Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
69. Ends and Limits, and the Dependence of Philosophy on the Natural
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/3-natural-hearing/069-ends-and-limits-and-the-dependence-of-philosophy-on-the-natural/

[0:00] think the word "physician," you know, which isn't one of the words for doctor, right, comes from "physis," right? Mm-hmm. You know. So he saw that as really, you know, violation of the the doctor should be right.

[0:18] So it's terrible. This abuse going on, huh? Yeah. I new son, Holy Spirit, Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels, twinkling lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, Thank you. Pray for us. and help us to understand all that you have written. In the Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. So, brother asked me to go over again briefly the word end or limit, huh?

[0:55] The word that's translated edge here in that first reading could be translated end or limit, huh? I think Aristotle actually uses the word eschaton there, which has the idea of last, but the limit, huh? But usually the word you have for end or limit in. Greek is uh either peros or horos huh. Okay. Now the first meaning of end or limit is the end of a magnitude, right?

[1:28] Like this is the beginning of the desk or the table, and down there is the what? End, right? Okay. That's the first meaning of end or limit.

[1:41] It's one of the most obvious to the senses, and we name things as we know them, right? So we tend to name things we can sense first, and then we carried the word over to things that are less sensible or not sensible at all. Very gradual process. Now the second sense he gives of end or limit is the end or limits of a motion.

[2:11] So in the motion from hot to cold, right? The end or limits are hot and what? Cold, right? Okay. Now the third meaning he gives of end or limit is the end of what? Intention, right? End in the sense now of that for the sake of which, the goal, the purpose. Huh?

[2:48] It's one of the four kinds of causes, right? Okay. And then he gives as the fourth meaning of end or limit definition. And definition, to use the Latin word there, comes from horismos which means end or limit in Latin. In Greek, the definition is sometimes called the horos, which means the limit. We get the word horizon, limit of the sky, and so on. Um.

[3:28] Now when Thomas says in the in the fifth book of wisdom, there, fifth book of the metaphysics, when he explains that fourth sense, huh? He says, well, the ultimate thing in knowing is to know what something is, but we tend to know things starting with our senses in a kind of outward way, and that's why the great Heraclitus says that nature loves to what? Hide. So in a way, the definition comes at the end of our thinking.

[4:04] So Aristotle will spend the whole book one, say, about the soul, trying to find out what the soul is, right? And it's not until the beginning, of the second book. About the soul that he arrives at the end. Now, as Thomas explains in the commentary, there's another reason why we speak of what the definition as an end or limit huh, and that is that when you define something, you in a way draw a line around that thing, separating it from everything else.

[4:37] If you go back to the first meaning of limit, do you see a likeness there? All the way to the fourth meaning. So, if you take the city limits of Worcester, that's a very precise notion, right? No part of Worcester is outside of the city limits, and none of the surrounding towns are within the city limits. It's a tight fit, as the logician says about the definition.

[5:04] It's convertible to the thing defined. Every square is an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral, and vice versa. Every equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral is a square. So, in a sense, drawn what the limits around it. Okay. You see that in a way in the first act of the mind, which Thomas calls simple grasping. Now, I'm going to grasp the glass here, right? It's not hard for me to grasp the glass, even though there's air around it, because my hands easily push the air around away from it, right?

[5:42] Now, I'm going to grasp the center of this table. You got a knife? Going to have to cut it out, right? And separate from everything else, and then I can grasp that center of the table, right? And that's why in logic and in reason there you divide in order to what define, right? Okay. So, you want to define the square? You can start way back if you want to, you know, with figure, right?

[6:15] Plane figure, right? Rectilinear plane figure, quadrilateral, right? But these are going to be separating the square from some things, right? So the the word quadrilateral, which is a four-sided rectilinear plane figure, that separates the square from everything that is not a what quadrilateral, right? But there are other quadrilaterals that are not squares, so you have to add, let's say, equilateral to quadrilateral, right? And that separates the square from the oblong, and it separates it from the rhomboid, separates it from the trapezium, but it doesn't separate it from the what?

