Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
19. Despair, Boldness, and Finding What Is Common Among Disagreeing Philosophers
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/3-natural-hearing/019-despair-boldness-and-finding-what-is-common-among-disagreeing/

[0:00] Okay. Whatever. Now, what Aristotle is doing in the second reading is to give a logical division of the opinions of all those men who have been reading, right? And even including those who are not natural philosophers, like Parmenides and Melissus, huh? Okay.

[0:26] So notice the way he begins. Surely it is necessary that there is one beginning or many. That seems to be logical division, right? Okay.

[0:39] And if one, either immovable, as Parmenides and Melissus said, there was one thing unchangeable, so they were outside of natural philosophy, or movable, as the natural philosophers say. And even those couldn't agree because some said it was air, some said it was water, and so on, right? Okay. And if they said that there are many, either they made a limited multitude or unlimited, right? And if limited, but more than one, either two or three or four or some other number.

[1:13] Of course, the famous one we met with Empedocles said there was four, right? Okay. And if unlimited, either is Democritus, one in kind but differing in figure or form, or also contrary, like in Anaxagoras, huh?

[1:30] Now, we have to stop there after you see that division, right? What do you see? You see all this disagreement among them, right? Some say it's one, some says it's many. That's a disagreement, right? Those who say there's only one thing, basically, some say it's movable, some say it's immovable. They can't agree, okay? Even those who say it's immovable, one says it's limited, the other says it's unlimited.

[2:00] Those who say it's movable, they can't agree. One guy says water, the guy says air, and the guy says fire, right? Those who say it's many, some say it's limited in number, some say it's unlimited, and those who say it's unlimited can't agree, right? So you have all these different opinions, and each opinion you got a different man, huh? As many men as many opinions, right? Okay.

[2:23] Now, I usually stop with the students and I say, now, is this an unusual state of affairs in the history of human thought? Everybody's got his own opinion, and they all disagree. No, see, this is a very common situation, right? Okay. Now, where do you go or don't go from here? Okay, right, okay. Put yourself back in Aristotle's shoes, right?

[2:49] And the first reaction to this is to what? Be somewhat discouraged, right? Even to despair, right? Because this is a sign of the great what? Weakness of the human mind. If one of these guys is correct, right, all the other guys will have to be wrong, right? And they can't all be right because it can't be one and many. It can't be water and air, right? You know.

[3:15] So possibly everybody's mistaken, you know. So to be mistaken is the usual state of the human mind. And when Aristotle is talking about the Greek philosophers before him in the De Anima, books on the soul, he says, some of them tried to explain how knowledge takes place. He says, but they gave no explanation of how mistakes take place, and yet that seems to be more common. And if you want to explain what takes place in men and animals, they should explain mistakes as well as knowing.

[3:52] And it is a more common phenomenon, even more in need of explanation. So this is a prime example, but it's not the only example of something happens again and again in human thinking, this almost universal disagreement, huh? Okay. Now, one reaction to that is not only discouragement, but to go all the way, it's to despair of ever knowing the truth about these things, right? You might take this as a sign simply of the weakness and inability in the human mind.

[4:34] Everybody's got their own opinion, and you know the truth, right? Okay. And I tell you that little story when I was first starting out in philosophy. I happened to be at some kind of a social function. I got talking to an older woman, and she asked me what I was studying. Did I tell you that story? And I'm studying philosophy. and she said, oh, well, let me tell you about this young man.

[4:59] that she knew. And he had gone to the University of Minnesota. He read author A, said one thing. Read author B, said something else. Author C, again something else. Author D, something else. He became more and more confused, right, as to what things are, and finally what? Yeah. And so he gave up the pursuit of philosophy, the academic life, and he goes out and lives on a farm now, she says, and he refuses to pick up a book.

[5:30] Well, I think that's kind of an interesting reaction, right? So she was concerned about something. This might happen to me. Now, I think that's kind of a very natural reaction, you might say, and a very common reaction. And I think the universities are, in fact, filled people who have despaired. And if they're honest, they just get up and leave, go on down the farm, and forget about the whole thing.

