Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
20. The Common Basis of the Life of the Mind, Pride and Humility, and Pantheism Q&A
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/3-natural-hearing/020-the-common-basis-of-the-life-of-the-mind-pride-and-humility/

[0:00] Okay, but just in the last few minutes remaining, it's almost five now. Notice what Herakitis says. Now, it's a very interesting statement. Those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common to all. He goes on in the fragment to say, as much as a city is strong in its law, right, and even more so because the law of the city is fed, he says, by divine law, which is more than sufficient and solid.

[0:28] But notice the comparison he's making there. Is it possible for you and I to live together in a city without a common law? No, see. In other words, if you're going by the law of England that you're driving the west side of the street, then I'm going by the law of the United States. I don't want to be on the same road with you guys. You see?

[0:49] So we need common laws to live together. But now, is it also true in the life of the mind? If we're going to live the life of the mind together, you and I, must we not have something in common? See? Now, sometimes I break that down with the two ways we might lead the life of the mind together. Sometimes we lead the life of the mind together as equals, right?

[1:12] Discussing something. Sometimes as unequals, like teacher and student, right? But now, if we're leading the life, let's say, together as teacher and student, the teacher is trying to lead the student to see something that the teacher knows and the student doesn't know. But he tries to lead the student to see what the student doesn't know through what the student knows already. See? Like Socrates leads the slave boy, right? to see how to double a square, ultimately, through things that the slave boy himself knows, but obviously the teacher has to know those things as well in order to lead the student from them, right?

[1:53] So the only way you can really lead truly and fully the life of the mind together as teacher and student is by having some things in common, right? That both the teacher and the student knows, and the teacher uses those things that they both know to lead the student to see the things that the teacher knows and the student doesn't know. You see that? So it's impossible to have the life of the mind together as teacher and student without having this common thing, right?

[2:22] Okay. So when I learn from Euclid, who's my teacher in geometry, huh? And he makes use of things I've learned already, right, to make me see the next theorem in the book. You know how that works, huh?

[2:37] And that's the only way he can teach me, huh? He's got to know those things too, obviously. That I know to lead me from them, right? Now, if you have the life of the mind, we do between equals, we're discussing something, right? As we know, we often disagree, right? I can say you're wrong because you don't agree with my thinking, and you can return the compliment. But that's kind of the end of our life of mind together, right?

[3:07] If you and I disagree, the only way to go forward is to find something that we can both agree upon, that we can use to decide between us, huh? Like two scientists, you know, they might have different hypotheses, and I can say, well, your hypothesis is incorrect and fit mine, and you can return the compliment, right?

[3:29] We got to have a little irony, you know. We saw Saint Paul using irony there in the Corinthians, there in the second epistle. He hasn't been any burden to them because he would, you know, support himself with his own labor, right? And so he's talking about how he's, what, you know, harm them, right, by not expecting any money or or help from them financially. Okay. Anyway,

[4:01] yeah, two scientists, huh? If they want to go forward, they've got to maybe find an experiment, right? That they can both perform and observe the results of, but an experiment where the two different hypotheses let's say would predict different things, huh? And then they can use a common experiment to decide between them, okay? And if you and I disagree about something in geometry, right, we have to go back to something we both know and try to use that to distinguish whose right, whose wrong, huh?

[4:35] So with it between equals, like teacher and student, or between equals in a kind of dialectical conversation, you know. We to go forward, you have to find something what common, yeah. So those who speak with understanding, he says, must be strong in what is common to all. And of course, to be strong in it means that you are able to see what does or does not follow from it, or what is or is not in agreement with it.

[5:01] Because if there is something common to two of us, whereby we could resolve our disagreement, why we are disagreeing in the first place? We don't see what follows from what is common, right? We don't see what is or is not in harmony first of what is common. So we got to go back to the common and become strong in it, and then we'll maybe see whether you or me in our disagreement are in agreement with that common thing, huh?