[6:58] Rhombus. Rhombus, yeah. So I need another difference, right? And then I say, well, it's right-angled, right? Well, right-angled separates it from all the other quadrilaterals except the oblong, right? But equilateral separates it from the oblong. So the combination of those two, with quadrilateral, separates the square from everything else, right? And that's kind of an amazing thing, right? You know, some of the early Greeks there they said you can't define anything.

[7:32] Why? Well, to know what something is, you have to separate it from everything else, right? And how many other things are there? Well, there's an infinity of other things. So how could you possibly, you know, separate it and say, you know, it's not this, it's not this, it's not this? So they said, you know, defining is a long story. Meaning, it's a story that has no end, right?

[7:55] But they forget that we know the what universal, right? And when I know, for example, that a perfect number is a composed number, right? Composed number is separating it from infinity of what prime numbers, right? Okay. So the universal is said of many things, right? It's because of the universal that we can actually, in our mind, separate the thing we want to define from what everything else.

[8:26] To see how those meanings are what ordered, right? Yeah. Now the Greek word telos does that fit all of them? Are certainly three. I think Aristotle uses the word peros more, but telos if you translate telos by end, you could extend it, right? This is the arche. This is the beginning of the table. That's the telos That's the end, right? But Aristotle points out in that same chapter there in the fifth book of wisdom, we sometimes apply the word end not only to what's opposite to the beginning, but we speak of what both as ends on the ends of the table, right?

[9:06] Yeah. Okay. And then if I get on top of the table and run down to the end and run back again, the beginning and the end of my motion, right, seem very close to that first sense, don't they? Like we see in this fifth, in this sixth book here. And then

[9:25] you know the the end in the sense of purpose is something like that, right? See, if I run all the way down to the end, you know where I'm going, right? And I stop. Well, something like that when you're pursuing the end, right? The end is pursued for its own sake, and not for the sake of anything else. So when you get there, you come to a kind of what stop, right?

[9:51] Like Thomas says, I consider the body. He says, so I can consider the soul, and I consider the soul, so I can consider the angels, and I consider the angels, so I can consider God, and that's it. That's the end, right? Huh? See. Okay,

[10:15] so you see how that's in a sense like the end of the motion, isn't it? But there's an end, obviously, between something like death. Sometimes when I'm teaching the students the meanings, the equivocation of the word "end," you know, I'll give them this argument, which is sophistical. I'll say happiness is the end of human life. The end of human life is death. Therefore, happiness is death. That's true.

[10:48] That's true. But notice, huh? In a sense, you say death is the end of human life. You mean it's the what limit in terms of the time, right? Okay. And so maybe reduce that to the second sense of end or limit, huh? But it's not the end in the third sense, huh? Aristotle himself, you know, points that out, huh? But I find, you know, students in exams, even though I often explain what the word "end" and what the sense we're using the word "end" means, they are easily deceived by the equivocation of the word.

[11:28] It's the most common kind of mistake in thinking, according to the father of logic, huh? Fallacy for mixing up the sense of word. And when you talk about nature acting for an end, like we talked about before, huh? So I have a student giving this argument that if nature acted for an end, all things would come to an end. But they haven't come to an end. Never did.

[11:54] You know, and obviously confusing the two different senses of "end," huh? That's that's extremely common. Something like that argument, like yeah, yeah. Okay. So Aristotle has done a lot of good in distinguishing the senses of these words, giving terms of avoiding the fallacy of equivocation.

[12:20] But just awful the way moderns use words, huh? Just incredibly bad, huh? We had a candidate the other day that using all these big words, you know, and one phrase, "teleological end."

[12:40] So they think they were teleological, right? Say, you know, but tell us, end. See, they don't want to use that word, huh? So they don't want to be understood, huh? See, apparently, actually, have you know, Hegel's admission that he wrote obscurely because he thought he would not be admired unless he wrote obscurely. Yeah. Oh heavens, he said that. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. One of my teachers, Charles De Koninck, used to go on these great lecture tours, right?

