Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
83. Shakespeare's 'Stumbling on Abuse': Nature, Bad as Privation, and Equivocal Words
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[0:01] Now, I was giving an example there. with I was thinking about the "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," right? And usually, what I see in that words are that we don't do God's will very perfectly on the earth, here, right? We often fail to do His will, and so on. But those who are in heaven do His will perfectly, right? So that that's why you understand those words, right?

[0:25] Okay. But now t here is a lot of emphasis upon you know mercy, you know, and Sister Faustina, and so on, you know, the mercy of God, and so on, right? So it occurred to me t here is a another meaning in what our Lord is saying, right? God's will is done what in heaven, and it's done in hell, right? But in heaven, you see more His mercy, you know, like Saint Teresa of Jesus said, "Forever I will sing His mercies," right?

[0:51] So I just took that from the Psalms, right? But in hell, you see more His what? His justice, yeah. So when you say "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," we're asking for His merciful, right? Did He not chastise us for what we deserve for our wickedness and so on? Right? Did He be merciful to us, right? And and that's when you go back to the Mass and say, "What He is," you know.

[1:16] We those parts we set to music, especially you know, we cantabimus, misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo, you know, praise twice. We sing what kyrie eleison. It's all that's a Greek word for what mercy, huh? Mercy, same word you have in Aristotle's poetics, He talks about pity or mercy. And then you have what the Latin word means every you know agnus dei qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis, right?

[1:43] So the emphasis there upon what in the prayers, you know, you are asking for God's mercy rather than for His what justice, justice, yeah, yeah.

[1:56] The only time Thomas gets near to asking justice, he says he asked God that He would give him grace and then reward His grace.

[2:04] You know, it goes back to that thing we were talking about once before. You know how how God is chiefly responsible for the good you do, right? But you are chiefly responsible for the bad you do, right? It seems damn unfair, you know, to a lot of us, you know, that you can't take any credit to speak of for the good you've done, but you can take all the credit if you want to call it credit for the evil you've done, right?

[2:34] You know, but that kind of shows, right? Justice is more concerned with punishment and mercy with the good, huh? So where you have the words of a wise man, right? And you know, even though you know, Plato, Aristotle got kind of the heights there, Aristotle especially. But I love the words of Aristotle there in the Politics there when he's trying to consider his predecessors and so on.

[3:04] He says, "There are some things we should try to say better than our predecessors said. You know, some things we try to speak better about. Other things we should try to say as well as they said it, right? And as well as striking, you know. That sometimes an author says something so well that you should try to say it as well as he did, right? And I was mentioning, you know, how I've had this experience sometimes with Shakespeare.

[3:36] I will be arguing with somebody about something, and they will absolutely not agree with me, despite the fact that I think my arguments are pretty good, you know. And and but finally, I recall, you know, some statement of this by Shakespeare. I get them, and all of a sudden they start to agree, even though because Shakespeare says it so well, right? And he says it better than I could say it, right?

[4:03] You see, so you know, nature loves to hide, right? You can't really improve upon that. I think I mentioned I was in the in the bookshop there the other day, and scientific section there, and there was a book, Nature Loves to Hide, stuck it away. You know, he wasn't acknowledging his debt to the great Heraclitus, you know, because it's become kind of famous now. But you can't really improve upon those things, you know.

[4:35] When Shakespeare, you know, refers to ethics, you know what ethics is about. In the play where Shakespeare, the Taming of the Shrew, the play where

[4:50] Shakespeare talks about all the parts of philosophy, right? Just about these went out because it's an alliterative, but he he says the part of philosophy that treats of happiness by virtue especially to be achieved. I could hardly describe better the Nicomachean Ethics than that, right? It's about happiness by virtue especially to be achieved.

[5:21] It's just said so well, you know, even better than Aristotle says, you know. Does that book any good about nature loves to hide? That book you found, nature loves to hide, is it any good? Oh, why didn't he read it again? Just looking at the title, talking, you know. He's going

[5:42] off his own resume. I don't think he saw the whole meaning of those words, you know. But he had to proceed wisely and slow, right? You know, I asked my colleagues, you know, you know, why does nature love to hide? See, and they were stung, me a little bit you know. But you know, if you go back to the word nature, which is equivocal by reason, huh?

