Logic (2016)
49. Figure of Speech in Aquinas: the Trinity as One Principle, Forms Mistaken for Substances, and Why We Err
Class of 2017-05-04
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/2-logic-2016/049-figure-of-speech-in-aquinas-the-trinity-as-one-principle/

[0:00] Now it's a different kind of thing here. Those are all different examples, but all examples of the same what? Kind of yeah, same kind of thing here. But now a little different thing here, huh? Scriptum super liber two sententiarum. You know about that, huh? It's an early work of Thomas.

[0:21] So just be a small I there right? Yeah I just caught that Yeah, Yeah. Okay. The drunk, Hebrews, right, killing somebody, right, homicide. Sins by two sins, huh? By drunkenness, you might say, right, and homicide, right, and the kind of which he merits two what condemnations, yeah, per se.

[1:00] Nothing, however, prevents the quantity of the what through ignorance to be lessened from the what what is going before, right? Hence, in the process of the argument, is figura dictionis. I know he's using the technical term there, right? This is the name of the what third kind of what fallacy, the one from imagination, right? Quia mutatur discretum in continuum.

[1:33] So you're you're putting what the discrete as if it were what two as if it's more in the sense of being what continuous, right? Huh? Okay. But maybe you know you're being drunk, right? Mean that you're less inclined to kill the person than you did, right? You know, or maybe striking out because you're mad at them or something. You know, you're drunk and you you know kill them, right?

[2:04] So like diminishing, right? That's a different kind of thing, right? Huh? But it's discrete to the continuous. Huh? That's a really kind of an interesting thing there.

[2:25] Look at the next text here from Quaestiones de Potentia. Moreover, all denomination. Remember that was a word we learned at the beginning of the categories. All denomination is from a form, but a form is something inhering in that of which it is. Since, therefore, God is named by relations to creatures, it seems that these relations are something in God.

[2:59] To the eighth, it should be said that that from which something is denominated is not necessarily always a form secundum rei naturam, right? Secundum rem, right? Secundum rei naturam. Since it suffices, right, to be signified per modum formae grammatice loquendo, right? Okay.

[3:27] For man is denominated from action and from what clothing, right? Mothers are discern which realitaria non sunt forma, right? Huh? Are you being deceived by forma dictionis? And again, this being

[3:47] a pretty important thing here, you know, You wanna have these things be real relations with God, do you? That was a really difficult thing. Those relations of reason, one heck of a thing, right? Huh? I read a text in town. So recently, there he's talking about how

[4:21] when a mistaken man comes to know the truth, right? Are there two changes there? Well, we're talking about generation corruption. There is the corruption of his error, right? And the generation of his what knowledge, right?

[4:46] So there is real distinction of two changes there, right? But they correspond. What about if a man is ignorant, and then he comes to know something he's ignorant of? Is there a generation of knowledge? Yes, but is there? corruption of ignorance. Yeah. Well, that would be non-being becoming non-being, right? Are different kinds of non-being. Different species of non-being. That's how we have to interchange, you know, because that's a being a reason, right?

[5:27] You know, the negation of negation, right? How many species of non-being are there? Yeah. This is actually amazing when Thomas goes through these things, you know, how, but you got to kind of start to see that you know he's correcting somebody, right? Okay. Okay.

[5:55] Now, real broad texture from the from the the the Trinity, right? Huh. Now the objection. Moreover, if the Father and the Son are one beginning of the Holy Spirit, that's what we say, don't we?

[6:19] It's either the one which is the Father, or the one which is not the Father. But you can't give you the one of these, because if it is the one that is the Father, it would follow that the Son is the Father. If the one that is not the Father, it would follow the Father is not the Father. Should not therefore be said that the Father and the Son are one beginning of the Holy Spirit.

[6:45] Doesn't the Church say this? The one beginning. Well, maybe she's wrong. Maybe they made a mistake, or it was a simple mistake. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know the the I mentioned this before that Aristotle in the three books in the soul there when he's talking about knowledge there he's talking about what the early Greeks said about knowledge, right? Huh. And what they said about knowledge was incorrect, huh?

[7:19] Because what was his name, the famous one from Empedocles, right? By Earth we know Earth, and by Water we know Water, and Air by Air, and Fire by Fire, and Love by Love, and Hate by Hate, right? And it's because we have all these things in us that we know them, right? Well, there's some truth behind that, right? Huh? Because the thing known must be in the knower before it's what known, right?