[13:08] He had twelve children and had to make a little money on the side. And sometimes he said for the fun of it, he would stick in a sentence in his public lecture that made no sense at all, not even to him. And he'd have somebody coming up that they do after lecture sometimes privately, and you know, say which they liked the lecture, and they would hit upon that sentence, right?

[13:28] Which shows there's something really, you know, perverse in the mental attitude of this person, huh? That they they enjoy what they don't understand. My friend Jim used to say, you know, he always tells women, "I don't understand you," you know, and they just love the fact that they're understood. Makes them more mysterious or something, right? See, so sometimes we don't appreciate something that we what understand, right?

[14:01] And you find people don't like to have things explained, made plain, because then they have that fuzzy feeling about what it all means, see? Okay.

[14:16] Now notice what the Greek the Greek words you have eschaton, horos Yeah, peras I think is the word in the in the fifth book of wisdom am I right yeah. Like P E R A S. Yeah. P yeah peras yeah. Change the action. Okay.

[14:34] That's the common one in the physics. He said. Yeah, I think I'm trying to think what what Euclid uses now. Is it peras? He uses both when he says the boundary is the limit. Yeah. He uses both words. One like the horos is the peras. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And sometimes that you have to use more than one word, you know, just because a little bit of limitation.

[15:07] But they're basically synonyms, really. Yeah. So they often they have more meaning. I don't know if I like my translation here of edge. You know, I don't know. You probably say more the end of the limit, huh? Yeah. But no, so Aristotle distinguishes those words. He's also helping us to understand better the the axioms, right? Because all the axioms are based on those common words there in the fifth book, and so what would be the axiom that Aristotle used here in the first reading for end or limit?

[15:50] It's like the axiom he had for beginning in the in the first book of the physics. The limit is other than that which. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a statement. Just as a censor.

[16:13] So nothing is an end or a limit. Whatever word you want to use, nothing is an end of itself. Okay. And I suppose the other side of the coin is that something is always an end. If it is an end of something other than itself, right? There's always some distinction between the end and that of which it is an end. Okay. And he had a similar axiom that he uses in the first book of the physics, and that is that nothing is a beginning of itself.

[16:55] There's always some distinction, huh, between a beginning and that which it is the beginning. Now it's interesting, huh, that the axioms, no one has ever, to my knowledge, really enumerated all the axioms, huh? In Aristotle, the fourth book of wisdom has his long consideration defense of the axioms of being and non-being. Something cannot both be and not be, right? Same time, same and it must either be or not be, right?

[17:31] When Thomas talks about axioms, he always gives us an example: the whole is larger than its parts, right? Okay, but this here would be another example of an axiom: nothing is an end of itself, and in the first book, nothing is a beginning of itself.

[17:57] Perhaps we have, you know, a positive one that an end is always the end of something other than itself, right? A beginning is always the beginning of something other than itself. So Aristotle, in the first book of Natural Hearing, there, I should get in there, right?

[18:18] When he's talking about Parmenides and Melissus, and they're saying that there's no multiplicity at all, right? Everything is one, right? Okay, he says they're really doing away with beginnings or causes, right? Because nothing is a beginning of itself, right? Nothing is a cause of itself, right? Therefore, if you don't admit some multiplicity, some distinction among things, right? It's impossible to have any beginnings, or any causes. Do you see that?

[18:54] Yeah. Yeah. Would be interesting to see how the Buddhists would apply that to their, you know, unity of everything. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing is a beginning of itself. Then how can everything be one? Well, at the point, I don't know how to consider that in a different way. Now, when you are trying to understand this axiom more distinctly than the man in the street understands it, right? Then you can go back to those four senses, right?

[19:28] Of end in the fifth book of wisdom, and you'll see, right? Starting with the first sense of end and going through to them, this more distinctly, right? So, what's the end of a body? Surface. Yeah, and the surface is not a body, right? Because a body has length and width and depth. Surface doesn't have length and width and depth, right? Got length and width, but not depth.

