. And Aristotle and Socrates did this before, right?

[22:48] Socrates in the Protagoras, right? He has an induction there that there's only one what? Contrary, right? Yeah. We just talked about kids. What's the contrary of sweet?

[23:05] And some people want to say, you know, well, it's got contrary, sour and bitter, right? But though it's really, what's furthest away from the sweet is not sour, you know, sweet and sour pork, huh? But bitter, right? Bitter is what's furthest away, huh? Contraries, right? But hope is contrary fear, right? Well, go back to the passage there from Shakespeare, right? Huh? As you know from the first book of Natural Hearing, the physics changes between what?

[23:51] Contraries, right? My fear to hope, my sorrows unto joys, right? Well, sorrow and joy are what? Contraries, right? And and you change from sorrow to joy, in comedy, right? And it would be the reverse from joy to sorrow, right? In what? Tragedy, right? Like a fellow goes from joy, huh? To great sadness, huh? Well, if fear is to hope, as sorrow is to joy, then isn't the contrary of fear.

[24:21] Isn't fear the contrary of hope? Okay. And isn't tragedy and comedy contraries? The one moves us to fear, and the other to what? Hope, yeah. The one to joy, the other to sadness, right? Yes. That's beautiful. Beautiful thought. I like that, right?

[25:04] Moreover, contraries seem to be about the same thing, right? But hope and desperation are not about the same thing, for hope regards the good. While desperation is an account of something bad that impedes one from obtaining the what? Good. Therefore, hope is not contrary to desperation, right?

[25:28] Moreover, to emotion is contrary to motion, right? Huh? Why rest is opposed to motion as a what? Privation or a lack, as we'd say in English, right?

[25:45] But desperation seems more to imply immobility than motion, right? Huh? Therefore, it's not what contrary to hope, which implies a motion of extending yourself to the good. Hope for, yeah.

[26:04] There's an article where Thomas talks about you know how you know the theological virtue of hope you know is named from the passion hope right and it's kind of unusual that a virtue should be named from emotion right but there's a certain likeness between hope for your what going towards a difficult good right there seems to be something virtuous about striving for a difficult good doesn't it so it has a certain likeness in this very nature of this emotion right to what virtue right huh now of course the theological virtue of hope is is not in emotions it's in the what the will right huh but it's for a good that is difficult to what to obtain right huh

[26:48] but desperation seems to be you give up don't do anything right I know I tell this story there when I was first in philosophy I was at some kind of a social affair, I forget what a social affair it was but I happened to get talking to a a doctor's wife you know huh So we were making a conversation and she asked me what I was studying and I said philosophy oh she says let me tell you about this young man that I know who went to the University of Minnesota so he read author A and author A said one thing and then he read author B he said something else and then author C, he said the third thing and he he got more

[27:24] and more mixed up he couldn't you know and finally he just you know threw the books down and he goes out and lives on a farm and he refuses to pick up a book now so she was concerned about me you know huh you know see well that's you know just give up right you know and you despair you know you know it's all over now it's going to sit there and mope I'm not going to move or do anything right huh by motion up and motion down right those are what are contraries right huh but this seems to be motion and rest right huh

[28:08] it's interesting that joy and pleasure sometimes though spoken of as being what rest or quiet huh? But we'll see how how the master does this, huh

[28:22] but against this is that desperation is named through contrariety to what hope huh I guess that is the word maybe yeah maybe the etymology of this right From Latin huh

[28:42] what Thomas says I answer it should be said that as has been said above in changes there is found a twofold contrariety one according to what excess to contrary terms in such a contrariety Is found only in the passions of the what concupiscible, as love and hate are what contrary, right? I suppose you say the same thing about joy and what sadness, right?

[29:21] In another way, through excess and recess with respect to the same term, going to it and fleeing from it, right? And such contrariety is found in the passions of the irascible. What a smart guy this guy is huh

[29:45] So he understands the difference between contrariety in the concupiscible and contrariety in the what? Yeah, just like with fear and boldness, right? You know. You're not about to have a fight, right? So if I have fear, I run away from you, right? If I have boldness, audacity, I go towards you, right? Okay, that's kind of contrary to having the irascible, right? Between fear and what boldness, right? Pick a fight with the guy in the bar, right?