[7:45] As Aristotle points out in the sixth book of Wisdom, sixth book of First Philosophy. The good is primarily in things, right? But truth is primarily in the mind, right? Okay. So I'm trying to learn some. I'm trying to get in my mind, right? See. But I'm trying to love God. I'm trying to go out of myself into God, so to speak, like he said there, right? In the play, right?

[8:12] It dwells there, right? Where love is, is okay. So Christ says, you know, where your treasure is, there your heart shall be, right? I left my heart in San Francisco, right? And so on.

[8:29] Now, you're saying the Father and the Son are one beginning. You got this problem, right? This objection, right? To the fourth, it should be said that these two, to wit, the Father and the Son, are one beginning that is the Father, or one beginning that is not the Father, right? Which is the either-or argument that he had in the objection, are not contradictorily opposed. Thomas, what a mind this guy had.

[9:04] I can always say, you know, like Cassirer said there about Aristotle. Compared to Thomas, I got the brain of an egg over. Hence, it is not necessary that one of them be what given. See. In the case of contradictory, there's no third alternative, right? Either you're drunk or you're not drunk, right? There's no third alternative. I say you're partially drunk. right? I tell that you're drunk. For when we say the Father and the Son are one beginning, right?

[9:41] Huh? This that I say beginning does not have a what? Determined supposed meanings Not limited to one or two Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a confused supposition for two persons, what? Together, right? Huh? Okay. Hence,

[10:03] in the proceeding, there is a fallacy of the figure of diction from a confused supposition to determine one. What the hell, Thomas? Who's going to, who's, who would see that except Thomas, right? Right. You know. I'm glad he wrote it down. Yeah. Yeah.

[10:25] Okay. Now, this is another objection, right? Huh? Okay. Moreover, if the Father and the Son are one beginning of the Holy Spirit, top of page five, there, right? It seems a converso, It should be said that there is what that the one beginning of the Holy Spirit is the Father and the Son. But this seems to be false, because what I call a beginning here, it either supposes or stands for the person of the Father or the person of the Son, and both ways it is false.

[11:05] Therefore, this is false that the Father and the Son are one beginning of the Holy Spirit, because this that I call a beginning, Thomas says, right?

[11:20] What the fifth? He says it should be said that this is true, that the one beginning of the Holy Spirit is the Father and the Son. Well, which is it? Because you want to, because this that I call a beginning does not what stand for one person only, but indistinctly for two. This has been said.

[11:52] Yeah, and then the next objection, right? Moreover, one in substance makes the same. If therefore the Father and the Son are one beginning of the Holy Spirit, it would follow that they are the same what beginning. But this is negated by many, right? Therefore, should not be conceded that the Father and the Son are one beginning of the Holy Spirit, huh? This may be an orthodox objection Maybe so, yeah, yeah.

[12:18] And the ability to to breathe the Holy Spirit, right, is common to the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit doesn't have the ability to breathe. The Holy Spirit, yeah. But the ability to breathe the Holy Spirit is common to the Father and the Son.

[12:39] Amazing, amazing. To the sixth, it should be said. It can be said that the Father and the Son are the same beginning, according as beginning stands for and confused indistinctly for two what persons say about reproduction there, right?

[13:02] The husband and the wife, one beginning of the child. They're not getting involved in that too much. They do have, you know, might be some sense, but careful about that, right? Yeah.

[13:59] Okay, let's look at a little bit here. We supposed to see the next one. It should be said that equal and unequal are said according to what quantity? Huh? For one in quantity is called what? Equal. Just as one in quality is called like, and one in substance is called the same. This is clear in the fifth book of metaphysics. Quantity implies a notion of what? Measure, which is first found in numbers, secondarily in magnitudes.

[14:47] That's why numbers is put first in the Species of quantity, and in some other way, in all the other genera, this is clear in the first book of Metaphysics. On each genus, that which is most simple and most perfect is the measure of all others. And that's interesting huh? simple and perfect go together, right? Now, when Thomas takes up the the substance of God in both summas, right?

[15:22] He takes up the simplicity of God and the perfection of God. What next to each other? Okay, simplicity before the perfection, right? But they're right next to each other, right?

