Prima Secundae
197. Aquinas on the capital sins (Question 84, articles 3–4): what 'capital' means and how the seven vices are derived
Class of 2015-01-22
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/11-prima-secundae/197-aquinas-on-the-capital-sins-question-84-articles-3-4-what/

[0:00] In the name of the Father, the Son, and 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, Lord, illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more quickly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, and help us to understand all that you have written.

[0:32] So, question eighty-four, article three. To the third one goes forward. Thus, it seems that besides pride and avarice, there are not some other special sins which are called what capital.

[0:59] For the head seems to have itself to the animals as a root to the plants, as Aristotle says in the second book of the soul. So we take our food in through our mouth, right? He thought that the plants, you know, draw nutrients in a sense food from the soil, which has got some truth to it, right? So the roots are like you know. So if you say one of these avarice is the root, you know, well then you're saying it's the head.

[1:27] It's just a different metaphor, if you want to say, right? If therefore cupidity or is said to be the root of all sins, it seems that it alone ought to be called the capital vice, and no other what sin.

[1:46] Of course, even words like beginning can be said what, in many ways, right? So the prince is not God, but he's the beginning of something, right? Principium.

[2:00] Moreover, the head has a certain order to the other members, in so far as from the head are diffused in some way both sense and what motion to the other parts of the body. But sin is said to the lack of order, right?

[2:18] But therefore sin does not have the notion of a what head, and thus there ought not to be what laid down any capital vices. But there's a head of the proper band, right? There's an order there, you know.

[2:36] And some of these crimes are all organized, right? So, moreover, capital crimes are said those which are punished by the what? Yeah. Yeah. As black hunter is a word that ended up

[2:57] and refers to striking, you know, hitting somebody with blows. Yeah. Yeah. But such a punishment are punished sins in each generatrix, different genera. Therefore, capital vices are not some determined ones according to species. But against this is what Gregory says. That must be Gregory the Great, huh? The famous work called Moralia. they referred to how Thomas depends a lot upon thirty-first book of the Moralia. He enumerates certain special vices which are said to be what the capital vices, huh?

[3:42] Now Thomas begins by distinguishing two senses of the word capital, right? That is important in that third objection, I guess. I answer: Should be said that capital is said from the caput, the head.

[4:02] Now the head is properly speaking a certain part of the animal, which is the beginning and the directive part of the whole animal. Whence metaphorically, huh? metaphorically, every beginning is called a what head, huh?

[4:25] So is Christ called a head sometimes? Okay, Pope called the head in the church, and also men who direct others and govern them are called the heads of others, right? Huh? So we're talking about the capital, huh?

[4:53] So he distinguished two uses of the word caput there, right? Therefore, there is said to be a capital vice in one way from head properly said. That's one way you lose your head, properly speaking. Ah, and according to this, a capital sin is said to be a sin which is punished by the punishment of the head. Lose your head. And in this sense, and thus now we do not intend about capital or what sins which want to be punished by lose your head.

[5:32] Okay, but according to the other way, in which a capital sin is what from the head, in so far as it metaphorically signifies the beginning or what is directive of others, huh?

[5:56] Okay. You speak of the mercy of God. How did you say about that? Is that word being said properly or metaphorically? Perhaps, yeah. Because it means just an emotion, doesn't it? Aristotle speaks, you know, tragedy is moving fear and pity, right? But the word is taken up from the Greek word. Now, that's an important distinction. St. Thomas says an article there in the first part, the Summa there, right?

[6:33] The first question there, whether Scripture should use what metaphors, and he says yes. Not just because it does so, right? But because it's appropriate to us, right?

[6:49] And that's where you have that famous objection that says, "What? It belongs to the poet to use metaphors, but poetry is infima doctrina, the lowest teaching of all. So why should the highest teaching use what the lowest teaching? What's the answer Thomas gives to that? Have you seen that? I've seen that he says the poet raises up the nature to a higher level of poetry, but Scripture brings down.

[7:22] Yeah, say that you have in both cases something that goes what kind of beyond our mind, right? But in the one case it's above our mind, in the other case it's below our mind, and the poet is trying to take something that is below our mind in some way because it's not fully understandable, right? And give it more meaning that it has, right? Okay. And the what in theology it's the reverse, right?

[7:52] Okay. So it's in a sense for the reverse reason that the poet uses metaphors and the what Scripture does. So I used to sometimes say, you know, when you talk about, you know, who are the greatest poets, right? Huh? And sometimes they say, well, Homer maybe among the Greeks and Shakespeare among the moderns and Dante in the middle, right? But Dante is not really, it seems, a poet in the way that Homer is, because he's trying to talk about heavenly things and give them kind of a what imaginative things, right?