[30:21] Huh? As he steps up, you realize he's really much bigger than you are. Oh shit! Time to get out of here. So he says the object of hope, which is a bonum arduum. It's a good that is difficult to achieve, right? He said there's no difficulty, right? And like you got a bowl of candy, sometimes you're reading something, or you're watching TV, or somebody's watching TV and watching the game, and they're eating popcorn or something, you know?

[31:12] You know, is that hope? Yeah. They hope to get the popcorn, you know? It's so easy, just to reach down. You do it automatically without even thinking, you know? And you know, pretty soon you eat the whole bowl, right?

[31:25] But the object of hope is a bonum what? Arduum. It has the aspect or the notion, the character of being what attractive, in so far as it's considered with the possibility of being obtained, right?

[31:47] And thus there tends toward it hope, right? Huh? Which implies a certain approach, huh? Going towards, right? Huh? But according as it is considered with the impossibility of being obtained, right? Huh? It has the character of something repulsive, right?

[32:11] For as is said in the third book of Aristotle's Ethics, right? Huh? That when it came to something what impossible, right? Then men what depart, right? Huh? Give up. And thus regards this object desperation, right? Huh?

[32:32] Okay. So the the friends of Socrates there are at one point kind of in despair of knowing the truth about the immortality of the soul, right? Because the only way to know the immortality of the soul was by arguments, and arguments that seem good can suddenly appear what? Not good, right? Huh?

[32:59] So how can you what? Trust me, right? I was meeting Thomas the other day there, and he was quoting Augustine, right? Who was talking about how Plato and and how the philosophy before Plato had despaired of our coming to know the truth, right? And it's because all they knew was about the sensible world and the senses, right? And the sensible things they thought were always changing. So Heraclitus had kind of summed up by saying, you know, that it's a river, right?

[33:33] Huh? And the river is always what flowing. So how can you say anything definitely true about it, huh? I used to when I was teaching, I'd always, you know, say, you know, where is Berkman? Well, he's in front of this chair. Well, no, he's in front of this. chair. All you can do is point because if you tried to say where he is, he won't be there when you finish saying where he is, you know.

[34:00] And then the senses are what? Well, you say, well, you know, the one guy says it tastes good. The other guy says it doesn't taste good, right? Huh? The one guy says it's it's cold, you know. And the other guy says, no, it's fine. It's not it's not too cold, you know. And the man who's who's sick, you know, tastes bitter the food, you know, and the other person.

[34:20] So you don't get the same judgment, you know, from different people, right? Huh? So neither the senses were by you would know if you could know, right? But the things you're trying to know are not knowable, right? So how the heck can you ever know anything, right? So they'd actually despaired of what? Of truth, yeah, yeah. And then, as they say, Socrates kind of turned away then from natural philosophy, right?

[34:49] And went to study, you know, politics and so on and ethics, right? Seem to find out anything there, you know. But now Plato, in kind of desperation, right?

[35:03] Socrates had begun to develop the idea that hey, by definition, you can seem to know things, huh? And if you can define, you know, what a square is and what a circle is, you could know that a square is not a circle, right? But if you could define a square and a quadrilateral, you could know for sure that a square is a what quadrilateral and so on.

[35:28] And so Socrates was the first guy to to want to re redefine things, right? Huh? And Aristotle says, you know, he was trying to syllogize, right? Because the basis of syllogism is is the definition, huh? And then Socrates, then Plato came along and said, well, if we know by definition, we're not knowing by our senses, right? But by our reason, right? And are we knowing something that's always changing?

[35:58] This what a square is always changing? No, it's something unchanging, And that's introduced this world of what forms? Yeah. And then Thomas says, you know, Augustine trying to follow Plato so far as you could in harmony with the faith, right? Try to you know see the things we know as being based in the ideas of God, right? You know, so on. He goes on to those things.

[36:24] So you can see Plato is trying to overcome that despair, right? But maybe he's made a mistake about these things, right? And then finally goes into talking about how Aristotle did it, huh? But anyway,

[36:46] very interesting. Okay. So Socrates leads them in some way, those guys, out of their despair, right? And they have some hope that they can maybe attain it, right?