[15:40] And one reason Thomas gives for putting the two of them together is that in material things, right, the more perfect is composed. So the stone is simpler than the what tree, but the tree is more perfect and more like God than the stone. Do you agree, Barnabas? Yeah. And I defend that statement by saying, you know, that we have the metaphor, right? The Lord is my rock, and a metaphor is based upon likeness, huh?

[16:17] To some likeness, right, of the rock. But in Peter's confession of faith, which the church is built on, he says, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God," right? So life is something found in God, right? He's alive. He's not a statue, in case you didn't know that. Okay, and

[16:41] so the tree is in some way alive, although life is hidden in the tree, right? That's why the tree doesn't get the plant doesn't get named from anima, right? Like animal does, right? Animals clearly alive, right? Okay, but the animal is more composed than the what? More complicated, you might say, than the what? Yeah, human beings even more complicated than a cat or a dog, right? Always the one.

[17:13] Yeah. And so you're knowing God kind of via negativa, right? So if you're thinking of God in terms of the creature and knowing him from the creature, he said, "Well, the simpler the thing is, right? Simplicity and perfection don't go together, right? Yeah. So you want to turn it up right away, right? So you go from simplicity. You want to talk about simplicity of God, and talk right next to it about what?

[17:49] Yeah, so that's an interesting reason he gives, right? And I like to kind of say, you know, if you could take a kind of, you know, Dante-esque ascent, you know, up as he does sometimes, where he's going up from hell to purgatory, but go up to the the nine choirs or orders of angels, right? You'd see as you go up, they get simpler and more perfect. Well, it's quite just the opposite thing in the immaterial world than the material world, right?

[18:21] And you'd be kind of suspecting what's at the end of this as you go up—something that's altogether simple and universally what perfect, you know? But you're kind of being prepared for that as you descend. It's amazing, right? You know, my teacher Kasurik said, "When you first see your guardian angel, he says, 'You guys, this is God. ' You know, it's a wonderful picture he does. You know, so simple, so perfect, you know.

[18:44] And and the angel was saying, 'No, I'm not God. ' You know, he's he's higher, you know. But you go up, this is God. No, this is God. No, no, no, no, no. Maybe this time he's to see that, right? It must be kind of fun for the angel to do that. Yeah. No, wrong again. Yeah, yeah. You tell me to get to God, okay?

[19:09] Yeah. Yeah. You can kind of be confounded and would think you first see God, right? Confounded, aren't? He could be so. What does Augustine say? You know, too late if I come to know the the ancient beauty, right?

[19:27] Okay. Um. So, notice he's saying here, in quolibet genere quod est simplicissimum et perfectissimum kind of thinking the higher things is the measure of all the things, has in color whiteness, right? And in motion, the daily motion, right? So we use for time, right? The sun's apparent motion around the earth, right? Okay.

[19:58] For each thing, the more perfect it is, the more it exceeds to the first of the genus, from which it is clear that perfection of each thing, according as to be observed, is its measure, right? And from the first beginning,

[20:16] similarity, its quantity. And then this is what Augustine says in the sixth book, of the Trinity In his quae non mole magna sunt, right? In size, the word. The same is melius quod melius. So you say God is more than me. What does that mean? Non mole magna sunt right he's melius right? huh? he's? Better than me. Okay. But when of each form not subsisting, what? Its being consists in what?

[21:10] Being in its subject or what? Matter, right? Huh? In two ways its quantity or perfection can be considered. In one way, according to the what? Ratio of its proper species. In another way, according to the being that it has in matter or in a subject, right? Huh? Now, according to the ratio of its own species or kind, what? The forms of diverse species are unequal. But the forms of one species, right?

[21:51] Some are able to be equal, some not. For it is necessary that specific beginning be taken in something indivisible. But the difference of this beginning varies the species. And therefore, if in this beginning, there is addition or subtraction. from necessity, the species are what? Varied. Hence, the philosopher says in the eighth book of wisdom, now he's talking about substance, right? The seventh and eighth books are about substance, right?

[22:28] In the seventh, he leads you by the hand from logic to talk about substance, and then in the eighth book, he leads you by the hand from natural philosophy, right? Huh? Okay. So he says that they are what? Like numbers, right? Huh? So there's a little truth in what Plato said, right? Huh? I got your number, right? Okay. Now, why do why do we say that, right?