[6:07] The first meaning of the word nature is what birth, and you know in birth the baby comes from within, and in every meaning of the word nature is seven or eight meanings. Aristotle orders them right, but in every meaning of nature, it's something within. And you get to the meaning of nature that defines natural philosophy. Nature is the beginning and cause of motion and of rest. In that which it is, right, it's the cause within.

[6:44] First, as such, not by happening, and in the last meaning of the word nature, which is what a thing is, right? But what a thing is is within it,

[6:58] and that's why we sometimes say you know the definition brings out right what a thing is. You wouldn't need a definition to bring out what a thing is if what a thing was was on the outside to begin with. No, it's something inside, right? Okay, and that's why you know Thomas says intelligere, right, as intrusivere to read within, right? But the proper object of intellectus is what it is, nature and sense of what it is.

[7:31] So the not the only reason, but the first reason, right, why nature loves to hide is this within. What's within is what him, right? Okay.

[7:46] So those are the seven places that occurred to me. The appropriate seven of the seven of wisdom. I didn't set out to find seven. I just got thinking about. You know, one day I'm thinking about these words, and I said it must be much more in those words than I've seen. So I got thinking about. I'll end up giving this talk. Okay. Now,

[8:15] here's another statement about stumbling. The same one, right? Won't be able to explain, but I'll just give it to you, right? Okay. It's a little bit earlier in the scene before Romeo shows up, and

[8:37] he's out in the garden there. Examining plants and so on, and he knows a lot of the secrets and powers of plants and so on, right? That's how he can make that potion for Juliet later on, right? That'll make her appear to be dead, but she'll wake up. Okay.

[8:58] So he says, "For not so vile, and on the earth doth live," he says, "But to the earth some special good doth give." Nor ought so good, he said, but strained from that fair use, revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. See that? Now ought so good, huh? But strained, huh? From that fair use, from the what? The noble use, the good use, right? The just use of it, right?

[9:35] The proper use of it, right? It revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. Okay. Why don't you make the last sentence into a statement here, right? You could say,

[9:52] "What revolts from true birth?"Stumbles on abuse. Just Using a little bit of the meter, there right? Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse, right? Make sense, okay?

[10:20] Now, what does that mean, true birth, right? I think this is kind of marvelous that Shakespeare's done here, because in what sense of the word birth

[10:41] is he using that word? Huh? You see, in the in the fifth book of Wisdom, Aristotle takes the Greek word for birth, which is phusis and he orders all the meanings, right?

[11:01] Thomas, in in the Latin there, right? You have the word natura, which means comes from the word for birth in Latin, and you have the same order of the meanings, right? Following, the order you have in the Greek. Thomas often gives those orders or some of it elsewhere, besides in the commentary in the fifth book. Now, what happens with in English sometimes is that

[11:29] the carryover of the English word is stopped, right? Because we import the Greek or Latin word in its later meanings, right? Okay, and that poses certain danger for the modern mind because you are using a word borrowed from Greek or Latin in its later meanings without following it from the first meaning, so your mind is out of order already using this word.

[12:04] Now, um one of the shapes we're talking about there? when he says revolts from true birth. In what sense is using the word birth? He's using it in the first sense of the word? He's using it in the sense of the definition of nature in in the second book of Natural Hearing. See, or is he using it already? Is he moved it all the way to the last meaning, which is very common in English with the word nature, right?

[12:40] The nature of a thing is what it is, right? What it is. Yeah, what it is. I bet it is using it that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, as I was saying before, right? You know, the wise man, he understands words he could go by reason, and either you have to go back, you know. to the Greek or Latin and. Follow, you know, the earlier meanings to the one that we have in English corresponding to that word, or else you have to take the English word in what Extended, right?

[13:14] Okay. And so I often take the English word road, you know, and you know extend it to the mind, you know. Okay. So Shakespeare has moved the word birth from its first meaning all the way down to its last meaning, kind of a marvelous thing. Okay. So he's saying what revolts from its true nature, right?

[13:44] And he has understanding, of course, that the true nature of the thing involves what its end or purpose, right? What revolts from its true nature is going to stumble on what abuse, right? Okay. Now you can apply this, you know, first of all to action, and then secondly to the life of the mind. Okay.

[14:20] So if you take, you know, an action, take the obvious things, just starting with the parts of the body, let's say, right? Okay. Take my hands, let's say, right? Okay. Now, why is nature giving me hands?