[6:00] But for one reason or another, they they stay and they spread despair. Yeah. But also, it reminds me of what Whitaker Chambers said, you know, when he came back to Columbia, there, and he said that

[6:18] his friends there they treated ideas like ping pong balls. And ping pong balls, something get knocked back and forth. You don't take it too seriously. That's what ideas are. You don't, you know, take seriously this pursuit of truth and trying to get it. It's obviously impossible for man, right? Just play with ideas, bang, bang, back and forth, huh? So

[6:43] this despair, as I say, is a very common thing. So I think the universities are are filled with people who have despair of knowing the truth. And this becomes almost like a common opinion that man can't know the truth. A very serious state of affairs, huh? Okay.

[7:03] Now, if you read Descartes' Discourse on Method, where he has a little autobiographical sketch of his life there, he fell into a kind of despair for a while. And it's because of this universal disagreement among people, right? Okay. Okay. Now, if you read the dialogue called the *Phaedo*, right?

[7:29] Socrates' friends fall into a kind of despair, knowing the truth about the immortality of the soul, because Socrates gives them a number of arguments that seem to them good, right? And then Simmias and Cebes come with some objections, and all of a sudden, everything doesn't seem to be good anymore, and they get discouraged, right? And Phaedo, who's recounting this last day of Socrates, Echecrates and they have kind of a little interlude there.

[7:59] Echecrates himself speaks of the sinking feeling he had when everything happened that day, right? And Phaedo talks about how the fact that they felt this kind of despair. And Echecrates says, "What did Socrates do, right? " You know. And Phaedo says, "I never admired Socrates more, right? " And if you read the dialogue, Socrates gradually leads them out of this despair to continue the investigation, right. And then he takes up the objections of Simius right, and see this huh?

[8:32] Okay, eventually answers that right? But that despair is very common, and I think Plato is teaching us in the Phaedo, and something you can teach in a dialogue form that you can't really teach in a more textbook type form, right, or treatise form. You know the role that the appetite, the will, and emotions play in our thinking. So you can represent someone getting angry and not seeing the truth.

[9:02] You know, Anaxagoras gets angry with Socrates, and the Meno all right. You know, the people get angry, you know, when they're being examined by Socrates, huh? And so you can see various defects of will and emotions that now this influences are thinking, yeah.

[9:21] I noticed not this despair of knowing the truth, right? this despair of knowing the truth. Despair of knowing the truth. This really comes after this natural desire we have to know the truth, but because truth is in many cases something very difficult to know, we easily get discouraged and even fall into despair. But this despair of knowing the truth, if that becomes you know habitual, then you give up the pursuit of truth, right?

[9:55] And so this is against the natural desire to know the truth. But nature doesn't do what more than is necessary, huh? If nature gives us a natural desire to know the truth, this must be possible in some way for man. Just like if nature gives us hunger and thirst, it must not be impossible to get food and water. You may not always succeed in getting food or water, right?

[10:33] But if it were impossible to get food or water, why would nature give us hunger and thirst, huh? So it goes against the natural desire to know the truth. This despair. At the same time, you can see that the natural desire to know the truth is not enough to know the truth. You need also the hope of overcoming the difficulties, right?

[11:13] So sometimes it's the duty of Socrates or the teacher to encourage the student, right? Especially when they're young, right? They need to be encouraged, huh? Okay. My old teacher Kasurik told me this one time. You know, as I was all there, and he had some questions in his mind as as to the matter that was being talked about in class there with Monsignor Dionne. So he went to see Monsignor Dionne in his office afterwards, right?

[11:41] Monsignor Dionne talked much differently in the office than he had in class. And Kasurik said, "Why do you talk so different in class?" He said, "It's a duty of the teacher to encourage the student." But now he had a student who was didn't need to be encouraged; he needed to be what cautioned, say, you know, and and to go through some of these difficulties, right? But the hoi polloi had to encourage him, right, to keep on and not make things too difficult at first, right?