[22:53] Yeah, yeah. You say, well, take something I know a little better here, like like soul, right? Huh? Okay. The soul of the plant has what? The ability to

[23:11] feed itself, to grow, and to reproduce its its kind, right? Huh? Okay. Now the animals have that, but then in addition they have what? Senses, right? Okay. An emotion. So you call the plant one, the tree, the dog or cat maybe would be two, right? Huh? Now the lower animals don't move around from one place to another, right? But they have sensation, like the, like the seafood, yeah, those things, yeah.

[23:47] And then you get to the higher animals, right? And they have all the senses, right? Senses of noting at a distance, right? At the ear or the eye or something. And then that's number three, right? And then man has all that, in addition, understanding and willing, so he's number four, right? So, knows what my friend Shakespeare said: "What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed?

[24:20] A beast? No more. Yeah, see, you must have known this stuff, Shakespeare. Just pray. Natural genius. Yeah. See, if your chief good is to eat and sleep, then you're no more than a beast, right? More on this. So Aristotle says that the species of things are like what numbers, right? In which a unity added or subtracted varies the species, right? So you take away the use of reason from man, and so on, and the will, therefore, and then you really move on to the beast.

[25:05] Okay. Some forms what get their species right through something of their what essence, right? Just as all forms absolutely, whether substantial or accidental, and in such is it possible that in the same species, according to this word, one form is more than another. For one whiteness is not considered by itself abstractly, right? More whiteness than another, right?

[25:47] Some forms there are which get their species from something extrinsic to which they are ordered, as motion gets its species from its what term. Whence one motion is closer to another according to its what nearness or distance from its what.

[26:06] Okay. So you come more into my house than the what? Salesman has got his foot in the door. right now. Or the squirrel. And some are found qualities which are dispositions in order to something, as health is a certain what commensuration of humors, yeah, very simple biology, in order to the nature of the animal, right, which is called to be healthy. And therefore, some grade of commensuration of humors or fluids in the lion is health, which in man would be infirmity, right?

[26:56] Because therefore, according to the grade of the commensuration, health is does not receive its species, but according to the nature of the animal to which it is ordered, right? It happens also that in the same animal, one's health is greater than another, right? Okay. And so far as there can be a diverse grade of commensuration of fluids, right, in which is still solved things that are subhuman nature.

[27:24] And in one way, in the same way, in science, right, which sees unity for the unity of the subject. Whence in one there can be geometry more than another, right? In so far as he knows more conclusions ordered to a knowledge of the subject of geometry, which is magnitude.

[27:52] Likewise, according to the quantity of perfection which forms have, according as they are in matter or subject, some forms of one species are unequal, in so far as they are in something more or less. Some are what not able to be in them more or less.

[28:19] So it argues here that no substantial form can receive more or less. huh? Okay. The same way for a double, right? These kind of relations are one thing be more double than another? No, there are some forms, yeah, some things. Okay, this

[28:46] is in there because it's going to help to clear up things that comes out later on. But forms which neither give their species to the subject, nor do they get their species from something that, according to its definition, is indivisible, right? They can be in something more or less, as what whiteness and blackness, huh? So one man can be more courageous than another man, right? One man can be more temperate than another man, okay?

[29:26] From these, therefore, it is clear, as Thomas says, that in two ways something can have itself to diverse forms of concerning what equality and inequality.

[29:42] For some forms there are which are which in the same species do not receive inequality, neither in themselves that one of them is greater than another of the same species, nor in their being that one is more its subject. This sort of the substantial forms. There are some that we do not receive inequality in themselves, but only according as they are in the subject, as whiteness and what blackness, huh?

[30:16] Some receive inequality in themselves, not according as they are in the subject, as a triangle said to be a what greater triangle, right? In that the lines of one triangle are more than another, all the order to specifying one thing. For once, surface is not more triangular than another, right? Are they making distinctions or not? Why they're texting? Okay.

[30:44] Some things are which receive inequality in themselves, and according as in the subject, as health and knowledge in what motion. For emotion is unequal, either because it goes a greater distance, or because it moves the mobile more swiftly. Similarly, knowledge is more one than another, either because he knows more conclusions, or because he knows the same things better.

[31:17] Similarly, something can be healthy. Healthy can be unequally, either through the grade of commensuration. One is more suitable to perfect equality than another, or because one has that grade in a way more firmly than another. Right.

[31:42] Can't your mouth full, Thomas? Can't worry too much about that. Now, this Quaestio disputata De virtutibus in communi right? That's the reason why this horrible text was before us, right?