[8:27] So he's kind of imitating, you might say, what Scripture does. I mean, in a way, why Homer is doing what? He's taking what might have been a pirate raid, you know. And you know Aristotle says, you know, Homer taught the other Greeks how to make a good plot. It's got to be a course of action. There's a beginning, middle, and end. Well, he can't take the whole Trojan War and make something out of it because it's a you know conglomeration of things, right?

[8:55] And so if you just take a a Course of action that has a beginning and an end. You have a course of action that has much more order than your own life has in a week, right? Huh? If I told you I did this week, and you'd say, "Well, well, what does this got to do with that?" You know, you did this, then you did that, then I did this, then I did that.

[9:11] You know, what's this got to do with that? I mean, you know, and by the look at the chair, I went here and I, you know, put gasoline. You know, the car. What does, you know, staying theology got to do with, you know, putting gas in the car? You know, and and here I cooked something or something. You know, you know, just just my life is just a hodgepodge of things, right?

[9:30] Isn't? I don't know what yours is. Maybe you're more ordered, but I just don't. You know. So you can't really compare Dante to Homer and Shakespeare, right? And you know Homer, you know, he takes what may have been just, as they say, a pirate way or something, And it's and it's you know like Job said, man's life on earth is a warfare, you know, and it's all the meaning it seems to have, right?

[9:53] Huh? You know. And you see it, you know, also in like in someone like Mozart, you know, and I'd come, you know, I'd babble to Kasurik about. You know what Mozart was doing in the music, you know. He says, "Dwayne, you think that's got more meaning than it does." I mean, Mozart is giving what the emotions more meaning than they really what have, you know. So that's a important thing.

[10:22] Yeah. Well, yeah, he uses metaphors. Very good metaphors, right? Yeah. Diana Sunday is cool. Mozart's metaphors in class. So he says, "Thus, now we do not intend about capital sins as said properly, but another way, as a capital sin is said metaphorically from the head, which signifies a beginning or something that is directive of others. And thus, a capital sin in this sense is one from which other vices what rise, and especially according to the origin of the final cause, which is the formal origin.

[11:08] This has been said above. And thus, a capital vice is not only the beginning of others, but also is directive of them in some way, leading them along, right? For always the art or the habit to which pertains the end is what principle and commands those things which are to the end.

[11:32] Whence Gregory in the thirty-first book of the Moralia compares these capital vices to the leaders of armies, right? Capital vice and all kinds of vices, you know, following them, you know, and he can do this nicely, don't he?

[11:54] Make movie out of this sort of stuff, you know. Like you have in Spencer a little bit, you know, praying the vices, you know, going down, following the leader.

[12:12] Now the first objection, right, is based upon taking the head more what properly, maybe, huh? To the first, therefore, it should be said that capital is said denominatively from the head, right?

[12:34] And that's very what important, huh? Which is what through a certain derivation or partaking of the head as something having some property of the head, but not being simply a head. And therefore, capital vices are said not only those. Which have the notion of the first what origin of all, as avarice, which is said to be the root, and pride, which is said to be the beginning, but those which have a what, the notion of an origin, that's near right, with respect to many what, yeah, okay, so you got a chain of command there right, huh?

[13:18] You made it one general on top, and then the general has got five colonels, and they're their beginnings of these, and quite an organization you got this

[13:29] here, you know. Yeah, yeah, it is. Okay. To the second, it should be said, that sin lacks order on the side of what it turns away from, namely God, huh? For on this side it has a notion of something bad, right? For the bad, according to Augustine in the book on the nature of the good, is a lack of mode, specifically. species, and order, right? Huh? But on the side of what it turns toward, it regards some little good, at least commutable good, right?

[14:09] And there, on this side, it can have what order, right? Okay. So we're saying even for the what, the head of the head of the rubber band, right? Huh? The pirate, the head of the there was you know these pirate ships, and someone was in charge, right? Because they're going after some goods. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They might be lesser goods, you know. So they're turning away from the law, the country, wherever it is, and God too, of course.

[14:36] But you know, some of them, yeah, yeah, yeah. They can have some kind of a organization. You keep the car running, and I'll go with the gun.

[14:52] The briggs, what is it? The famous bug. Okay. The third objection, of course, the argument is taken from what the capital sin, according as it is said, by reason of what punishment owed to it, that you lose your head. But here we do not speak thus, right? Okay. I suppose my Hammond doesn't understand that better, that use that word, right? Because some use a hand, some use use a head, you know.

[15:19] I heard of people who worked back in the oil companies there in Saudi Arabia and went to one of those public executions, and decided not to go and visit them anymore, you know, because off goes the head, right? Swift, you know. Of course, you get these movies now from the ISIS. They're terrible things. Okay. Now, not a Before we get to the enumeration of the capital vices, this really gets interesting, right?