[14:44] Well, so they're part to provide for my own body, right? To feed my own body, you know, put stuff in my mouth and so on, right? And to, you know, gather things I want to eat and so on, right? Huh? Okay. And gather, you know, things to clothe myself in and so on, right? Huh? Okay. But nature's also giving me hands to take care of my children, right?

[15:10] Especially when they're a baby or something like that, right? Huh? Change the diaper, right? Okay. Take care of them, right? Okay. Guard them from danger and so on, right? Huh? Okay.

[15:24] But now my hands can be strained, as he says, from that fair use, right? So I can take into me drugs, let's say, right? Huh? Which actually what I'm stumbling on abuse now, right? My hands have been strained from that fair use, through birth, right? I'm misusing my hands, right? Not to feed me and nourish me and so on, but I'm using my hands now to harm myself, right?

[15:53] Before torture, right? Take the poison, right? Like Romeo does, right? Drugs are kind of a poison too, but I mean, poppy carries are very things, right? Or if I use my hands to to kill the baby, like an abortion or something like that, right?

[16:11] I'm just using my hands, right? The abortionist is, misusing his hands. huh? The strength in that fair use, right? I'm stumbling on abuse, son.

[16:23] Cicero says that we have, you know, these vocal cords and tongue and so on to speak, and this is Aristotle says in the Politics to be signed and managed by nature as social animal, right? It's to what communicate, right? We couldn't really live together without being able to communicate, huh? But when we use our vocal cords and our tongue to lie, then we are what going against, right?

[16:51] The natural purpose there of these things, huh? Okay. And even Cicero saw it very clearly, right? This was against the nature of these things.

[17:02] The the sexual organs, right? Men, even women, are often misusing these, right? Contrary to their very what purpose, right? Okay. And so they're stumbling on abuse, right? You know, some of these scandals, but there's all kinds of scandals down through history in this matter.

[17:27] But there's also, you could say, in the in the moderns, kind of revolt from the nature of man in general, right? What he is, son, from the natural end or purpose of man.

[17:42] It's tied up with that question that we discuss, you know, where the nature acts for an end, right? But Shakespeare isn't the understanding of that, right? So you'll go against the natural end of man, or the natural end of his parts, which would be the hands or the vocal cords and sexual organs and other parts, for that matter. You're going against what revolting, right? The true nature of these things,

[18:06] but they aren't. But now in the life of the mind, you see, what you see in the modern philosophers is a revolt, first of all, from wonder, which is a natural desire to know what and why, and the natural desire to know the cause, son.

[18:26] And so in Hobbes, let's say, or Karl Marx, for example, you have explicitly rejected wonder, right? This pursuit of knowledge simply in order to know, right? Yeah, Everything's in order to power, to doing, right, to making.

[18:47] So this is this is revolting from true birth, right? You're going against this natural desire to know, huh? When Plato first spoke about wonders being the beginning of philosophy, he looked at that reading, right? He saw the connection between that, ultimately, God, right? You know, because wonder is the beginning of philosophy, and this is a desire we need to know the cause. It's going to ultimately lead to the first cause, and the God himself, right?

[19:13] So you revolve from that wonder. But it's kind of implicit in the modern philosophers. Heisenberg in the Gifford lectures, right? He gives one of the customs that influenced this. He said the the union of natural science and technical science, right, in the 17th and 18th century, turned natural science into a technical science, huh? And at the same time, he said change the attitude towards nature from a contemplative one to a what?

[19:43] Pragmatic one, huh? Okay. So it's implicit, kind of, in most of the modern thinkers. Even though the great scientists like Max Born said, you know, nothing great can be accomplished in science without the elementary curiosity, says the philosopher. Okay. But the the tendency there in the modern philosophy, something, is to revolt from this one desire, this desire to know the cause this desire to pursue knowledge for its own sake.

[20:13] And notice how, in Augustine's definition of belief, or in Anselm's definition of theology, there is a respect for that natural desire. Augustine defined belief as assentire cum cogitatione, right? To assent while thinking about it, right? Assent is firm, right? But to think about it because you don't understand it, comprehend it. And then Anselm said that theology is belief seeking understanding, right? But Augustine had said that before, right?