[32:05] It should be said that too many right errors happen about forms. From this, that they do not judge about them. From this, that they do judge about them, just as they judge about what substances, huh?

[32:20] Now, why is this? This happens, or seems to happen, because forms per modum substantiarum are signified in the abstract. This is the fact of formae dictionis again, isn't it? ut albedo veritatis, right, or something of this sort.

[32:41] Whence some, fouling the mode of speaking, right, judge about these as if they were what substances, huh? Somebody said that about grace. Yeah. Grace was it's something. No, God has his treasure house of grace, and he kind of dumps it on us. And from this proceeds the error of those who posit a hiddenness of forms, right? Huh? As of those who what posit forms to be from creation, right?

[33:26] For they guess, right, estimate, right, that it belongs to forms to come to be just as it comes to be what substance, yeah. And therefore, not finding from what the forms are generated, they laid them down to be created or to create. pre-exist in matter, right? That's hard to see, right? Huh? Okay. Let's say you got a piece of clay, right, in the shape of a sphere, right?

[33:55] Huh? Okay. Now you can mold that into a what, cube, huh? Where'd that shape come from? The world of forms. Yeah, it had to be created, right?

[34:11] Because there was no, or else there was a form of cube hidden in the sphere of clay, right? You just kind of revealed it, right? Was that the way it came about? That's what this little guy sculpted. It was there. I just chipped away the waste. Yeah, yeah. That's what Michelangelo said. It was in there. So Michelangelo said, Yeah, yeah, just revealing the thing that's hidden in there.

[34:41] You're kind of imagining it as something that exists by itself, right? Like a substance, right? Or in itself, right? And it's either got to be hidden in there. or Else it's got to be created, right? In both cases, you're imagining form to be something like a what substance, right? Terrible. Yeah. This last lowly one, right, This can rise to all these crazy ideas, right?

[35:12] Strange, huh? See, are you are you giving existence to a form, or are you forming the matter? Forming the matter Yeah. If you say you're giving existence to a form that wasn't before, then you're going to have to say it's either created, right, or it's what hidden in there, right? Like opening a Christmas present Yeah, yeah. It's kind of interesting that I was thinking the position of Socrates in the dialogues there, you know, where he says that

[36:05] learning is recalling, right? So it's kind of what you knew already, but you would. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, Socrates is talking to the slave boy, and he says, "How do you double a what? " Yeah. And the slave boy says, "You double the side, right? " And Socrates shows him that if you double the side, you get a square four times as big, right?

[36:39] And then he says, "Well, now suppose you have this original square, and you put it on the side of another square just like it, and then another square just like it, another square like it. Okay. Well, now what do you have? " It's four squares. Yeah. So they're how much bigger than the original one?

[37:05] Four. Yeah. And then how does Socrates do? Draw the diagonal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So slave boy is answering all the things that he knows, right? So the way to really double a square, which is to take the diagonal, right, for the side of that square, comes out of what the slave boy knows. So the slave boy is now what recalling the way to he'd forgotten, you know, temporarily how to double a square, right?

[37:39] He's helping remember. Yeah. Yeah. Is that what's taking place? He's coming to know what he didn't know through what he did know. Yeah. Yeah. So it's in the, he was able to know it from what he knew already, right? But he didn't know it yet from what he knew already.

[38:04] Hence, by reasoning that you come to know, right? What you don't know, what you know already, right? So if you go back to the the syllogism, right? No, just to take the letter form here for one. Every B is A, and every C is B, right? And that contains in its power every C is A, right? But is every C is A one of the premises? So when recalling those two premises, I can come to know every C is A, right?

[38:46] I'm not recalling, in fact, every C is A, am I? I'm coming to see it from the first, you know, time from every B is A and from every C is B, right? Yeah. So you're kind of confusing two things, right? Yeah.

[39:13] Was hidden in what I knew already. Was it? Uncovered. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Socrates says he's shown that the learning is recalling. There's some truth. Yeah, yeah. Recalling what you knew. Yeah, yeah. You learn by recalling what you know, but then you come to know something you didn't know through those things that you recall.

[39:46] Kind of an interesting mistake, huh? Beautiful, beautiful mistake in a sense, And so I know St. Bonaventure whether he was inspired by that or not, but I know when he treats them in his Itinerarium, he talks about how beginnings of number and magnitude, they're in the memories. Mm. Those beginnings are Mm. Not all conclusions, but the beginnings are in the memory, and from those go forward. I know.