[12:18] When I was rookie, I made when I was outlining what was going to do my doctoral thesis, and I brought him to Monsignor Dionne, and he had it for a day or two. And when I came back in there, and he asked me a few polite questions, and then he said, "Now a more serious objection. He proposed a change in order of my thesis, and the many proposed I could see was better.

[12:39] Right? In fact, it was so good that I could write the thesis by myself after that. But I said, 'Yeah, that's not the way it is. ' And he said, 'I'm going to give you evidence for what I'm saying. ' He says, 'He's giving me the you know all I need to write the thing myself. ' I'm just what I'm saying. He says, 'It's like I reviewed it too quickly or something, or else he's just testing a little bit.

[13:03] ' Okay. But this is the most common reaction to this situation. Okay, it's despair. So men become skeptics, huh? And there've been men who are skeptics in every age. But there's something wrong with that because it goes against our natural desire to know the truth. But at the same time, you realize that philosopher needs the hope of overcoming the difficulties in the way of knowing the truth.

[13:32] Now, to take my favorite whipping boy there, Descartes. If you go back to the Discourse on Method, and you had a biographical sketch, I mentioned how Descartes did fall into a kind of despair for a time, right? But his desire to know revived, and was not crushed by this, right? And decided to what? Well, if these guys can't agree, let's forget about them. Let's try doing ourselves, okay?

[14:00] And this is what another reaction, all right? I'm going to do it myself. Do it yourself, okay? Now this is not opposed to natural desire to know, really. It's not opposed to what hope, right? Okay. But what reason is there to think if you do it yourself? That you will do anything more than add another opinion to an already what? A few long lists, right? And Descartes says, "Well, what I say will be so clear that nobody disputes it."

[14:41] In fact, he publishes his work. He gets all kinds of objections, right? And say how to reply to all the objections and so on. So

[14:53] this do-it-yourself doesn't suffer from despair, but maybe it suffers from what we might call boldness, kind of overconfidence, right? That I can succeed where everybody else has what failed, right?

[15:14] Um, this is against something else that we need. It's not against the hope, as they say, but it's against the fear that we need in the life of the mind, against

[15:32] the fear of being mistaken or the fear of making a mistake. Read my scribbles here. Okay, against the fear of being mistaken or making a mistake.

[15:57] Now you go back to that great dialogue, the Phaedo. I mentioned how the friends of Socrates fall into a kind of despair. Well, Socrates gradually leads them out of that despair, and you can see how he does so if you read the dialogue of the Phaedo. And then they start to take up the objections of Simmias and Cebes, and Socrates, one, two, three, the three three arguments he destroys the position of what Simmias, right?

[16:27] And now you know they start to get what kind of bold, right? You see, and Socrates says, "Wait, wait! Now it's not going to be so easy to answer Cebes's objection as it was, but Simmias's objection, right? Well, now you see what a good teacher can do, right? He can see now that they're not in need of being encouraged, but now their boldness has to be what Tempered, Tempered, Yeah, see, with the fear that you might make a what mistake?

[16:57] Wisely and slow they stumble that run fast slow, they stumble. Run fast as Friar Lawrence does, huh? So that the philosopher has to have a balance of hope and what fear, right? And you have to realize as a teacher, but it's kind of hard to maybe with that whole class of people, those who need to be encouraged and those who need to be what cautioned, so to speak, right?

[17:29] And but that balance of hope and fear is something necessary for the philosopher, and it's analogous to what you have in other things in life. You know, if I'm running for political office, if I don't have the hope of getting elected, let me just go through the motions. I'm not going to run a very good campaign, right? But you often talk about the necessity of a politician running scared, as they say.

[17:55] And sometimes a man who's been elected to office many times, kind of thinks that he's got things sewed up, and he stays in Washington too long. The other guy is ringing bells and building a force, and when he comes back to the district, he suddenly realizes that what things are not such an easy thing, right? And so his boldness or his overconfidence is going to lead to his what defeat, right?