[19:56] What's the end of a surface? A line. A line. Now, is a line a surface? Nope. No, it's got length, but a surface has length and width, right? What's the end of a line? Point, yeah. And is the point a line? No. What's the end of a point?

[20:25] No end. Doesn't have any end, right? Okay. And the point can't have an end, right? Because if it had an end, there'd be some distinction between the end or the edge or the limit of the point point and the rest of the point, and then it wouldn't be what indivisible, right? You see? Okay. So there's no distinction in the point of any kind, so there can't be, you know, the edge and then the rest of the point.

[20:55] So I argued from that in the first reading that therefore two points can't have an edge or limit or. contiguous Or is it continuous? Well, they couldn't. They couldn't. They couldn't have a common end or limit because they don't have any end or limits. they couldn't have. They couldn't be touching. contiguous because they couldn't have their endolimits together. They don't have any endolimits right? So the only way they could, they could, you know, touch would be to coincide.

[21:22] And then, you know, think at all. And it would be more correct to say that the point lacks a limit, rather than to say the point is limitless. Well, you've got to be careful now, because lack is not lack, not lack. negation. Yes.

[21:47] No negation. Just doesn't happen. Because lack, in the strict sense, is the non-being of something you're able to have, and especially something that you should have, right? Okay. Okay. So strictly speaking, you know, the stone is not blind, right? Yeah. But if you or I didn't see, we'd be blind. Yeah. Okay. And so, strictly speaking, the the point does not lack an end, right? You'd say it doesn't have an end, but it doesn't lack an end, huh?

[22:20] Okay. Now there's another axiom that I'm fond of: that nothing is before or what after itself, right? Okay. Let me go through this for a moment here. In the second sense of end, the end of motion, right? Okay. Now, is the end of emotion? Emotion? No, no, no.

[22:46] And is the end the end of it in the sense of purpose? Is that the purpose of itself? No, that's the end or purpose of the means. Is that what is for the sake of the end, right? Mm-hmm. Okay.

[23:01] The definition is the definition of something. What? Yeah, it's kind of interesting, right? Cuts it off from everything else. Yeah, yeah. Even the definition of definition is not a definition of that definition. We say.

[23:21] Think about that, right? The definition is a definition of definition. Mm-hmm. It's not a definition of itself. Mm-hmm. The definition of definition fits any definition, not just the definition. We don't.

[23:43] When Thomas talks about order in the sentences, he says that order means what involves distinction, right? And and before and after, but then he he kind of corrects that and says, well, distinction is really presupposed to order, right? See? But I sometimes say, you know, what does reason have to see before it sees it before and after?

[24:09] Well, if you realize that nothing is before after itself. It's always before or after something other than itself. You have to see some distinction before you could see a before and what after, right? Okay.

[24:28] Now these axioms are something that our reason naturally comes to what know, okay? And you can't really avoid knowing it, huh? Although sometimes you get somebody mixed up and thinks he doesn't know what he does know. Yeah. Would you say that would be

[24:50] the product? Not the best term, but of the natural understanding that one arises from repeated experiences. These axioms. Well, the whole the whole is more than the part. You can't live without experiencing wholes and parts, right? And if you experience wholes and parts, you'll come to some understanding of what a whole is and what a part is, and you'll see that a whole has parts, right? And therefore, it's going to be obvious to you, really, that the whole is more than one of its parts, right?

[25:24] Okay. So the composed whole is composed of more than one of its parts, and the universal whole is said of more than one of its parts is set of. huh?

[25:40] But again, let me just stop on that thing a moment because that's very important here. What? Okay. One thing that's very important to see is the complete dependence of philosophy upon the natural. Okay. The complete dependence. Let's go ahead and that. The complete

[26:15] dependence of philosophy upon the natural. Okay. Now you could consider that perhaps in in these three statements, huh? Each of which you might consider by itself, huh?

[26:45] One, what we were just talking about, there are some statements, and of course, there are parts. Which our reason naturally knows, or at least. Naturally, comes to know.

[27:21] So you'll find inside of everybody who talk to them that they know that a whole is more than one of its parts. And so naturally, do we come to know that? That you can't. You say, "When did I first realize that a whole is more than a part?"