[37:05] But Socrates, at that point, the first time in history that I know of, where someone says we need an art about arguments, huh? That technê peri logous, right? And I don't know of anybody who before Socrates that said we need an art about arguments, right? But an art that would help us distinguish between a a good argument and a bad argument, and among the good ones between a necessary one and one that was probable, right?

[37:31] But eventually Aristotle developed that art, right? But kind of anticipated by the great Socrates or Plato. Whence despair? He says implies a motion of a certain what? Withdrawing.

[37:54] An account of this is contrary. Let's say desperation is contrary to hope, as recess to excess, right? Okay. Going towards something and going what? Away from it, right? Other can

[38:15] say it's more striking in boldness and fear, right? Because in fear you're really going away from it, okay? But in the case of despair, you're giving up the seeking of it, right?

[38:34] So when when when Peter denied Christ, did he despair? No, now he wept, huh? But but another guy there, you know, he seems to have despaired, right? Huh? He hung himself, right? Huh? On The tree, right? Huh?

[38:57] So, hope is a very necessary thing, right? And the hope in the Christian, but also hope of the philosophers are very important too, right?

[39:16] Now, how does Thomas reply to the first objection, which says a contrariety seems between hope and what? Fear, right? That's kind of indicated with Shakespeare's words there, right?

[39:30] That fear is contrary to hope, according to a contrariety of objects, right? To wit, of the good and the what? Bad, right? And this contrariety is found in the passions of the irascible, according as they are derived from the passions of the what? Concupisable, right?

[39:58] But desperation is contrary Only according to the contrariety of excess and recess, which is the contrariety proper to the irascible, right? Okay. there's a kind of opposition between hope and fear, though nevertheless, right? Okay.

[40:19] We see, I hope to know the truth, but I might fear that I'm mistaken, right? And Socrates, you know, talks about that wonderful fear he has that he might think he knows and he doesn't know. That's a really bad state to be in, right? Huh?

[40:43] Yes. It's a very common state to be in. Aristotle is speaking, you know, about the early Greeks and their thoughts about knowing and so on. He says they they tried to assign the cause of knowing, right? Huh? But they didn't assign the cause of error or mistakes, and that seems to be more common. He says than knowing the truth, right? So they should have explained. If they're going to explain what you're finding in man, even the other animals, right?

[41:20] You should talk about what mistake and error, right? Okay. But notice that opposition. If there is opposition between knowing the truth and making a mistake, right? Huh? Hoping to know the truth, right? And fearing to make a mistake, right? But one is about the good truth, and the other is about the bad error, right? And that comes back to the concupiscible, right?

[41:57] I love to know the truth, and I hate to be mistaken, right? If I didn't hate to be mistaken, I wouldn't fear to be mistaken, right?

[42:13] Thomas says in the Summa Contra Gentiles error, as magna pars miseriae Error is a great part of what? Yeah, yeah. And even Aristotle and Thomas, it seems, were mistaken. Say about the nature of the sun and the moon and the stars, right? Huh?

[42:36] That they were mortal bodies and so on, right? Huh? You know, Thomas, you know, does say at one point there, you know, that maybe a change in the heavenly bodies takes more time than the lives of many men, right? And that's why we don't see. So he has some where he says there might not be altogether necessity in the argument, you know, huh? But Nevertheless, he I think he followed Aristotle.

[43:05] Think that the sun and the stars are made out of a different kind of matter than the things down here, right? And that the form of the heavenly bodies exhausts the ability of the matter, so there's no corruptibility, right? Huh? And even there in the twelfth book of wisdom in Aristotle's thinking there's these three kinds of substances. So, error as magna pars miseriae. It's a great part of misery, richness, right?

[43:37] And to be mistaken, right? So Thomas would hate hate to be mistaken, right? Now. What Saint Augustine says somewhere, I forget. If somebody's not sure if he loves the truth, ask him if he likes being deceived. Yeah.