[15:49] As I say, sometimes, you know, people like the bad characters in movies or in plays, you know, better than the wishy-washy good characters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course, our Lord said, you know, if you're lukewarm, you know, I spit you out, right? So, but he'll take you to the extreme, right now. Something like that, paradise lost, paradise regained, with the, uh, figure of Satan being Yeah.

[16:18] surprisingly attractive to the reader, Yeah. whereas the figure of Christ is pretty bland. Yeah, yeah. C. S. Lewis criticizes Milton for that, you know? C. S. Lewis does, right? And the, the, the, uh, the devils in Dante, say, are much better, you know, for what, what the reader like. Hit, I mean, not Hitler, but the devil's kind of come almost a hero right now, going against God, right?

[16:43] And what's that book that that Mrs. Clinton wrote her thesis on, you know? Oh, Solinsky. Yeah, yeah, it's dedicated to Right. It's dedicated to To the first revolutionary. Yeah, to Satan, yeah. Good thing to dedicate your book to. That's ama- I- I'm- I'm amazed at the parallels with, I just, uh, Dr. Warren Carroll has a lecture on Luther. It's very interesting because he says he's- he's not a reformer, he's a re- he's a revolutionary.

[17:17] Yeah. And what's interesting is the last sermon he preached before he died was against reason. Boy, he deserved to die after that. Wow. Mm-hmm.

[17:32] It's a lecture that he gave 10 years ago or whatever it was. I was reading some things there about Saint Francis de Sales the other day, you know, and I guess he's first went, you know, he's fairly young into the Chablis there, you know, to try to convert the fallen away Catholics there. That's where Calvin was, was very powerful and so on, and, uh, he says in some of his less scarred moments he referred to Calvin as a stinker.

[18:04] That was his sermon, and he had to apologize afterwards because it caused such scandal. The people were shocked. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, I heard an unguarded moment from Father John Hardin referred to some other place.

[18:21] Weirdo. I know my, my, my, my friend Washington Irving, you know, his parents, you know, of course, are from Scotland, you know, so they have Calvinist background, you know, and he had to sneak out of the house to go, go to the theater, you know, and so. But it's kind of interesting. I don't know, I don't think he, you know, fully appreciated Catholicism. When he writes about Spain, you know, he talks about how, you know, the bells would ring from the cathedral and from the convents, and everybody'd stop and supposed to say the Angelus, right, huh?

[18:56] It was a moment of prayer like that. He was impressed with that, you know? What a, what a healthy thing that was, you know? He's got a good sense, you know, in that respect, huh? Um, I don't know, I think he really knows altogether what Catholic was all about, but he can see some wonderful things about that, huh? Like that, those sort of things that you had in Spain at that time, 1820s and so on.

[19:17] He was going there. 1829, went to the Alhambra. Talks about these things. Yeah. It's amazing that when I was a kid in Ireland, they used to, on the public radio and television, Mhm. they would play play Mhm. the angels 3 times a day. Mhm. Stop, stop pro- programming, and they would eat some holy picture of church or something, and then bong. They

[19:41] would do. Mhm. Would they recite it? I mean... No, no, just the bell. You just hear the bell. They wouldn't recite the Because, because the first time I heard it, I said, what's, why do they ring the bell, you know, 3 times, and then 3 times, and then 3 times a night? And my mom says, the angels. I said, oh, oh. I didn't know, but that's what they did.

[19:58] Just to remind everybody. If you couldn't hear a church but you weren't within earshot of a church, you had the TV or the radio on, you could hear it. And that was the public station, which nowadays, God help us, they probably the devil us 3 times a day or something. You see, it said in Spain, the holy days are as numerous as the days of the week.

[20:16] Suits the Latin temper. Slow things down. Yeah. Okay. Now 7, huh? Mm. Yeah. So how many commandments are there in the ar- are there? Commandments? Yeah. 10? 10, yeah, but 7 side of the human beings, right? Yeah. Yeah. I was kind of struck by that, you know, by Aristotle, that I mentioned that last time. You know, he, in the ethics there, he says that, um, murder, theft, and adultery are always wrong.

[21:04] And then in the, uh, book on the places there, he says that to not love your father, you don't love your father, or you don't honor the gods, he says, you're not in need of argument, you're in need of punishment. So he's got, you know, the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh commandments, right? Plus a little bit about the the gods, right? And it's very good he sees that, right?

[21:30] People don't see that nowadays, of course. Turn the radio coming up here, you know, and they're talking about, and turn on, we're going to hear, find out everything about divorce. Of course, many divorces going on, you know, you know, how to get a divorce and how to live with it, and so on. You can hear all about it, you know, the program. It's just, uh, terrible, but...

[21:54] Okay. To the fourth one goes forward. Thus, it seems that there ought not to be said to be seven what capital vices, right? Which are inane or empty glory, right? no? Invidia, which means what? Envy.