[27:41] And if anybody says he doesn't know that, he's either just saying it, in which case, give him part of his salary this week, right? Part of the dinner that he orders in the restaurant, part of the car he bought, and so on. Because doesn't see a difference, right? He'll scream and rant and show that he really does know it, right? Or else it's because he's deceived by a what sophistical argument, huh?

[28:12] And I gave the example there at the argument based on the quotation there the word "part." from that argument? Let's repeat it briefly. But? I give this in class sometimes. I say to the students, "Y'all know a whole is more than a part, and you all know that, right?" And then I say, "Now, what's a man? Well, man is to begin with an animal, right?" Okay. But my mother didn't like it when I called man an animal.

[28:43] She didn't like me saying that. I said, "Well, mother, I don't mean he's he's just an animal. He's an animal with reason. Well, that's better now. Okay. So man is not just an animal. He's an animal with reason, right? So animal is therefore only a part of what man really is, right? Okay. And then I say, but animal includes besides man, cat, dog, horse, elephant, right? So what is only a part of man includes more than man?

[29:16] The students say, "Wow! I guess the whole is not always more than the part. Sometimes the part is more than the whole." Now they're all deceived, right? By the most common type of deception, which comes from mixing up different senses of a word. And it's these words that are equivocal, not by chance so much that deceive us, because their meanings have no real connection, right? And I always give the example: there, Roger Maris hit sixty-one home runs with the bat.

[29:47] The bat is a flying rodent, huh? Therefore, Roger Maris hit sixty-one home runs as a flying rodent. No one's going to be deceived by that, do you see? Because both meanings are quite quite sensible, and they have no real connection, right? But here, the word. Part is equivocal by reason, like the word in. You know, where students will make that mistake of mixing up the senses of in.

[30:17] So they mix up the senses of what begin of part here. When I say that animal is a part of man, I mean that animal is a composing part, right, of the definition of man, right.

[30:34] But I could say that man is a part, a subject part, a species of the genus what animal. Okay, and so mixing up two senses of whole and part, the universal whole which is said as parts, and the composing part, right, from which its whole is put together.

[30:59] Because the student doesn't see that, I'm able to what deceive them, right? Okay. Now, just I got to mention last time the more difficult example there of before, right, where the students. are reasoning from the second sense of before, remember to the fourth sense of before,

[31:18] They're saying that breathing is better than philosophizing, because you are not going to be breathing, not going to be anything else if you are not breathing, right? And I say, well, that's showing that breathing is before philosophizing, the second sense of before. It can be without philosophizing, but not vice versa. Does that show it's before in the fourth sense of before is better. Maybe like saying that Chaucer is better than Shakespeare because he came before Shakespeare in time.

[31:46] Because he came before him in time, you say he's before in in goodness and in being better. No. So people are very easily deceived by that.

[32:01] I was reading the Summa Contra Gentiles the other day, and Thomas knows having to deal with Averroes and his things, and so he's deceived by provocation. He says Thomas says, "Here is a great Averroes now is being deceived by provocation, the commentator, right? " As he's known in the Middle Ages by Tornamastia, the commentator, okay. That's because he's the commentator in everything, right? It doesn't mean he's commentator well, right?

[32:30] Thomas is called the commentator. Take away the the antonomastic title thereof Averroes and Mr. Thomas, right? He is the commentator. My rule of thumb is, you know, Aristotle means what Thomas says means. Shocked if I say that.

[32:51] Okay, so there are some statements in their parts, which our reason naturally knows or naturally comes to know. I think it's more naturally comes to know, right? But it's so natural the way we come to know these that it seems like we always knew them, right? As Plato said, it seems like we always knew them. We just recalled them, right? Because you never eat time to actually say you know these things.

[33:14] You always knew them. Now, secondly, we have a natural desire to know the things we don't naturally know. That's very interesting, huh? There is a natural desire

[33:55] in our will to know the things we do not know naturally. Okay. If we don't have any desire to know the things we know naturally, because desire is what for what you don't have, right? Okay.