[18:19] Okay. Of course, you have something like that in religious life, right? When Thomas is commenting. on the 32nd song there but One of the songs there, where it speaks of both hope and fear, right? And Thomas says, "Well, a hoping in the divine mercy, right? Without fear, the divine justice will make one what presumptuous, huh? But fear of the divine justice, without any hope in the divine mercy, would make one what despair, right?

[18:51] So what you need is this kind of a balance of hope and fear. You need the hope in the divine mercy, balanced by the fear of the divine justice. And sometimes things get unbalanced. I was in a one of the Catholic bookstores there a few years ago. I was walking around, and here's St. Anselm, you know, meditation to gain fear of the Lord. I say, you don't read that very often now, right?

[19:19] You don't have the old, you know, four last things, you know, death, judgment, heaven, hell. You don't have much of that, you know. And so I think, you know, we're always being told in church that God loves you just the way you are. Well, be careful with that statement, right? I hear it over and over again in the parish and so on. So you need this balance, right, of hope and fear, right?

[19:46] But again, you have to, in a sense, adapt yourself to the person, right? If you're dealing with a woman who's who's committed abortion or had an abortion, right? She might be very tempted to what despair for her salvation. She realizes what she's done, right? So you might have to build up her hope in the divine mercy at this point, right? But someone else has come to know who thinks they're pretty good, you know.

[20:10] If you ever read the the autobiography there of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, you know the one who started the Sacred Heart, and sometimes she's feeling pretty good about herself, you know. Boy, does Christ tear it! It's really frightening, you know, to see this, right? You see, but but Christ is a master, you see. He knows when to what be merciful and when to you know straighten you out with with justice.

[20:37] So I mean, if you're a priest, say that that's hearing confessions and so on, you have to find them in a way, know what is necessary with this what person, right? Huh? Would they need to be consoled or encouraged, or you know, rely on the divine mercy and so on, or would they need to be what you know, straightened out a bit, you know, with their lax life and you know, you know.

[21:07] I first came to Worcester there I used to be in the cathedral parish downtown there. The old Monsignor Daly, you know, he was. I used to like his sermons, you know. He was a good guy going confession, but his confession him too, but remember the guy from the thing, you know. And some of you are going to have a mighty unhappy eternity, he said, you know. He's explaining, you know.

[21:25] But but but you know, most churches nowadays you don't hear anything about sin or anything about the. Consequence of sin or anything that is a hell, you know, and so on. And every time I go to a funeral home, you know, people are always talking as if the person who's died is is in heaven, and and they're, you know, well, I mean, I'm going to think Granny's probably in purgatory, but I mean, you know, I mean, you got to, you know, I think we kind of got.

[21:53] I know my father died, you know, and Father Steiner, very good priest, we had there, he said to my mother, you know, now never stop praying for him, you know, because we don't know how long you're in purgatory or how long, you know. And they don't hear that at all now, you know. Now they think. I know my father died. You know, he would say, you know, what all suffering is orphan.

[22:10] He says, "Well, I said, I hope so, you know, but I don't know. " No, you know. You read the life of the saints, you know. You say, "Well, probably for most of us, if we make it at all, it's going to be through purgatory and not through, you know. " First come, first served. I mean, first immediate,

[22:31] you know. You know, you read the life of Saint John the Cross, and he says to his friend, "You know, pray that I have my purgatory in earth. " I got to stop and think about that, right? Saint John the Cross asking his friend to pray that he, John the Cross,

[22:49] have his purgatory in earth. Better to have your purgatory in earth than up there, you know. I mean, these things are kind of frightening. The people now they're very, you know, but you get again you got to you know frighten people too much either you got to you got to realize where they are.

[23:05] Well, it's like in the philosophical life, you see, and in a way, with my three main teachers there, Kisuric and Deconic and then Dianna, sort of in that order, right? Kassirik probably encouraged me the most, right? By Dion, most of all, what the fear, yeah, yeah. And I think it would have been bad for me to have Dion as my first teacher, right? Because I would have been afraid to think.