[22:18] Ira, anger, huh? Tristitia, huh? Yeah. I guess got a special name there someday. It's like acedia you know, but anyway Avaritia, huh? Avarice, gula, gluttony, and luxuria, okay, lust, I suppose, huh? Somebody's put a big sign up in that when they drive by Worcester there, you know, coming back from here, you know, huh? Lust leads, drags you down to hell, you know. That's a reference to something in the Bible, you know.

[22:59] There's one that he always has some kind of spiritual message every, you know. This is the one that's up there now. Lust draws you down to hell, you know. Good people see the thing. Yeah.

[23:13] The first objection to the same distinction of these seven, right? Well, sins are opposed to the what virtues, huh? But the principal virtues are what four, as has been said above. Therefore, the principal vices or the capital vices are not except four. Why do you get seven there? Okay. Okay.

[23:37] However, the passions of the soul are certain causes of sin, as has been said above, right? Huh? But the principal passions of the soul are four.

[23:58] Of but two of which no mention has been made among the four said sins, namely about hope and what fear, huh? So was it say in the in the in the constitution there, Vatican II there in the modern world there, huh? Church identifying with the what joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears, right? That's that's the four principal passions. Well, here you just have two of them, right?

[24:26] This this sadness, whatever it is, and this what delight in gula or luxury. Now they enumerate some vices that pertain to what? Yeah. For delectatio pertains to gula and luxuria, right? Lust and gluttony. And sadness to what? Chidia, huh? And envy.

[24:59] Okay. And therefore, unsuitably, are enumerated the principal sins. Gregory's in deep trouble now, isn't he? On the basis of these two objections, would you say? What does he know about these things? Just because he's called Gregory the Great, huh? Yeah. I envy him being called the Great. Huh?

[25:25] Who was the name of that guy in Greece? There, he was called he's called the the Just or something, you know. And anyway, somebody, you know, voted to have him thrown out of the country or something like that. So, why'd you do that? I'm just tired of hearing him called that all the time.

[25:45] That's why the moderns I don't like. There's some of them being called the Great, you know. You know, they started calling John Paul the Second John Paul the Great, right? And I don't know if they put a sticker or not. I don't know. And but I mean, you know, I'm tired of hearing him called the Great. You know, that kind of envy, you know, didn't you?

[26:04] Nobody's great. I mean, we're all the same. We're all great. We're all great. We're all heroes. Yeah. So, these are two of the principal passions, right? And now in the third objection, you got this thing, anger. Anger is not a principal passion, huh? Therefore, not not to be laid down to among the principal vices, right? Well, you always never read Coriolanus by William Shakespeare, right?

[26:35] Well, that was after. Yeah, yeah. You're talking about someone shot a doctor there. He didn't like, but didn't think he was charged eight thousand dollars or something like that for having his wife or his mother in the hospital. I don't know. That's easy. That's a quick fix. The guy who shot him is a customer at Linhart.

[27:03] She knows him. Is he a local? Is he a local phenomenon? Well, I don't know where where was the doctor shot? Yeah, yeah, in Boston, in Boston. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just just yesterday or something like that.

[27:18] Charging too much, guys. I guess. I don't know if that was the reason or didn't. They're saying he didn't like the way his, you know, he'd operated on his mother, and mother didn't survive the thing. So I don't know. I don't know. He snapped. That's all he said. He snapped. Blacked out. Yeah.

[27:41] Moreover, just as cupidity or avarice is the root of sin, so pride is the beginning of sin, right? As has been said above. But avarice is laid down as one of the seven capital vices. Therefore, pride ought to be enumerated among the capital vices, right? But that's just the queen of the vices, right?

[28:06] Sorry King of the Vice Yeah, no, the woman would probably be mad about being called that. Because I think that the ancients thought the queen bee was was was the male, right? Was actually the queen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, then that really sexist, you say, because they called the queen bee the king, right? Okay.

[28:40] Moreover, some sins are committed which are not able to be caused, which are not caused from any of these, right? The cause of none of these, just as when someone errs from what ignorance, right? Or when someone from some good intention commits some sin, as when some robs and you might give what? Yeah. Or the what Robin Hood there, right?

[29:10] That's that's that's Obama. Okay. Therefore, insufficiently are the capital vices enumerated. But what a mess he's made of poor Gregory, huh? Of course, Gregory's not here to defend himself, right? Now he's made a mess of Gregory's teaching, right? Gregory got that from the monks, you know, from the desert fathers. When did he know he was a monk? Yeah. But Thomas says, "But against this is the authority of Gregory, thus enumerating them in the thirty-first book of the Moralia."

[29:56] Okay. Think of how I confess I'd assign you. Now you read the such and such a book. You read a book of the Moralia. Next time you're in here, I'll send another book to you. You know.