[34:32] Instead, the English word English is a marvelous language for philosophy, but the English word for desire, wanting, right, sometimes has the sense of what lacking, right, not having, right. So Hamlet says he's complaining about hasty marriage and so soon afterwards, right? Says why a beast, he says, that lacks discourse of reason would have what? No, he's a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer, right?

[35:03] Oh, okay. Does that mean desires? No, it means he lacks the discourse of reason. So I say to my students, you're sadly wanting. I'm not saying there's some sad desire, but there's a real lack there that you know maybe partly not their fault, but partly fault of the teachers, okay?

[35:30] So there's a natural desire in our will to know the things we do not know naturally. When we ask what and why, right? It's a natural desire to know what and why that Socrates talks about, huh? And of course, the third statement is, huh? We come to know the things we do not know naturally through the things we do know naturally.

[36:02] So we come to know the things that we do not know naturally through or by the things we naturally know. Okay. You can apply it both to the statements and to the simple things, right? The statements are composed of, huh?

[36:49] So you look at all these theorems, saying Euclid, we come to know them through what reasoning, right? Huh? Okay. But when you reason to a statement, you reason to it through other statements, huh?

[37:04] So do we come to know all statements by reasoning? Well, if we came to know or had to know all statements by reasoning, we'd have no statements to reason from. And so we know no statements, right? We need to know that, okay? So notice if you think of these three statements, each of which we could talk about something. But if you think of those three statements and the truth of each of them, but think of them together, you can see the complete dependence of philosophy upon natural.

[37:43] The first thing to think about is the fact that there are some statements and there are parts that we do naturally know, and we call that I call it natural understanding, right? Aristotle just calls it nous, right? Understanding, because understanding is you don't have to reason out, right? And Thomas will call it intellectus, right? To explain nous. But I call natural understanding to distinguish it from the reason out understanding that we have, say, theories in geometry, okay?

[38:20] Now there are some statements that we naturally know. It's seen by the fact that these statements aren't everybody's thinking, really. And what's common to all this is something what natural? Okay. Well, there's other ways you can consider those too. But when we try to go beyond those things we naturally know, the impetus comes from this natural desire, this wonder, as we call it. Wonder is the beginning of philosophy, right?

[38:51] But that wonder is a natural desire to know. But those things that we desire to naturally desire to know, we have to come to know them through the things we do naturally know. So what we learned last time in that first reading, we learned through things that we naturally know, like nothing is an end of itself, right? Something is always an end or a limit of something other than itself.

[39:25] Sorry, I missed. I was scratching something down here. But the order you just went through, you described as something like one, three, two. Is that one, three, two? What you were saying. I'm saying there are some statements that we naturally know, or that we naturally come to know, right? Okay. And these are called axioms, right? Um. And sometimes Boethius calls them the statements known to themselves by all men.

[39:53] Okay. Um. Now beyond that, there are many other statements you want to know, right? And they're parts. Like you want to know the Pythagorean theorem, let's say, right? Okay. We don't naturally know the Pythagorean theorem, right? Okay.

[40:12] But We're pursuing a knowledge of that through our natural desire to know them. Okay, so that's the second dependence there. But we come to know the Pythagorean theorem ultimately through things that we do. What naturally know.

[40:36] And so you can see from that the complete dependence of philosophy upon the what natural. Yeah. And therefore, if as Shakespeare says in the Romeo and Juliet, there, Friar Lawrence says that those who revolt from truth. true birth, right, those who revolt from the natural, right, they stumble on abuse, right. If you revolt

[41:07] from the natural, right, that would lead to the complete what collapse. Of philosophy. Now, this is what actually happened in modern philosophy, the history of modern philosophy. There is a revolt from the natural, and basically, you could say they revolted from the idea that there are any statements that we naturally know, right? From this natural understanding, huh? You see, you know, you popularly stated, you know, I always see them quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes, right?