[5:25] Okay, you see that? So Aristotle is going to do here is is is going to find a common basis among all these disagreeing guys, huh? And he's going to become strong in it. He's going to follow exactly the advice of Heraclitus. And of course, he probably had more words, you know, to work with. You know, we just have the fragments, right? But even in some of the fragments we see, we can see Aristotle is working his way towards the common what thought, huh?

[5:57] Okay. And so we're going to see first of all, you know, how he finds a common basis, the common basis he does find, and then all the steps he goes through to become strong in what is common to everybody.

[6:16] And then later on, we're going to look at another set of readings, from Aristotle, again from the first book here, where he's going to do the same thing again. But there he begins by finding a common basis among all men, and he becomes strong in that by going through several steps, huh? That's the amazing thing, right? And he's following exactly what Heraclitus that's why Heraclitus is a central thinker, human thought.

[6:42] but he goes you know, you can imagine what he is because of what he said. People, you know, they saw the importance of that, huh? And he kind of anticipates the common basis that Aristotle first finds, and we'll see. You don't see the fatal, right? And we'll see Aristotle here, okay?

[7:02] And that's the only way I think to go forward. The other alternative is to say, well, I look myself, or else you know. But the most natural I just don't get into despair.

[7:20] I used to always think, you know, you know, when I was still a college student, you know, you go to one of these meetings of professors, they're kind of philosophy meetings, you know, and they're all disagreeing, you know, and so on. It's not too good an idea to bring young students. in there. Right, yeah, yeah. All these guys disagreeing, you know, no two guys saying the same thing, you know, because it can be kind of a, you know, discouraging thing to say the least, huh?

[7:41] Is it? Heraclitus, you know, he has other fragments. He says we should not act and speak. He says like those asleep. For sleeping, he says what? For the wake, he says there is one world and it's common. But each man falls asleep. Each man goes into his own world, right? You know, so you can say that these men are all what? somewhat asleep, huh? Each in his own world, right?

[8:12] And Heraclitus is, I mean, Thales is in the world where water is beginning of all things, and Anaximenes in the world where air is beginning of all things, and Democritus in the world where the atoms are beginning of all things. Each guy is in his own world, huh? And of course, his own private world, huh? And you know, the Greek word for private is idios. Forget the word idiot, huh?

[8:39] But in a sense the idiot, the madman is is a man who's living in a world of his own making, right? And so, most of you are must be living in their own world, not the the one true world, huh? So if we all, you know, you fall asleep, you know, after this class here, you know, and I might dream I'm here, and you dream you're somewhere else, and we're all dreaming, and it all falls, right?

[9:05] But if we wake up, oh yeah, we're we're on the table, right? Well, we all agree, right? We wake up, you know, and come back to the the one real true world.

[9:18] Was it Bellarmine wrote the famous thing? I think, and you know, on the Protestants there, you know, the way they kept on dividing, you know, as they left the the church, you know, they kept on, you know, dividing, you know, everybody got their own opinion, right, right down to the last thing, you know. All these private worlds, huh? They get their own catechism, their own creed, their own this, their own that, huh?

[9:41] And they all depart from the one true common creed, huh? What was that court decision? What that Casey decision where it says that the heart of human freedom is to define one's own meaning of existence, etc. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the example. Yeah. Someone, someone commented about that and says, "Yeah, well, that's the schizophrenic, which is true. Yeah. The schizophrenic is the most free person in our society.

[10:18] Okay, so we'll start this. We're running out of time here. What he does the reading aid is to find the common bases among this group and that group, and then find the beginning of ten. He finds the common bases that they all share, and then he starts to become strong in it. He goes through many steps and we'll note each of the steps as he goes along.

[10:43] But you know, when I first was, you know, I started to teach these things and. Translating the fragments, and suddenly dawned upon me how carefully he's following Heraclitus there, that advice.