[30:12] Get you. Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Both my daughter and my daughter-in-law—they both home teach, you know, and kids are learning their stuff, you know. No way they wouldn't it. Even a Catholic school. I

[30:41] answer it should be said, as has been said, that the capital vices are said those from which others arise, especially according to the notion of a what final cause, huh? But this origin can be what noted in two ways. In one way, according to the condition of the one sinning, who is thus disposed that he is most of all affected to one end, from which, for the most part, he goes forward to other sins.

[31:28] But this way of origin is not able to fall under what art, right? In that infinite are the particular dispositions of what men. Okay.

[31:45] So I got angry because you served me salmon, right? Of all the things you could have served me, why did you have to serve me that? Yeah. See, that's some pe peculiar hang up that I have, right? Now maybe something different. for You you maybe wouldn't get upset at all if you were served salmon, right? But but might be something else that affects you, right? Right? Yeah. Okay.

[32:08] You can't teach that. You've got to teach something that is true, either always or for the most part. So Aristotle says you can't teach what happens by luck or by chance, because it doesn't happen always and doesn't happen most of the time, right? So

[32:33] there was a story there of the the guy who ran into somebody's car and there was a nice young lady in the car that he ran into, and she's going to sue him back in the day before he had to a fault. And it took so long going through the court, you know, did you go down there and you know they arrange and change the dates or something?

[32:53] They got to know each other and fell in love. By the time the thing finally came up, they were going to get married, right? I say now, I wouldn't recommend that as a way if you see a nice girl in a car just run into her, you know, to get to know you better.

[33:10] But if you take it, how do you what? How do you meet your future wife? Well, there could be some chance in it, right? You know, and he tells somebody he asked them, you know, how did you meet them? And it's kind of funny, right? And one guy ran into his wife and knocked her down. Future wife, so so there can't be any art or science because you only do something that is true for the most part, right?

[33:38] Or or if not always, right? But either always or in geometry you know things that are always so, right? Triangle, Thomas says, always has its interior angles are going to be right angles. In natural science you see men are born with what? Five fingers, right? Huh? But some men, some people born with six fingers, huh? They say Anne Boleyn had six fingers. I don't know what the hell they saw in her, but I heard that, huh?

[34:05] But some people are born without an arm or something, you know? Okay. You can still say that man is a two-armed or two-legged animal, right? Because it's true for the most part, right? But you can't teach something that happens rarely, right? Okay. Eats salmon or something like that.

[34:27] But this mode of origin is not able to come under art, right? In the infinite are the particular dispositions of men. Nothing's about the infinite, right? Another way, according to the natural what? Relation of these ends to each other, right? And according to this, ut in pluribus, not always, right? But ut in pluribus, huh? For the most part, huh? Men would teach you to say, "malum in specie humana that is, "what men can do is bad."

[35:00] For the most part, men are bad. Most men are bad. As Aristotle said most men prefer a life suitable to beasts. That's not good. Whence this mode of origin is able to come under art, right? Even though it's not true always, right? It's true for the most part, right?

[35:25] According to this, therefore, those vices are said to be capital whose end, right, have primary reasons of moving the what appetite, right? And according to the distinction of these reasons, the capital vices are what distinguished.

[35:47] But something moves the appetite in two ways, huh? In one way, directly and per se, and in this way, the good moves what the appetite to pursuing it, the bad, according to the same reason, to fleeing it, right? Another way, indirectly, and as it were to another, just as someone pursues something bad on account of some good joined to it, or something what he flees something good on account of something bad joined to it,

[36:37] huh? Now he says the good of man is threefold, huh? Going back to the old division of what? Yeah, the Greeks said, right? Aristotle and Socrates talk about them. Goods of the soul, goods of the body, right? Exterior goods.

[36:56] The good of man is threefold. The first is the a certain good of the what soul, right? Which from the what from only from the grasping of reason, which only from apprehension, I should say, right, has the notion of desirability. To wit, the excellence of praise or what honor, right? And this good, inane glory or empty glory, right, pursues in a disordered what way?

[37:39] Another is the good of the body, and this either pertains to the conservation of the individual as food and drink, huh? Portable water, as they say, and in some of these things in Europe, there you see portable water. You can drink it. And this good, Gula, pursues in disordered, right? I suppose that increases drunkenness too, right? But gula is taking the broad sense. Or to the conservation of the species, right?

[38:14] Huh? I suppose intercourse, right? And to this luxury is what, or lust, is ordered, right? Okay. Now, the third word, luxury, there has ideas something kind of superfluous, right? You know, you're leading a luxurious life. Well, you don't need all that. Cut back on that.

[38:43] The third good is the what? Exterior good. To which what? Wealth, right? Huh? And to this is ordered what? Avarice. In the same what?