[41:41] If I was to write down a piece of paper the statements of which I'm completely sure I would leave the paper blank. Okay. Now, of course, the question is, is he sure about the fact that he doesn't know these statements? But anyway, that's his problem, right? Okay.

[42:05] Does he doubt the statements exist? Because when I say statements exist, the proof is right there, made a statement. And the man who would deny that and say statements do not exist, he can't deny without making a statement. So some statements we know. Statements exist, right? Okay, so. Um. So

[42:32] he had that rejection, right? Huh? If you read through John Stuart Mill on Liberty, huh, one of his major works, and the chapter on the Liberty of the Mind, right? Huh? He's defending the Liberty of the Mind. if you think you want to call it that? Yeah. On the grounds that we don't really know anything, you see, and therefore we've got to be free to think what we want to think and fight among ourselves, but you know, we're never really knowing anything, right?

[43:06] So, okay. That kind of dominates, you know, the universities nowadays, right? Yeah. In other words, if you're trying to teach the students that some statement is true, you're trying to lead the students that that would be a violation of the morals of the modern university, right? See, I've got to present all points of view, right, and allow the student to make up his own mind. Mm. Otherwise, I, am what?

[43:41] Terrorist. Yeah. You see, You see what I mean? Okay. Um... So one thing that Mill would not admit is that there's some statements that we naturally know.

[43:57] Okay. So there's a revolt from. We might say natural understanding, right? Yeah. When you spoke, when you spoke of that, is St. Thomas's intellectus? I would imagine he uses intellectus with many senses. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And the same with nous in Greek is used in many senses, right? Okay, but they use the same word there for the faculty sometimes, right? And for this habitus, right, this habit, because it's one that seems to arise naturally from the mind itself, rather than having to be reasoned out.

[44:37] I've gotten the habit now that I I I translate episteme as a reasoned-out understanding. I have to call the other natural understanding. Okay, but Plato, I mean, Plato, but Aristotle and Thomas understand that nous is being something what natural.

[45:00] Now the second thing you find in the moderns is kind of revolt from this natural desire, and it's more explicit in some than others, right? But in the case of the early modern philosophers, you see this desire for what power, right? As you place this desire to know, and you know, even in Descartes, right? You know, the tree of knowledge, you know, you got the roots down there which are metaphysics.

[45:30] I don't know how they're words, and you have the trunk which is physics. Then you have medicine and mechanics and all these practical things up here, but the fruit should be right. So everything's ordered to the practical, right? You know, so it's rejection of what? No wonder when you get to Hobbes, right? Hobbes says it explicitly, right? You know, that the end of all knowledge is to do something, right?

[45:54] To make something power, and you see this very much in Marx, right? In Marx, huh? He rejects entirely any knowing that isn't tied up with the power of making, huh? So I ask students, you know, when you read a little bit of Hobbes or even Descartes and Marx and so on, are these men philosophers in original sense of the word? Are they lovers of wisdom, or are they lovers of what power, right?

[46:28] Seems to be the lovers of of power, huh? So they're giving up this second thing here, right? This natural desire, right? Now, give up those two, of course, they give up the third thing, obviously, right? So that's part of the reason why philosophy kind of collapsed in modern times.

[46:56] When I kind of give an image of the history of Greek philosophy from Thales to Aristotle, you know, I say, well, in the philosophers before Plato, you see the seeds of philosophy, especially in the fragmentary form that we have their words. In Plato, you see the seeds growing into philosophy. In Aristotle, you see the grown plant to some extent. Nothing like that, modern philosophy. You can't say, you know, that you see the seeds in Descartes and they're growing, and you know, Um, the history of modern philosophy is not like a development there, right?

[47:41] It's a zigzag. Each guy takes off, zigzag. You know, you can call it zigzag if you want to, right? But there's no reason to zig off in that direction. You know, this guy goes here, and this guy takes off goes that direction. This guy takes all that, you know. And I had an interview guy the other day there who was kind of a, I don't know, what do you call him, a conchie in a way I don't know what he was.

[48:04] Anyway. I didn't know what a name was. I was thinking about what a name was. Finally, I got almost insulted. I said, Do you have a name? What is the name?