[20:50] And just as sort of a man would like to understand what he believes, right? Although we can only understand it imperfectly in this life, right? That corresponds to the fact that grace and belief are not going against the natural desire there, right? Okay.

[21:07] Now the second thing to revolt from is from the what? The natural road, huh? The road from the senses into reason, and all that that road involves.

[21:20] And so the modern philosophy is kind of a a right of passage into modern philosophy that you have to attack the senses, right? And people who are caught up in this, you know, you know that if you don't, you know, distrust the senses, you're naive, right? Okay. The only problem is that in order to attack the senses, you have to follow the road from the senses into.

[21:43] Yeah. So, but once you kind of rejected that road, then you can, you know, imagine where you want to be. You know. Yeah. You're on your own. Okay. And the third thing that you revolt from is this natural understanding of the axioms, huh?

[22:04] Naturally coming to understand the axioms. So, Bertrand, Russell, you know, attacks the idea that the whole is more than the part, right? And he has a nice objection to it, huh? My teacher DeConick there refuted him, you know. Okay. But I myself sometimes I construct an argument that's, you know, one part I give you, you know, which most students would be taken in. I solve it for them, but they can.

[22:40] And I was talking to a Heideggerian, you know, and he says, you know, now that that's all conversation, it's been a beginning, hasn't it, you know? So these things are. You question that, you question, you question all the axioms because that's a natural that's since Aristotle says it's a natural beginning of all the axioms. It's impossible to be and not be, right?

[23:08] Now, once you do that, you say, then really you have to think you know no statements at all, right? Because the statements that we don't actually know, we come to know them through the ones we do actually know. And so, if we don't actually know any statements, then we don't we know any statements. And so, I can in John Stewart Mill, if you look in the essay "Liberty," right, when he's defending liberty of thought and so on, one of his premises is that we never really know whether any statement is true, right?

[23:41] That's kind of commonplace, you know. They're always quoting all the holes, you know. I put out a piece of paper, you know, the statements I'm sure about. I would leave it blank. You all say that, right? You see, Why put down the holes larger than the part? Statements exist, all kinds of things. But

[24:04] once you revolt from all these natural things, right? Then philosophy sinks fast, right? Because philosophy is based upon following this natural road, and it's based on this natural understanding the axioms, and you wonder about the things you don't actually understand, but you come to know them through what you actually understand. So, when you revolt against nature, you're abusing philosophy. You're abusing, in a sense, the your very reason, huh?

[24:32] Sure. And that's what you have. So, what you revolts into birth stumbles on what abuse, huh? As De康 ing said, there, you know, you talk about the the eleven theses on Farbach, you know, which as Comrade Engels said, you know, this contains a brilliant germ, you know, the you know the scientific outlook in the world and so. But it's rejection of a wonder, right? Among other things, and so as De康 ing said, I mean the whole philosophy, in a sense, which began in wonder, is being abused here, huh?

[25:12] And this is what Shakespeare is talking about, huh? Yeah. Strange and wonderful. Well, then, as a stranger, give it welcome, he says. Huh? So

[25:30] that's really you know marvelous statement, you know. I've talked about these things also. You know, I did a talk out at T. C. one time. You know, on the fragment of of the great Heraclitus, right? Heraclitus says, "Wisdom is to speak the truth," he says, and to act in accord with what nature. Giving ear there too, right? Like a dasal student of nature, huh? But Shakespeare, in a sense, is expressing the same truth, right?

[26:03] He's a little boy, right? So, could you say something about the words stumbling and abuse? Well, as I say, you're stumbling on abuse here, on your action, right? Abortion, all the rest of these things, right? By misusing my parts, right? Okay.

[26:26] And I'm making no kinds of mistakes when I reject these things that I actually understand. If I reject the natural road, you see, that's the first road in our knowledge, and it's presupposed to all the other roads and intersent to all the other roads. So the way to reject the natural road is to reject all the roads, right? Which is to lead the mind to what? To wander, as Sophocles and Shakespeare says, to wander in illusions.

[26:53] That Shakespeare's phrase, to wander in illusions. You know, in the comedy of errors, right? To wander in illusions. Kind of nice, isn't it? It's a play that they use where you wander in the Latin word "error." Oh, yeah.

[27:17] So the the word "stumbling," I was just thinking of the senses of that. Fall into error, right? You're stumbling, fall down, right? See, we use that. We use the word "fall" for for moral failure too, right? You know, falling, right? Fall into sin, right? You know, other ways we speak, you know. Fall from grace.