[10:55] Amazing. Sometimes I call myself an Heraclitean right? He first saw this thing, you know. And we'll come in here too when you get to the

[11:11] eleventh reading. There you see the role of contradiction, right? And it's going to be the first major example in the order of learning of the role of contradiction development of our knowledge. At that point, we'll stop and look at the fragments again of Heraclitus about contradiction, and then Aristotle's statement of this in the third book of Wisdom. But then we'll give the ones from the modern scientists.

[11:37] In fact, where they see something of this, and then finally the the words of. The theologians and Christ Himself about this—some kind of amazing thing to see that. We saw a little bit of that in the fragment of of uh. Anaxagoras, right? This is seeing that apparent contradiction between the different things he's saying, which leads us to the solution suggested by none other than Socrates, right? I don't know.

[12:09] Socrates is very good at seeing contradictions in your thinking, right? We know he read Anaxagoras, and that contradiction, you know. I don't know how long I was teaching myself, you know, you see the contradiction there, and then, and then. You led us to it. You gave us choices. You said two sentences. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So far, a couple of sentences. Yeah, yeah. But once you see that, and you realize that there's reason to say both of these things, and yet they seem to be opposed, then you have to what?

[12:37] Look under that contradiction and see how it can be resolved, and that's how we discover the way the mind, in fact, can move itself. There's gold, and there are hills. Yeah. In some ways, it seems that for most people, there's

[13:03] more reason to despair. Yeah, yeah. Because also say that they disagree, and also that they were they they were more intelligent than most people. Yeah, yeah. And so, if they couldn't find the way, yeah, because even finding what is the way, yeah.

[13:22] You know, you know, Thomas is a lot of his works. He he he attacks the positions of the Latin Averroists, as they're called. I mean, in other words, they have these crazy opinions that Averroes and others had, but in in I think it's in the De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas But anyway, he says they speak as if wisdom began with them. Yeah, and kind of going to be the modern philosopher.

[13:51] You see that same thing. Each modern philosopher, in turn, speaks as if wisdom began with them. I feel they speak, and I think Thomas hit upon something there, right? The defect in the in the will of these people.

[14:16] Sometimes they have kind of false. They can be guilty, you know, that they were lucky to discover this, you know. You know, but but.

[14:29] It's. I think I was mentioning the last time I was reading the commentary there on Second Epistle to the Corinthians. There and and Thomas touches upon that the two kinds of pride there. Yeah. And you know, because I see this text, you know, more complete when we discuss Gregory's division of the species of pride and the kind of manifested, you know, by their effects. I think the fundamental division is that when I'm led by pride to think I'm better than I am, right?

[15:06] The two ways that you could say, you know, for us to divide it is because I think I have some good or excellence I don't have, right? You know, I can be led by pride to think that I have some good or excellence I don't have, right? And that's you know, you know, in what I have, right? No mistake about it. And the other one is not in what I have, but in how I have it, right?

[15:35] See, so I could think that I understand something I don't understand, right? Yeah, I should bring in that obituary from Monsignor Dulac. That's kind of interesting, you know, because Father Stromberg there was kind of quoted in the thing, you know, talking about Dulac, you know. And Dulac would often say not often, but sometimes say, "I don't understand that," you know. In other words, he wasn't doubting it.

[16:05] You know, something maybe in philosophy there, but just you know, I don't understand either. That's kind of a good sign that the man would say, right? You see,

[16:17] so sometimes we pretend to understand something we don't understand, right? Or we think we understand something we don't really understand. Other times we do understand the thing, and so it's not pride to say we understand it, but we we think we discovered it ourselves, right? You see, when we actually learn it from somebody else,

[16:43] and you know, not necessarily have to go on every time you explain something, say, "why I learned so and so, I learned so and so," you know. but I mean, I mean, sometimes you get to think as if you're the first guy to see these things, right? But there's another way of doing it, right? I'm the only one who's seen this, right? That's another kind of pride, isn't it?

[17:08] We think you're the only person who has seen this, and you're not the only person who's seen this, huh? It's interesting how when the two great philosophers here, Plato and Aristotle, they both had the idea that the universe was eternal, right? It always was, right? And therefore that the philosophy and the arts and the sciences were discovered many times, huh? And then there's some kind of a cataclysm, you know.