[39:08] In the same four vices, disorderly flee the contrary what? Evils. Yeah. So I suppose disgrace, and you're fleeing what? Poverty and these things, right? Huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know St. Thomas divides it into three, but the middle one there he divides into what? Subdivides into two, but he still observes the rule of, you know, three and two and getting four. I think

[39:36] he said it under verticals. Yeah, he definitely did. Definitely did. Yeah. Now here's another way of approaching this, huh? The bonum appetibile? Good, especially moves desire from this that it partakes something of the property of what? Happiness. Okay. Because in some ways, like true happiness, right? Okay. Which naturaliter, Which all naturally what? Desire, right? Huh? Okay.

[40:33] I think I was mentioning how you divide philosophy into what? Two main kinds, right? Looking philosophy, which some call theoretical philosophy, from the Greek word for looking. Or speculative philosophy, from the Latin word for looking, but which I like to call looking philosophy because that's the word in English. And the other is what they call practical philosophy, right? Or the philosophy of doing, you could say, right?

[41:05] And the philosophy, looking philosophy, begins in the desire called what? Wonder, right? And Albert the Great says, you know, that great poetry, right, Rouses in wonder, right? And so Aristotle, he's commenting in Aristotle's word that the philomythos, the lover of myths or stories or fairy tales, right, is a is in some way a philosopher, right? Huh? Because he's motivated by what? Wonder, right? Huh?

[41:44] And Aristotle argues that that you know that geometry and all these parts of looking philosophy are that they are looking philosophy. Because they are pursued out of wonder, right? Not of any practical desire, right? Huh?

[42:03] It's not arising the desire for wealth or something like that, right? You know, desire for power or something else, but just out of what? Wonder. But what desire gives rise to this philosophy of doing?

[42:23] Yeah, the desire for happiness, right? And so Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, he has two considerations of happiness, right? A more general one in the first book, right? And at the end of the first book, he sees a connection between this happiness and human virtue, right? As Thomas says, you know, virtue is the road to happiness, vice is the road to misery. And you see it all the time in the paper every day.

[42:51] And so, but after goes through all the virtues, right? And their corresponding vices, and then takes up friendship, right? To then he comes back in the tenth book and finishes his consideration of what happiness is.

[43:08] But in domestic philosophy, you're aiming at not just your own happiness as a man, but the happiness of your what? Family, right? Huh? So my wife and I we decided there wasn't any TV in the house, and the kids are, you know, I mean they'd see TV, you know, the grandmas and grandpas, but there's no TV in the house, right? And so they got a certain love of what?

[43:32] Reading, you know. My daughter has no TV in the house, right? But the children, you know, do much more reading, you know. So it's good for them, right? Good for them, huh? But you're thinking the happiness of this child, right? That he's going to have something more substantial. you know, what he's going to get from from watching TV and not knowing how to read or write? I guess kids don't know how to read or write anymore, you know.

[43:53] They just got, you know, press the button. That's that's about it. Yeah. It's very superficial, right? Very superficial. Anyway. But then in political philosophy, you're looking for the the happiness of your country, right? Huh? Which is what George Washington, these great men were doing, right? Seeking the happiness of the country. So this is the chief thing. This is the end of life, right? Is saying. So this is interesting he says here, huh?

[44:22] Good especially moves desire from this that it partakes of something of the property of happiness, which naturally all desire is their kind of their their purpose in life, right? Okay.

[44:36] De cuius ratione whose notion is first a certain what? Perfection, right? For happiness is the perfect good, right? To which pertains excellence and what? Clarity. Which pride or in aim glory, right? Which is like it? Is aiming at, right? Huh? Okay.

[45:00] Secondly, of the idea of happiness, it's got to be sufficient good, right? Completely satisfied, which average the size promising, right? It in wealth, right? So I always quote that the one of my fellow students there in high school there, you know, in the first year in the home class, homeschool, home class, he had at the beginning of the day before he began your classes, really give a little fatherly advice, you know, money isn't everything, and he says, you know, yeah, but what it is, it'll buy.

[45:33] So the idea of sufficiency, right? Huh? You know, and they're always advertising this thing, you know, the magazine thing there, where you know you get, I don't know, seven thousand a week or something for the rest of your life, or something like that. Because well, if I had that, I'd be all set, you know, yeah, you know, have all I need. I remember they they talked years ago about they did that interviews with these people who won big money prizes in Canada, and most of them were more miserable than they were before they won the money.