[40:11] see, in, editions, you know, like of Euclid, you know, that they will give you the reference to what theorem is used to prove this, right? So if you kind of forgotten that theorem or something, you know, and you recall it, right? Huh? And even some editions of Thomas, they do that, right? Huh? You know, because Thomas will say, you know, in one of the later chapters, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, you know, as before we said, you know, they had little in parentheses, you know, but this is not Thomas.

[40:43] This is, you know, question or chapter or whatever it is, you know, which he showed this this thing that he's now using, right? So you have to make the effort of recalling what you know already, right?

[40:58] It's interesting, you know, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, when he goes to a new chapter, right? If he can reason to the conclusion, the next chapter from the chapter immediately preceding, he will do that first, right? And it's beautiful, like in the beginning of the Summa Contra Gentiles, there, chapter thirteen is is on the um, existence of God, right? huh? Okay. Then chapter fourteen, since he's he's even more so than in the Summa Theologiae, he's he's proven by what from motion, right, that the unmoved mover exists, right?

[41:37] Huh? And he has two arguments for it, and they're much more developed in the Summa Theologiae. Well, then in the fourteenth chapter, he's mainly what he's saying is new. There is that we we know more God is not what he is, right? And what to begin knowing that he's not, he doesn't move. It's almost it's clear from the previous. This is the fourteenth chapter, which is right after the thirteenth chapter, which is where the five proofs of God.

[42:04] So he's he's basically upon the beginning of that previous chapter. And then in the next chapter, the fifteenth chapter is on the eternity of God, right? Huh? Where he recalls he's just shown that that God is what unchanging, right? Huh? So if God came to be or ceased to be, he'd have to change, right? Well, if there's no change in God, then God has no beginning, no end.

[42:33] It's kind of eternal, right? And there's no time in God. And then he gets to the next chapter. He recalls that God is eternal, right, to show that God is pure act. It's kind of basic, and he goes into other arguments, huh? It's kind of helping you, you know, to tie things together, right? And then you go back into an earlier chapter, right? Huh? If he can argue from what's in the immediate chapter before this chapter, he'll do that first usually, right?

[43:01] And then he'll recall something, you know, two three chapters back or ten chapters back or something, you know. It's kind of funny, you know. I mean, kind of it's kind of good, though, you know, help a little, you know. So it's nice to see, you know, right away something from what you just saw, right? You know, and then go back and say, oh, I can go back to other things.

[43:22] See, yeah, yeah. Just as form is said to be a being, not because it itself is, if we speak properly, at the bottom of page seven here, but because by it something is, right?

[43:50] And thus the form is said to come to be, right? Huh? Okay. So, in the clay that is in the shape of a sphere, right, becomes a cube, right? Huh? Is a shape coming to be?

[44:12] He says, "What speaking, right?" Notice the last line there on page seven: "Si quid enim forma dicitur, non quia ipsa sit, si proprie loquamur right, huh? Sit, it's that, right, by which something is. Okay.

[44:41] So, in what sense is a form said to come to be? See."See, if I take a piece of clay that's in the shape of a cube, and I mold it into a sphere, right?

[44:59] What is coming to be? A sphere of clay or a sphere? Yeah, yes. Strictly speaking, right? And the spherical shape comes to be in the sense that it's that by which the clay is a sphere, but it doesn't come to be per se,

[45:25] because then the the sphere's the shape itself would have to have a matter to come to be from, right? Yeah, yeah. No, my dust is on. Yeah. Okay.

[45:50] Maybe we should look at this. Go on to page eight next time. I'm going to give you indigestion. But shows how subtle these things are, right? Huh? But I mean, just with that one kind of fallacy, right? But Aristotle, I think I started to mention this. I didn't mention it today. I mentioned it the other day, but in the De Anima, right? Aristotle says that

[46:17] they tried to assign the reason for knowledge, right? But not the reason for mistakes or error. That seems to be the usual state of human mind to be mistaken. And so, something incomplete about their, you know, consideration of what takes place in man, right? Huh? That's why it's one thing to say you can learn how to play golf, but you should first learn how not to play golf.

[46:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like to put these two things together from from my masters, Aristotle and Thomas. Aristotle says to be mistaken is usually a condition of human mind, and Thomas that to be mistaken is a great part of misery, right? Tell you something about the human race. Ain't there, yeah? Yeah.