[17:40] And only a few farmers up in the hills, or someplace, you know, shepherds are left there, and nobody knows anything much to speak of, right? And so then they start over again, right? Well, although this is false that the universe always existed, right? It keeps us a little more humble, right? Because, like, you know, it's not like you know, Aristotle was the first man. You know, Aristotle doesn't realize how unique he is in some ways, right?

[18:03] You see. But Aristotle was really the first man to understand what the soul was. That's interesting, you know, and many other things. So, if you knew how unique and, you know, well, he thinks you know, you know, that the the the the myths and some of them, you know, are kind of a you know third, fourth-hand account of filtered down, you know, from people who discovered, you know, you know, he sees that way sometimes, right?

[18:37] You've seen it in the text there. Because, because, because you know, the twelfth chapter there, the the second epistle to Corinthians, where Saint Paul says, "I know a man who was carried up to the third heaven, " and so on. He's talking about himself. But then after that, you know, talking about the great revelation and he was given this thorn in his side. We don't know exactly what it is.

[19:04] It might have been a some kind of physical suffering. It might have been some kind of concupiscence right? Augustine takes that as a possibility too. But anyway, there is something that was given to him to humble him, right? To keep him from being what he himself says from being puffed up by the magnitude of the things, right? So if Aristotle had known how unique he was, you know, he was the first man to understand these things, and most men after him would never understand them as well as he did.

[19:37] You know, what I mean? You see, So that the thing is easy to discover many times, and then you know it'll be discovered again by somebody else, you know, so I think it's a little more humble. You know, but he kind of, kind of, you know, divine providence using the mistaken notion of eternity of the world to keep Aristotle

[20:01] from being too puffed up by his great discoveries, huh? But I think in the politics, he says, you know, we should say try to say some things better than our predecessors, and other things we should try to say as well as they did. You see, he shows a kind of remarkable balance here in Aristotle, right? Because he's not anybody's patsies. Obviously, he's going to examine what people say, right?

[20:27] But there are some things that are said so well. like what Heraclitus says about this, you know, you don't try to improve that. Just like Shakespeare says something so well, you know, you know. You find it, you know, you couldn't say it better than that. All you do is you beat Shakespeare, you want to say it as well as Shakespeare said it, right? You see,

[20:58] this we could be new made when thou art old, and see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold. About children, right? You know, he says it so well. these things, huh? For? Thou art thy mother's glass, meaning your mother's mirror, and she in thee calls back the lovely April of her prime. It's so beautiful, right? You know, you see your children and your grandchildren, you see something, you know, of yourself or other people that you you've loved coming back, right?

[21:30] You know, it's kind of amazing to see this, right? You know, but Shakespeare said it so well, you know, Nothing you could express better than this.

[21:39] It's like you know, Washington Irving, you know, in the last conversations. There with Pierre there at the end, you know, where he says, "it's really idle for you, the rest of us to take any credit for what we wrote, you know, because Shakespeare said it all, you know." It's kind of amazing, you know, that that's it. You know,

[22:01] I never quite said it as well. as Shakespeare said it all, everything, you know, and of course they named the whole first age of American literature, you know, the the world of Washington Irving, right, because he's a dominant man, you know, dominant writer, internationally and nationally.

[22:20] When you try to do it yourself, you are speaking as if wisdom became of you. It seems to me, in a way, something like that,

[23:11] anyway. Interesting text of Thomas here. I mean, you see things so many times, but but he's saying, you know, charity is the greatest of the virtues, right? And that comes in the Corinthians, and pride is the worst of all sins. Interesting he, says that, right? Charity. The reason why charity is the greatest is because it unites us with God, and He's the end, right? And that's the end is the beginning, in all practical matters, right?

[23:41] So charity unites us, you know, most fully to God, right? Therefore, it's kind of the root beginning of all the virtues, huh? But pride is seeking one's own excellence, not in order to what? God, right? So and then he quotes you know the Old Testament verse, you know, pride the beginning of all, right? Kind of turning away from God, right? The beginning of all things.