[46:05] They end up getting divorced, all kinds of crazy things that happen, you know, and their lives just went went went to pieces because. Yeah, but but people think, oh, gee, gee whiz, you know, if I if I could win the the big prize, you know, it was a Super Bowl, whatever they call these ones, ball, you know, all kinds of money, you know, I mean, you know, and and they keep it going up every week, you know,

[46:31] and some of you some of you kind of feel good for the person who won it because they're they're in a very lowly state, you know, and they've got needs of money, but but maybe most of them who win these things will end up they don't know what to do, you know, don't know what to do with it. It's kind of funny, huh? Because people, you know, they know how sometimes, you know, even people who don't get the money that way, but they know how to make money, right?

[46:55] But they don't know what to do with it once once they what? Yeah, yeah. I remember one time being I was on a board of trustees, you know, this one guy was trying to pull a deal off there, you know, makes to get more money, he had lots of money, and somebody else stopped him, you know. He almost had the guys in tears. I I was sitting there saying to myself, he's got all kinds of money.

[47:19] What's he did, you know? You know, why does he have to be, why does he have to be almost in tears because he can't pull off one more money making deal, you know, huh? But you know, Soros, you know, gives money to all the wrong things, right? Some of these guys and and people contribute to the wrong campaign and so on, and people

[47:41] they know how to make money, but they don't know what to do with the money once they get it, right? Okay, but money seems to make you know take care of everything, right? Huh? But it is a little buy, right? Huh? Everything is for sale in Rome, they said, right? They said that's, but happiness is something. It's got to be a sufficient good, right? Enough, right? It's not sufficient, then, then it's not perfect.

[48:03] It's not a, it's not, it's not going to completely satisfy you, right? Okay. And the third condition of it is, happiness, without which happiness cannot be, and this is what, Delectatio, right? Okay.

[48:25] Joy or pleasure, right? And interesting, the Aristotle in the tenth book there, before he gives his final consideration of happiness, there, right? He takes up pleasure and how, you know, that is, right?

[48:40] As is said in the first and the tenth book of the Ethics, right? Okay. And gula and luxuria, right? gluttony and lust, sic, that seems to be the pleasures that are most known according to the senses, anyway, right? All these advertisements for beer and the happiness that it brings, you know, you can see all this happiness. I mean, just the way that people are reacting in the advertisements and.

[49:21] So he has the same what? Four, but in a different way, right? Two ways of showing it, right? Huh? Okay. One takes off from the what? The division of the goods of man, right? And the other from these things that are required by properties, you might say, of happiness, right? Huh? To be something perfect and excellent, right? Huh?

[49:48] Gee whiz! If I could be president of the United States, I'd be above everybody else in the country. Everybody in the country would listen to me, right? For an hour and fifteen minutes last night, I could get the whole country to listen to me. I don't think because they said it was very poor attendance. So I mean, people watching it, you know. Yeah, he went down. The spectator invited so so.

[50:10] After six years, they kind of what he said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's what I mean. They know. He had that bully puppet, you know, pulpit, You know, they call the president as a bully puppet. Puppet. I'm going to be saying puppet. Puppet. Yeah.

[50:43] You have the wealth, you know. Okay. Now he's going to go to the other side of the distinction he made before. He went into those two, where he says something moves the appetite in two ways: in one way directly and per se, and he's kind of gone through that with those two explanations of the same four, right? And another way, indirectly quasi per aliud what he says.

[51:20] But that someone flees the good on account of some evil what joined to it. This happens in two ways, because this is either with respect to one's own what good, and thus it is acedia I don't know. Mr. Translator, the old Baltimore laziness, you know, but but yes, Sloth is probably a better way to translate it here. Which is said about a spiritual good on account of the bodily labor what joined.

[51:52] I was looking down on the doctor in the summer there when I was in high school. The guy says to me, kind of guy works in the dock all the time. He said, "What would you do if you if you won the prize, right?" I said, "Well,

[52:11] I'd find a quiet place there and do some reading." I said, "I said, what would you do?" He said, "I'd get to hear him." He says,

[52:24] "I think he meant it, right?" In his office on the dock there, he had these, you know, girl pictures there, right, huh? So one time, my brother Mark, you know, got the job of being in charge of the dock, right, huh? So he took all the pictures down, and threw them away. Guy comes back and says, "What happened to all my pictures?" We just said,

[52:49] "We laughed about the thing." Yeah, see, would he get to hear him? Yes, he would have. I don't know, but wouldn't know what to do with it Yeah. The idea, you know, once you go and study, now once you once you he had the, yes, you know. You know, he studied these things. You are forced to do so, right?

[53:20] Yeah. So some people don't have to go to church on Sunday morning, right? You know, more comfortable to have another couple hours of sleep, right? Sure. why not Or get up early to eat more

[53:37] Yeah Or about a what alien good, right? And this, as if it be without insurrection, pertains to what envy, right? Which is sad about an alien good, the good of another, insofar as it impedes one's own what excellence, right? I

[54:03] was reading a book by a sociologist there, you know, talking about how envy is very much found in our society, right? And it's kind of a yeah, it's kind of a

[54:17] disease of democracy, right? Because we're all equal, right? And so why is this guy, you know, up there, high above me, you know, doesn't deserve to be there, you know? But I see his elevation as kind of a front to me, and you know,

[54:37] way Warren described to me when De Koninck died, you know, all these people crawling out of the woodwork, you know, they were kind of, you know, taken up with his fame, you know, and so kind of envious of it, huh? But.