[43:55] One way you can show him by the opposite. You don't like being deceived. But that's more in the in the what love and hate, which are in the concupiscible the emotions, maybe in the act of the will actually, but but the analogus to the you know the one thing the concupiscible, right? That's another thing. This thing, you know,

[44:20] it's difficult in many cases to know the truth about things, right? And so, unless I have that what hope, right? I'm going to give up right now. Now Heisenberg, you know, talks about the time when he and Niels Bohr is trying to understand the quantum theory, right? And they have these long discussions all day long, you know. And then they go for a walk in the park afterwards, and he says, "You know, can nature really be as absurd as it seems to us in these experiments?"

[44:52] And finally, Bohr and Heisenberg got each other's nerves, you know, because they were talking about this all day long, right? And finally, Bohr said, "I'm going off to ski. I'm going up to Norway and go skiing. The heck with this." And Heisenberg stayed in Copenhagen, and and and Bohr went on, and Heisenberg started thinking, you know, huh? And then finally, he thought he saw the way out of it, right?

[45:20] And so he went down to the lab and he started to calculate, right? And he's so nervous, you know, so excited, he was making stupid, you know, additional mistakes in calculating, you know, like even Einstein made sometimes, you know. But finally, he calmed down and he was thinking about say, perfect, you know, that you know. So he had solution to it, right? And then Bohr, right, off skiing, he got another solution to it, right?

[45:46] And then they came back and they compared it and they see how they're doing, you know. But no, they were kind of almost despairing, you know. You know, how can you?

[45:59] You know, it's like like uh Schrödinger, you know, and he didn't want to go that way, right? You know, he says, you know, you don't get these damn quantum jumps. He says, I wish I'd never got into physics. He says, you know,

[46:13] he's trying to get a, you know, you know, theories no more, you know, compatible with Newtonian physics. You know, the theories of Newtonian physics, but, but, you know, if Heisenberg and and and Bohr had not persisted, right, you know, then they never would have discovered these things, right?

[46:36] So many times people kind of what despair, right? Huh? I know I was trying to solve something and I couldn't solve it as an undergraduate, and then it became relevant somehow to my thesis, you know. And I was reading Thomas and I was listening to Monsignor, and I put two and two together. I said I had the answer, you know. I runs down to see Monsignor Dionne about, you know, and and because they start off very logically, you know, he said, I know where you're going, Duane.

[47:01] I said, damn it, I said, can I go there? He agreed, you know, but you got to, you know, you can't give up, right? Huh? But a lot of people do despair of knowing the truth, huh? It's like you know, Whitaker Chambers talks about the time when he became a communist, right? Huh? Of course, the communists, as you know, were mistaken about a lot of things, but they thought they knew the truth, right?

[47:28] You know, why his his fellow students there at Columbia University, right? They'd be given up the pursuit of truth, you know, and but the way he describes when he came back to talk to them, you know, he says they treated ideas like ping pong balls, right? Why is a beautiful metaphor because the ping pong ball you they're knocking back and forth, right? You know, you do that that bang bang back they throw it back and forth.

[47:55] You don't care much about the ping pong ball, you know. It's no big deal. You're the ping pong ball. It's a little thing, and that's the way they do, you know. You knock ideas back and forth, you know, but you kind of like playing ping pong, right? I knock it to you, and you knock it back to me, and you know, sometimes you miss it, sometimes I miss it, you know, and so on, and sometimes it's off the table, you know, but you know, he found that you know, found the communists much superior to that, right?

[48:19] At least they took these things very seriously, right? Enough to start a revolution, right? Huh? You know, so but they were mistaken, right? Huh? They had not despaired in knowing the truth, but you know,

[48:35] the first time he talks about starting to doubt the communist thing was that he was looking at his daughter's ear, right, in the kitchen there, you know, and the ear is not the most unusual thing in the world, but it's kind of struck him, you know, that couldn't happen by chance that ear, you know. He's kind of looking at, you know, he kind of admiring the ear of his little daughter, you know, and you know, he said.