[23:31] Yeah, you know, so easily to be mistaken, see, you know. And so I haven't, you know, unfortunately, in exactly the right order, right? Kassirik, Diakonik, Dion. But my friend Warren Murry used to say, "Well, John Dion's his predominant passion is fear. "

[23:52] But that was good, right, under fear of being mistaken. But you see that very much in Socrates. Now there's a lot of element of fear. But when these people have despair, then you don't need to have more fear. This fear, we just the need of despair is not balanced with hope. So a balance of hope and fear is something. There's different kinds of hope and fear, right?

[24:12] But it's a very important thing in the spiritual life and the Christian life, right? You know, to balance the hope in the divine mercy with the fear of the divine justice. But in philosophy, another kind of hope and fear, but the hope of overcoming the difficulties, knowing the truth, balanced by the fear of making what. A mistake, right? Okay, and for the politicians, hope will get elected in the fear of being what thrown out.

[24:40] You see? So this first thing here is against the natural desire to know, and it's against the hope that we need. The second thing is against the fear that we need, and the boldness of Descartes, the audacity of Montaigne, I would say, of Descartes, right? Another name for excessive, fear is boldness huh boldness, huh?

[25:12] Well, now is there any other alternative to this situation, this sad situation, which reveals the human mind is the most part mistaken? Huh? It's really a frightening thing. Is there any alternative to despairing and giving up, or to what? Let's forget about these guys and do it ourselves. Is there anything that avoids the despair and avoids the the boldness? Huh? What is Dionysius? You know, and he sums up the cause of error.

[25:50] He says it's bold imagination. That's the source of error, not bold imagination. And the side of the knowing powers, it's this false imagination, right? But on the side of what the mind's this boldness, huh? Bold imagination. That's what it is.

[26:17] So is there another way out? In other words, is there some way to go forward as opposed to this, which is to give up, right? But to go forward with the help of these other men, right? Yeah. Unlike trying to go forward here all by yourself.

[26:41] It would be then the separation, trying to separate what is right and what is wrong, with what extent. Well, well, let's let's look back. I'm going to give you two things here. One was said by Empedocles, and we have it in the fragments on method. I put it one is said by Empedocles and one is said by Heraclitus, and one is said by Heraclitus, huh? But there's fragments that suggest two possible ways of going forward with the help of those who disagree, right?

[27:15] Okay. Two ways of going forward, and one is suggested in a fragment of Empedocles, huh? Where Empedocles says that men don't live very long, right? And having seen a part of life, they boast of having seen the whole.

[27:39] Now again, that shows the danger of pride, right? But he's saying men see a part of the truth, right, and they boast of having seen the whole. Well, this is an important thing that man sees a part of the truth

[28:05] before the whole, right? He hasn't seen the whole. But that men seeing a part of the truth out of pride, they think they've seen the whole, right? And that's part of the reason why they disagree more than they maybe even have to, right? Okay, because of the defect of their will, huh? Now,

[28:33] this suggests, right, that there may be parts of the truth scattered among those who disagree, right? And if they're reasonable men, maybe each of them has seen some part of the truth, but out of human weakness, human pride, they think it's they see the whole, right? Okay. And we can see Empedocles to some extent doing that when he came to earth, air, fire, and water as the four roots of all things.

[29:06] Maybe he thought, you know, that Thales had seen something when he said water is the beginning of things, and especially it's the beginning of living things, and so on. That maybe he thought he got carried away and thought we're not seeing the whole truth about the origin of things, huh? We saw he combined not only earth, air, fire, and water, but he also brought in the what?