[54:52] It's a common thing that envy, you know, in our society. I knew a student who told me one day and said, you know, there's something funny about me, and he was right. Yeah. Because he said every time I see somebody benefit, even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with me, I feel in some ways that I've lost something. Yeah. Yeah. And this guy ended up going on to become an immensely successful lawyer and partner at a major firm in Boston.

[55:25] And but it was staggering. First of all, the honesty was impressive, but that whole perspective just was bizarre. It's from the devil, Death entered the world, through the envy of the devil. He envied God first, and then everybody else.

[55:49] Well, it's competition between parents, you know, their children to be, you know, the best school or being the best job or whatever it is, you know. So and they envy the the other parents because their kid is more successful in somewhere other, you know. Or parents sometimes they get envious of each other because my my kids' friends seem to like their parents more than their friends like me.

[56:12] Yeah. Everybody else's parents are cool, but not me. Yeah. The kids all like this parent or that parent but not my house Yeah. There was a cartoon of these guys at a baseball game. and. Three of them friends, and one is boasting about his son, saying, "Well, my son got into Amherst College." And the second one says, "Oh yeah, well, my son got into Harvard." So the first one's like, And the third one goes, "Oh yeah, well, my son bats three seventy five."

[56:47] And the other two go. Now, I used to you read I was a David Hume, you know, and he's talking about oh, and now the famous Aristotle and Peter, you know, washed away, you know, and so you know they kind of you know dislike the idea that these people are held up, you know. We're supposed to follow them in some way or learn from them in some way, right?

[57:22] Kind of envy their their position there. It's kind of funny when my one of my professors there in modern philosophy, there at Laval, used to have a joke there about Descartes. You know, Descartes is called the history of philosophy books, the father of modern philosophy, right? He says he has no sons because nobody follows him. Everybody does their own thing, you know, in modern philosophy, Because if they follow somebody else, then they're doing honor to them, right?

[57:51] And so you would envy them their their position, right? So you've got to be original and. Start your own mess, and yeah. It's envy, maybe something that drives certain developments in modern quote philosophy unquote, like deconstructionism, and also Rawls. Rawls' his concept of the ideal society, which is really counterintuitive in certain ways. Essentially, it's a kind of the lowest common denominator. Very democratic, then, yeah. Yeah. To you know, but they also seem to be fueled in certain ways by envy at their foundation.

[58:36] That's what there was a. I think I saw. I remember hearing way back when, and about the trees, unrest in the forest, trouble with the trees, for the maples want more sunlight than the oaks ignore their pleas. And so the maples formed a union and demanded equal rights, and so on. They and the the the last verses of the song go. Now there's no more oak oppression, for they passed a noble law, and all the trees are equal by hatchet, axe, and saw.

[59:12] That's how music is taught. Is that the law? No, it's not. Gaily and. Yeah, that's what. And yeah, John Genaro and Jim Garner and I used to play that tune back then. It's it's an interesting tune. It has some musical merit to it, but but the best part it was the words. They disclaim that has any meaning other than just being a silly verse. It sounds like it has a lot of meaning.

[59:42] It says a commentary on society in general, socialism in particular. It sounds like the Canadian the Canadian group, so it sounds like a commentary on

[59:53] social. I was talking to a nun there, who who was you know thought one should be ordained and that sort of stuff, you know, and so on, and and I was quoting something from John Paul II. Well, not when he's pope, you know. I mean, but, you know, we'll get some next pope or so they'll, they'll open things up, you know. And I think the press is trying to think that Francis would do something, you know, like this something.

[1:00:16] But I mean, is there some element there of envy in some of these women, right? That they can't they can't have positions of authority like a bishop or even a pastor, or they can't be a priest, right? And you could envy that, I suppose, huh?

[1:00:35] It shows a complete misunderstanding of the order. Which is interesting. It's just a secular job that one aspires to with a sort of promotion, which it's certainly not at all. You know, the servant of all that's. That's. That's what that's what my counterbalance, that might say, try to way to see more deeply into it is, is to say, yeah, sure, women who want to be priests are on power trips.

[1:01:04] Where did he get the idea though that priesthood is a power trip Some priests are on power trips. Or he says it's an insurrection to what? Revenge, I suppose, huh? And thus it is what anger, right, huh?

[1:01:28] And to the same vices pertains the what pursuit? Obsidios.