[48:57] Something struck him, you know, the doubt in his mind about. Yeah, it's obvious they're so stuck in material. That's the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's a beautiful that replied the first objection, right? Because this thing has some truth in it, right? Okay. But it's it's what

[49:21] in the passions irascible, according as they're derived from the passions of the concupiscible Right? Why the approach to and the withdrawal from is proper to them as irascible emotions. What's more, the contrary is more despair than than fear. Right? But these are kind of contradicting hope and fear. Right?

[49:43] Okay. But it's really properly in the concupiscible at that one. Okay. Now, what about the second objection here? Right. That hope and despair are not. About the same, right? Well, the second should be said that desperation does not regard the evil under the character of something bad, right?

[50:15] But sometimes, per accidens, it regards the evil in so far as it makes for the impossibility of obtaining something, right? It's a very bad thing that's in despair. You despair of knowing the truth, right? Like some of the Greek philosophers did, and before it's the way the modern philosophers did, right? Then

[50:36] you might as well. There's something bad, right? Okay. There can be desperation from the what excess of the good only, right? Okay. So people give up, you know, trying to think about God because it's just just just too much above us, right? You know,

[51:00] kind of you know the way that the Jews there didn't want to believe Christ that he could be man or that he could be God, the Son of God, or it could be equal to to the Father, right? Huh? You know, this this is too hard to think, and so they would give up, right? Huh?

[51:25] Now, to the third, it should be said, huh? That desperation does not imply only the lack of hope, right? Huh? It's not just deprivation of it, right? It's not just a lack of hope. But it implies a certain distance what? From the thing desired, right? Huh? That's the original sour grapes, right? Huh? He he he really wanted the grapes, right? But he couldn't reach them, right? And then kind of he said, "Well, they're probably sour anyway, you know."

[51:57] I said, the guy? He really wants the girl, but you know he's not clever enough to win the girl. And so he says, "Well, she'd be spoiled anyway, you know, and get to me.

[52:08] It's going to be sad about one guy anyway, you know. You know, she'd be spoiled. you'd have to treat her like a queen all the time. She wouldn't cook your meals and do your stockings and wash your stockings and so on, you know. So she's not really desirable, you know. Okay. But then, despair of any truth is less not important anyway, you know. Love is what's important, right?

[52:28] You know, yeah. So people say nowadays, right? Okay. Yeah. Whence desperation presupposes desire, just as what hope does, right? Huh? Okay. So I want this, right? Huh? I want something good, but because that good is difficult to obtain, right? Huh? My desire for that good can be followed either by hope. If I think I can overcome the difficulties, right? Or it can be followed by what? Despair.

[53:03] If I think I cannot what? Overcome the difficulties, right? Okay. For about that which does not fall under our desire, right? We have neither what? Hope nor despair, right? Okay. So you see the order, right? huh? That's Shakespeare's definition.

[53:37] Yeah, the ability for a large discourse, looking before and what after, right? Okay. So, I very often point out what does reason always see before it sees it before and after.

[53:55] No, that's. That's the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. What does it always see before it sees a before and after distinction? Yeah, yeah. So you have to see some distinction between hope, let us say, and despair and and desire, right? Huh? Before you can see the order of these, right? Huh? Desire comes before either hope or what? Despair, right? And it's not always though followed by hope or despair, right?

[54:25] If there's no difficulty in getting what you desire, just to be chowing down on popcorn, or you're watching the game or something, right? Okay.

[54:36] And, but in order to see why desire comes before them, you'd have to see the distinction between desire and hope, right? Huh? But hope is a movement towards the good, difficult to obtain, right? When you think you can overcome those difficulties, right? But you wouldn't have that hope that you know rising up, you know, huh? Jupiter Symphony, right? You know, powerful thing. I thought you what you know the last movement to the Jupiter Symphony, you know Mozart.

[55:17] I'd heard the the symphony many times, and and Warren Re says, you know, what he does in the last movement. And I says, well, kind of, and he says, well, he combines, you know, four or five melodies. And I says, he does. You know, you get this impression, you know, you know this. I can do two things three times, four or five things together, you know, huh?

[55:39] I guess he does it in Don Giovanni, huh? You know, in the in the in the when they're dancing, right? Huh? There's two different dances, and then he finally combines them all together, you know. Kind of things he does, you know, what gives this power, you know? Man completely in control of the situation, you know.