[48:19] And it has all these, you know, you know, complicated things. You know, it's part of a linguistic structure. He can't tell you a name. And

[48:31] but so it's like in the office there, talking about we admitted philosophy. modern philosophy was a zigzag, right? You know, there's no development there. Something obviously wrong. What's going on here? We're supposed to be standing, as they say, on the shoulders of those who went before us. They're supposed to be building, right? We're supposed to be

[48:59] gathering the, you know, whatever part of the truth that men before us saw. You know, then bringing these parts together and building on them and so on. They don't have any sense of that at all, in modern philosophy? If? As it goes on, it gets even less. what? understand what they're even saying. you know? So well, Hegel is just like, I don't think I've ever understood it.

[49:20] One of the things where Hegel says he was on purpose writing so he couldn't understand it. because people would not admire him if they couldn't understand. it. But uh, when you read, you know, my standard joke about Heidegger was when I was teaching at St Mary's College. I taught there for three years between my two sessions in graduate school. When I arrived there, one of my colleagues there in the department was trying to figure out what Heidegger meant by being.

[49:49] Three years later, when I left, he was still trying to figure out. I said the race is all, you know, it's all wrong. You should be able. You should spend more time trying to judge whether what somebody says is true or false than what does he mean, right? If you have to spend all your time trying to figure out what he means, and you still don't know what he means,

[50:12] the fortune all wrong, right? Yeah. See I mean you still have to come out and say, "water is the beginning of all things?" I know what he's saying. Now we can discuss that, right? And even if we disagree with him, we can develop our mind in critiquing our reasons for rejecting that, if we do. It's a pretty good guess, I think, but he might. But these guys, you know, spend all the time, and you still don't know exactly what they mean.

[50:39] My brother Richard got his doctorate from the University of Notre Dame, right? And one professor he knew there in the graduate school. One of his tricks was he had quite a vocabulary. So in conversation, you know, conferences, and you know, disagreements, and so on he will use these words, right? Which are so abstruse that even the other what professors don't know what they mean, right? Well, professors, as you know, are vain and proud and so on.

[51:10] So, what does that word mean? You see, they're not going to ask that because then they look a little bit naive. You see, so you don't know what the guy is saying exactly. So you know, you can't really attack what he's saying.

[51:28] Then they're so wordy too. You know, John Locke ends up at the end of the essay of Human Understanding apologizing for the length of the work and saying it's too lazy to go back and pare it down. So you've got to read so many words. You know, to get anything, you're not even sure what he's saying, and it's kind of hard to attack him because they attack a whole cloud.

[51:47] You know, so that's kind of into the practice of philosophy. Yeah. Again, the talk I would say, Mary's college one, not to mention Thomas Aquinas College, on the one fragment of the Great Heraclitus where he said, "Wisdom is to speak the truth, and to act in accord with what nature." Give an ear there too, right?

[52:18] But as Kant says there in the you know the second preface, the critique of pure reason, right? We shouldn't listen to to nature like a student listens to his teacher. We should summon nature to obey us, like what? the judge, summons with us to respond to only what the judge decides to put to him. Yeah. There's some truth. That's what some modern scholars stand on. Yeah. You know, but that's not philosophy.

[52:50] It's not really listening to nature. At least not in that full sense, huh? I think this is a pretty good summary there of the complete dependence of philosophy upon the natural. And you see that those first two things are that they revolt from that in modern times. Then you can see that philosophy is going to be in a very serious position.

[53:22] So notice, ah, in the second paragraph that first reading. I'm not going to go through the whole reading again, but just at the end there of the second paragraph in page one.

[53:33] For the edge and that of which it is an edge are other, right? Or if you want to use the word end or limit, the end and that of which it is an end, or the limit and that of which it is a limit, huh? Are other, right? That's a statement. It's a statement that we naturally what? Know, see, or naturally come to know anyway.

[54:00] You see that? And so it's two things that we naturally know like that that we eventually come to know. Other things, huh?