[24:20] I guess when when when De Koninck and Dionne, I tell you that story, but I guess when De Koninck and Dionne were over in Europe for the Second Vatican Council, right? And they were, you know, periti, you know, for the cardinal there in Quebec, And they were working on something, you know. And once Dionne pointed something out in the philosophy of nature, and De Koninck stopped and he says, "How could I miss that all these years?

[24:45] I've been teaching philosophy, of nature, you know, for thirty, forty years, you know. How could I miss that, you know? " But one conversation I had with Dionne, you know, he was just recalling that you know how childlike De Koninck was, and the real humility there, huh? You know,

[25:02] Even, the first time I met De Koninck, you know, I met him at the house of Kasurik, and he'd come down one of his lecture tours. He had a dozen children. and I had some questions that Kasurik could not answer. see, Because Kasurik says, "well, when De Koninck comes down, you ask these questions. " So De Koninck stayed at Kasurik's house, so he called me over and I came over there and I put all my questions to De Koninck, and he answered them all.

[25:29] see, I could tell you the superiority to Kasurik, you know, it's quite clear, you know, from that. And then when I got through with that, then then uh, Kasurik said, "now, Duane, you explained to to De Koninck your ideas on music, right? " I had some things to be done Mozart, right? And De Koninck, you know, sat there listening to me, you know, and and said, "well, he said write it up, " he says, "We'll publish it.

[25:52] " He says, "You know, you know, great, you know, there's no pretension at all, " in De Koninck, you know, and he said, "Just what I had to say, " you know. And

[26:07] and he kind of used to you know, he's you know there's all these articles he'd publish he'd go take them to Dionne to read first, you know, to see if there's anything wrong with it, you know. Oh yeah, you know that's real. I guess that's true humility, right? You know, kind of you know recognize Dionne's great judgment there, but

[26:27] I'll find that most most teachers you know is this, you know as the Latin says, right? He just puffs up, you know, and so on, you know. And uh...

[26:41] Yeah. Yeah, I was always struck at Thomas Aquinas, by Dr. MacArthur, how often he just I asked him go to him with questions, say, "I don't know. "

[26:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And God's more perfect, but he would just say, "I don't know. " What do you think about this guy? I never read him, Some people would talk about him even if they didn't read him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[27:21] You see, some of these these physicists, you know, I read, you know, kind of their you know we call them semi-popular books, you know what I'm calling them. But before I left Laval, I went to see De Koninck, you know, and. uh, he from time to time referred to Heisenberg, or some of these people right, and so on, and so I know I'll be teaching philosophy, of, science and so on, doing some of these things like that.

[27:43] So I thought he would send some of the names of these people, you know, what people thought were worth reading and so on, so on. And he was giving the names, and saying, So you won't be misled by, you know, the second-rate scientists you'll have in your school, right? " It must be from the horse's mouth, as I always say. And

[28:04] so I read these people, and I, you know, I use them a lot. They're important in my classes. I mean, for different, you know, things, you know. But there's a rumor going around, assumption that Berquist had a PhD in physics, or he's about to get one, you know. You know, and because I even forgot whatever calculus I know, I don't think I know any calculus now. I don't think I, you know.

[28:24] And so I'm very far from, you know, getting a Ph. D. in physics, You know. but the rumor was either I had one or I'm about to get one, you know, and so on. And I said, gee, with how easy it is to, you know, you know, give them the impression, right, that I know a tremendous amount, you know, that I don't know, you know. I'm not going to be trying to do this, I said, but I read it, you know, I've got it from the horse's mouth, right?