[56:02] The glorious music of Mozart, as my friend Washington Irving says. And on account of this, also both of them are about the good, right? Which falls under what desire, right? Now, because you

[56:37] got to think about when you carry this over to the theological virtues, why does hope come before what charity or love, right? You know, the beautiful prelude there to Dei Verbum, right? They quote Augustine. You know that by believing we might come to hope, and by hoping we might come to love, right? So there you have an order of a different kind than the one St. Paul says, right?

[57:05] He says these three remain, and the greatest of them is love, right? What orders is St. Paul talking about there? Which of the four orders that Aristotle distinguishes is he talking about there?

[57:28] What? No, no. He's saying that charity is the greatest of these three: faith, hope, and charity. right? The fourth sentence. The fourth sentence, too. Which is better, right? Than the 12th chapter categories, right? And I got to think about you know, man, look at the graph. Sometimes, which is is better, hope or faith?

[58:05] Everybody knows what St. Paul says, right? He says of the three, charity is the greatest, right? So that's that's first, right? Which second? Which is third? Which is second? Which is third? I'm inclined to say hope is better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember raising the question of, Dion, he was very cautious about you know, you know I wouldn't say it, right away. but then Warren Murray pointed out to me this text of Thomas in the disputed questions.

[58:33] I think is about hope, right? Where Thomas clearly says that hope is greater, right? But when Thomas sometimes you know speaks about the three virtues, he says

[58:46] by faith we in some way know what our end is, right? By hope we tend towards it, right? By charity we already in some way but joined to it, right? Huh? You know, like St. Therese of Lisieux, you know, she says, "I don't know what more I can have in heaven," you know. My union with God is already complete," she says. I mean, you're talking about the union of what?

[59:11] Of love, not the union of the mind with the vision, right? Huh? You know, Augustine never said that. You know, he said Augustine. You know, you know they always call the vision is the whole reward. you know, Okay. But um but notice what you say. By faith, we in some way know what our end is, what our goal is. Okay, that's why it ends up with eternal life there in the creed, right?

[59:39] But by hope, we're tending towards that difficult good, right? That difficult end, right? So that in sense, you're you're closer to the end, right?

[59:52] See? Why if I had despaired, right, you know, I wouldn't get I wouldn't get to the end at all, right? Okay. But then, but by charity, right? I'm already in some way united with my end, right? Huh? So the end is always what is what best, right? Huh? So what's closer to the end is what? Yeah, yeah. So first philosophy is better than what? Natural philosophy, because it's more what?

[1:00:25] Wisdom, right? And but natural philosophy is better than geometry, because it's closer to what? To wisdom, right? So when Saint Paul says the greatest of these is is charity, and then Thomas, you know, as I say in the display, is showing how hope is better. There you have faith. I mean, you have charity, hope, faith in that order, but that order is the fourth order, the order of goodness, which is better, right?

[1:01:01] Huh? Okay. But when Saint when they quote the great Augustine, they're right in the proemium to Dei Verbum in Vatican II, right? He says, and they're talking about they're talking about getting to you know sharing the the the end, yeah. But but you know if you look at the actual text, right, he's saying that by believing we might come to hope, and by hope we might come to what?

[1:01:31] Love, right? Huh? Well, then you're talking about the order in what? Yeah, yeah. And it's also the order in the in the ingredient of faith, hope, and charity of Augustine, or if you take Thomas's catechetical instructions, right? Huh? You know, he first expound the the creed, right? And then you expound the Our Father, right? For hope, and then you talk about the two commandments of love and the Ten Commandments.

[1:02:03] So that's also the order of teaching, right? Huh? And that's found in catechetical instructions. It's kind of it's kind of beautiful too the way when the order of the sapiential books, right? Huh? You know, you have the Book of Job there, which is a defense of what? Faith against the chief objection to faith, right? Which is the evil world, right? And then you go to the songs, which are prayers like the Our Father, right?

[1:02:36] Huh? And then finally you go to the what? Song of Songs, you know, charity, right? Kind of in that order, there you go. Beautiful.