[47:11] I was thinking, you know, the about the the Latin word error and the English word mistake, right? And this definition is never a reason, right? But

[47:39] error comes to be from the Latin word for wander, right? Okay. So, if you knew literature, you know that there's ones about knight errant, a wandering knight, goes around rescuing, you know, damsels from dragons or various, and erratic, right? So the word error suggests that a disordered movement of reason, right, is the source of error, right? That's how it's named, right? That your mind wanders, right, into error, right?

[48:19] Some people who knows this, and he's attacked the wanderer, the name, you know, poor. And so tied up with the word, what, what definition of reason?

[48:35] Shakespeare's. Yeah, discourse, right? Because discourse means that you're what running, but when this running is disordered, right, then it results in a what error, right? Okay. So that's the Latin word error.

[48:56] So that's kind of the sign, right? That reason that error is a result of a disordered movement of reason, right? Okay. Um. That's interesting, huh? That goes back to the other thing about looking before and after, right? Okay. But now, how is what is the word mistake coming from? It seems to be what.

[49:24] Taking this for that. Yeah, yeah, to miss, right? Intention, right? Okay. So this one girl was acting in the play and did a very good job, right? Huh? And I made a mistake, right? I Complimented her sister, right? Huh? So I took her sister for her, right? But taking goes back to the what? More to understanding, right? Or you know that you're trying to grasp something, right?

[49:57] Huh? So and so kind of mistake is like a misgrasping, right? Huh? So it's kind of named from the activity that is more what? Like understanding, right? Huh? Um. What's a misunderstanding? See. Misunderstanding seems to me closer in etymology to mistake, it doesn't it? See. It's kind of like the might be the end product of a of a discourse of reason, right? See. And you know when they talk about the God and the angels, right?

[50:36] Well, God doesn't make mistakes, right? But even the angels in their natural knowledge don't make mistakes, huh? And Thomas, when he takes up the divine mind, he denies, you know, at least negatively, there's no discourse in God's mind. And we involve kind of emotion in God's mind, right? There's no discourse. But the angel doesn't know by discourse either. See, that's right away. But what? But he knows through knowing himself, and what he knows by these other forms.

[51:13] It's already formed. I remember, I think I told you there, my son Marcus and little boy. Why can't we be born just knowing everything we need to know, right? I said, you want to be an angel, not a man.

[51:27] That's what it is. You've got a marvelous creature, the angel, right? Huh? You know. And so Thomas then denies discourse in the angels, strictly speaking, right? You know, he's not coming to know if he doesn't know what he does know, right?

[51:45] Doing so in a disorderly way that would lead to mistakes. This laborious mistake Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how many things do we misunderstand? You know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[52:01] So the usual state of human mind seems to be to be mistaken, right? Thomas, I would say when Thomas would say that, you know, to be mistaken is a great part of misery. You know, you argue from you know the context. I think he's talking about whether we can be happy in this life, or you know, in some sense we can be happy, but not perfectly, right?

[52:26] And one of the reasons he gives is that, yeah, yeah, or even things that we know are not really sufficient reasons. We got a kind of reason for thinking that. I'm not too sure about the reason I gave, you know. All right, then.

[52:47] I like those two definitions of reason because I think they kind of have some brevity to them, and they kind of harmonize, right? Can you say, well, Shakespeare doesn't talk about understanding, right? Huh? And but discourse carries idea of what reasoning, right? But you have to reason from something you understand. I used to say to students, you know, if you understood nothing, would you have anything to reason from?

[53:16] So when Shakespeare says you have, someone said, you know, reason is the ability to reason, right? Might not be the best way to put it, but but we could say that that includes, right? Understanding, right? Yeah. If you didn't have understand, if you can reason, you must understand something. reason from nothing. Just like in looking before and after, it implies that you have what ability to see distinction, right?

[53:49] You know. So included in looking before and after is looking for distinction. Included in discourse, right? Is understanding too, right? Okay. But in in in Hugo's definition there, where he says

[54:17] directing itself and others, right? That tied up with with order, right? So when you say directing itself and others, that includes what looking before and after, right? Because you have to see order in order to direct yourself or anything else, right? So

[54:39] that they will discover, you know, what else is kind of implied in these things. But it's good, I think, that the use definition of exalt understanding is something reason does, right? So.