[28:47] But you know, I speak with some authority, you know, because I can say what Einstein says about his own theory, right, or what Heisenberg says about his own theory, right? Maybe you know. And

[28:58] but you realize how easily people can get the wrong impression, right? So you ought to pretend to know more than you do. I mean, it's very easy to do that in some ways. And

[29:27] the pantheism, I forget. I was reading some a while ago looking looking at it, but in in the East, you know, the pantheism, how it's yeah, so prevalent. Yeah, India, yeah, was always like the dog was saying. For now, it's as with democracy. The custom was—is there something like that in the East? Well, I don't know. I mean, there's a lot more to say about than this chapter, but

[30:14] was it C. S. Lewis? I think I'm familiar with the text, but Warren Murray's talking to me about it. You know, C. S. Lewis speaks about pantheism is so almost natural to man to think this way, you know. But

[30:28] it's kind of the. You know the state of the unwashed mind, so to speak, right? You know, so I mean, it's not only democracy that makes men think this way, you know.

[30:53] Father Dom Rutledge was a Benedictine, and he lived in India for a while. He said Saint Thomas, thinking about why they thought that, but yeah. Well, I mean, if there's no, if there's no

[31:13] understanding of ability, right, then you think that whatever is in the ability of something is actually in there, right? So just like Anaxagoras thought that everything that's in the ability of matter, right, is actually in there, right? Well, likewise you might think everything that's in the ability of God is another kind of ability, now the active ability, right? But you might think that that ability is composed of everything that. Is able to be right, Or able to make, or whatever it is, huh?

[31:46] Mm-hmm. give rise to. Well, then you, put this pantheistic then, right? You're saying all the creatures are in the ability of God, right? So they're all in some way in God. Well, you know, if you imagine them to be actually in God, then you've got pantheism, right? You know. So

[32:14] you see, the the first cause of error on the side of the knowing powers is is more false imagination than the senses. It's false imagination. And like von Weizsäcker says, when you imagine something, you make it actual in your imagination. And so, if you try to imagine ability, you make what actual in the ability what it's an ability for.

[32:44] And that's kind of involved in Heraclitus in Anaxagoras' position on matter, right? But the same way be involved in understanding God, right? See, um,

[33:01] I'm thinking of the way of speaking to a scripture there. And Moses, God says to Abraham, to Moses, "Follow me, and I will show you every good." And Thomas says, "That is myself." Say,

[33:24] well, it's in a way of speaking there, right? God is every good, right? You know, if you misunderstood that, you you you know, you know. Or don't we say in the Second Apocalypse when I see it in the saints, you know, that in the next world God will be what? Omnia omnibus don't they say that? Yeah. Omnia and omnibus, right? Yeah. in a sense, what you're saying is that that God contains everything in a way, right?

[34:01] But it's hard for us to understand the way He contains everything in a simple way, right? So if we think of God containing everything in some kind of a of a of a concoction there, a mix of these things, then you're then you're thinking pantheistic terms, aren't you? See, so the imagination and stuff to do that when you try to imagine them in there. Let's be just sticking on this we mentioned Teles here in the first hierarchy of the angels and the the seraphim.

[34:43] You know, see the order of the universe. Divine providence and the divine goodness, and the cherubim see it in the divine substance, and the thrones see it in the divine knowledge, right? And Thomas says, "When one should not think now that the divine goodness, the divine substance, and the divine knowledge are but three different things, right? But there is another consideration of each of these, right? And that's the way Dionysius is trying to explain the the the

[35:17] superiority, right, of the seraphim and the cherubim and the cherubim to the thrones, right, that they see the order and the higher principle, right? So to see it in the divine goodness is like to see it in the end, right? To see it in the divine substance is to see it in the form, right? But the form is less than the end, right? And to see the divine knowledge that's less than the divine substance itself, right?

[35:41] It's kind of interesting to think about that, you know, but that's awfully profound, huh? Now, Monsignor Kasurik used to say, when you die and see your current angel, you'll Start to worship him like God, and you'll say, "No, no, I am not God. He's much better than me. Maybe he's got this tremendous being, you know. This must be it. This is God. "

[36:11] You know, kind of a little tongue in cheek, but I mean, the idea that you know that that these angels are something, right? And even your current angel, which is in the lowest, hierarchy, lowest order, I mean, there must be something, right? You see, you know, this is God, right?