[29:28] The numerical ratios of our friend. Pythagoras, yeah, right. Okay, and then he tried to add something himself there. So this is one way of trying to go forward with the help of those who disagree, and that would be to gather

[29:53] the parts of the truth divided among them. I was talking in Dionysius today. We were talking about the Phaedo. And I was mentioning, you know, that Socrates or Plato is thinking of the soul as a complete substance distinct from the body, huh? So the soul is in the body like a man in his boat, man in his car, right? Simmias is bringing this opinion that the soul is kind of the harmony of the body, kind of an accidental form or order of the body, huh?

[30:44] Like the modern biologists think that the soul is the cause of life, is he right? Well, actually, Aristotle will see a part of the truth in both of those, huh?

[30:58] The truth that Aristotle will eventually bring out is that the soul is a substantial form. So the idea that the soul is something substantial—that's the part of the truth that Socrates and Plato see, huh? But it's a form, is in the other opinion, right? But it's not an accidental form, and it's not a complete substance. It's a substantial form. So Aristotle is going to gather the parts of truth that come to both of them.

[31:27] So this is one way of going forward, despite all the disagreement, to go forward not by yourself, right, with the help of those who disagree. Gather the parts of the truth to divide amongst them. Okay.

[31:45] This one reason for dialectic to have the different opinions clash together, because it's like the war, right? And when the two armies, like the Achaeans there and the Trojans meet in front of Troy, the weak men on both sides go down, right? If you could stop the battle after the first conflict, done, and then gather up those who remain, you have a better army than either one that you started with.

[32:12] You'd have Hector and Achilles in your army. You'd have the invincible army, right? You see. So when the different opinions clash, the weak points, the weak elements tend to go down, the strong ones emerge, right? And then you can kind of gather up, right? Hector and Achilles, and you come up with the best army, right? Superior to either the armies to begin with. Now there's another way of going forward suggested by the fragments of Heraclitus, and there's a whole bunch of them dealing with the common.

[32:43] But I usually single out one in particular where he says, "Those who speak with understanding," he says, "must be strong in what is common to all." Okay. Is it possible that among those who disagree, they might have something in common? Remember the disagreement between Heraclitus and Parmenides, right? Where Parmenides is saying that contradiction is impossible in things, and therefore change doesn't exist, right? And Heraclitus who's saying what?

[33:19] Change is real, right? But it involves contradiction, right? Well, there's something in common these two guys, but you had to choose between these two, right? And then you begin to realize that you're having to choose between the two was based upon the fact that one seemed to contradict the other, right? And then you're starting to bring out what's common to the two, huh? So Heraclitus says, "Those who speak with understanding," Heraclitus says in Greek, "must be strong in what is common to

[34:02] all." Okay. The much he says is a city is strong in its law, even more so he says, for the law of the city is found is nourished by one divine law.

[34:23] So. These two fragments suggest two possible ways of going forward with the help of those who disagree. One way is to gather the parts of truth that might be divided amongst them. The other is, despite the disagreement, to find something they all have in common, bring that out, and become strong in that, and make that the cornerstone of your analysis.

[34:52] Now, Aristotle is going to do both of these, but the next question I ask the students is: What should you try to do first? Should you try to gather the parts of truth that are divided amongst them, or should you try to see if they have something in common despite the disagreement and become strong in that? What should you do first?

[35:22] Second. Yeah. Now a lot of times students will say the first, but I think it's the second too down here. But what's the reason for doing the second before the first? Well, since it's common to all, well, that's less stuff you have to go through. I mean, yeah, you have one truth that's common between fifty people. Well, that's only one thing you got to learn if it's different.

[35:48] Yeah. Then you got fifty different things. Okay. Okay. So simplicity. Okay. What's what's the basic before and after we learned about knowing there in the in the first reading there, even more general than general in particular, even more general than confused and distinct. More known than less known. Yeah. Yeah. Now we got to start with what is more known to us before what is less known to us.

[36:13] Now, which is apt to be more known to us: something that one man sees but other men don't see, or something that everybody sees to some extent? Something everyone sees. Yeah. Yeah. So once you try to do what Heraclitus says first, right, and then later on do this, huh? You see that?

[36:35] Accept. Now we'll see how Aristotle does this. Okay, next time.