[36:28] I should have, you know, talked a little bit about that. This greater mind that Anaxagoras talks about—what is it? Is it the divine mind or an angelic mind? Because he arrived at there. Seems to be an angelic. Yeah, See? It's a mind that moves matter by changing place, like the angels can do, but it's not a mind that's responsible for the very existence of matter. So he's actually a very angelic mind.

[36:59] And you know, I never pursued it, but one time, you know, somewhere in class, Theodoric says it's easier to know that the angels are than God, right? Of course, the other person thinks, "No, no, " you know, because he talks so much about God, it's a little about the angels, right? But actually, it's easier to arrive at a mind that's separate from matter for the reasons he gives, right?

[37:19] Than a mind that could be the creator of that. That's very hard to understand, huh? Creation is very hard to understand, and so there is a greater mind that's separate from matter that acts upon and moves it around. Okay, but there is a mind that's actually, you know created matter. That's very hard to understand. See, so it's kind of easier to arrive at the divine at the angelic mind in some ways than the divine mind, although one might think of the greater mind as as God because you know nothing better, right?

[37:46] When you see you know a guardian angel, you say, "Where you been all my life?" You know. I mean, this is God, you know. I mean, it's got to be a pretty impressive thing, you know.

[38:01] Yeah, that was Michael Bailey when he talks about you know his his argument from mind. He says, "But I haven't proved God. I've just proved some mind. Yes, maybe it's another planet. I don't know. There's just some mind, haven't you? Yeah, yeah. That's all I proved. He's not. I'm not talking about God necessarily. Yeah, yeah.

[38:27] Angel, someone who knew how to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I gotta get going here. I don't know how much of Aristotle Augustine knew. he mentions a category, you know. Oh. That's only work that we know that he he was acquainted with. There's no mention of any other work he's acquainted with. Aristotle, who they didn't have, says to them or not, but you know. He Says he thinks Plato might have ran into Jeremiah, and that's where he got some.

[39:08] Yeah, no, he takes those too seriously. Those suggestions, you know, that that Philo was taught by Moses, and. Of course, it's actually better from the pedagogic point of view to have the Greek philosophers developing philosophy independently of the faith, because then you see what human reason can achieve.

[39:33] Yeah, sure. And I also I'll make that comparison to the the church fathers make between one advantage of not all the Jews being converted, right? Was that those Jews who were not converted and some of whom were violently opposed to Christianity, they were witnesses to the authenticity of the books of the Old Testament from which the Christians you know would reason as far as the prophecies are concerned.

[40:00] So when they were dealing with the Gentiles, you know, if if all the Jews had been converted, the Gentiles might say, "Well, you just you know fabricated those books, you know, you know to kind of you know give a false credibility to your religion, right? " But when the enemies of your religion, right, when when they are witnesses to the antiquity of the books on which you reason to your thing, well, then that's pretty good situation to be in, right?

[40:31] And you know, the same way, like you know, with you know, we teach Porphyry. You know, where the greats got a a whole paraphrase of Porphyry's Isagoge, which is fundamental. Thomas, everybody uses it, but Porphyry was, as we know from Augustine, he was quite anti-Christian. Oh no! When the Christians had his anti-Christian diatribes burned, right? So you know, but I mean, it shows how philosophy is kind of what independent, right?

[40:57] And you know, people might say, you know, well, you can't know about God by reason. You just think you know by reason because because of your you know you have the faith and then you you know try to find it. But it's kind of amazing, you know, to see the Greeks how far they got. At least Aristotle, as far as the knowledge of God and of other things.

[41:20] I remember my my my cousin there. She never had a you know college education, but she was she taking like the miniature of great books things, you know. And because you're gonna cross a bit of Aristotle in the great books there, the miniature even one. And what Aristotle says about God, she's kind of amazed that this guy could know anything about God who is not a a Christian.

[41:41] How would you know about it, right? That's kind of good for them to