[27:45] What's the name of the devil there? Right? He's compared to the falling star, right? I saw you using that. Yes. His word "stumble." We stumble in our actions. We stumble in our thinking, right? Just like the church fathers, you know, is it when they're talking about our mind? When our mind speaks of say the Trinity, our mind stutters. You see that? Because really, very concrete, huh?

[28:35] I'm going to express now the mystery of the Trinity, right? And I'll do that, stuttering. As opposed to the heretic who raves. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As someone so raves. Stuttering is close to stumbling, huh? Man, whose stammering is kind of stumbling, or is close to it, right? But it's not quite as bad as stumbling, right? What stuttering is kind of a imperfection of speech, right? But no, you're carrying the thing over there, right?

[29:12] Now the word in Latin they have the, or in Greek right, they have the word logos, right? Logos means first the word, right? Yes. And then later on, it means the thought that the word what signifies, right? Okay. So when we say in the beginning was the word, and the word was towards God, and the word was God, the word there is closer to thought than to what, than the vocal sound, right?

[29:37] The signifies a thought, right? But you know, there you see the word is being moved there, right? So when Thomas explains, you know, that he's going to explain this more as the thought of God, right? See,

[29:53] you know, you read my little poem, right? God the Father said it all in one word. I wonder when that word became a Man, he spoke in words so few and said so much. He was the brevity and soul of wit.

[30:12] You know, but you know Thomas will quote scripture. You know, God has made a verbum, abbreviatum, an abbreviated word, right? That Christ says an awful lot in a few words, huh?

[30:38] So, here I got my back in all that's it's got marvelous, Shakespeare. huh? I learned more from Shakespeare than any of the modern philosophers. It just doesn't say much to them, does it? So,

[30:56] next time we'll look at St. Thomas. Then do we come back to natural hearing, or do we move on? We'll go on to the De Anima. Yeah, yeah. Which chapter from Brother Verner was thinking that was chapter thirteen? That sounds about right. It shouldn't be hard to find, though, right? During the beginning. Yeah, yeah. He's sorry. I have to leave. Let's come back to something last time we're talking about there in the second

[31:27] stumbling passage there from Friar Lawrence, huh? Where he said, "For not so vile that on the earth doth live, but to the earth some special good doth give, huh? Nor aught so good, huh? But strained from that fair use, revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse, huh? "

[31:57] It touches upon the thought, the statement that nature, huh, the sense of what a thing is, is the measure of what's good or bad. So it's strained from that fair use. The thing revolts from true birth, from its true nature, right? And then stumbles on abuse, huh?

[32:24] Now, some interesting if you compare nature on the one hand, what we mean by nature here, and then what we mean by bad. If you really understand what what bad is, then you see a connection between that and it's being measured, yeah, by nature, huh?

[32:58] And I think I mentioned last time or sometime anyway that the word bad has at least three basic meanings. It's a word that is what equivocal by reason, okay? When you say a word is equivocal by reason,

[33:20] this is the phrase. You say a word is equivocal. You mean it has many what meanings, huh? And many here in the sense of what? More than one. Yeah, many is opposed to one. Not many is opposed to few. So even the word many is equivocal by what reason, right? I mean, yeah. So now sometimes we distinguish between the word that's equivocal by reason and the word that's equivocal by chance, and you find the distinction in Aristotle, and you find it in the Neoplatonic philosophers, you follow it down to Boethius, Thomas, and so on.

[34:16] What's the difference between a word that's equivocal by reason and one's equivocal by chance? Well, there's an order between the ones meanings. So you can say that a word that's equivocal by reason,

[34:38] which sense of the word reason is there involved? Because the word reason has at least what two meanings in English, right? When I give you a reason for something, I say that's using the word reason in one sense. When I say that I'm an animal with reason, an animal that has reason, it's another sense of the word reason, right? Now when I say I'm an animal that has reason, huh?

[35:09] What is the definition of reason in that context, huh? The the ability to know, the power. Okay. Okay. Perhaps Shakespeare has defined it the best, huh? For us in in Hamlet, that's ability for large discourse, huh? Remember that? Looking before and what after, right? Okay. What's the definition of reason when I give you a reason for some statement, huh?

[35:43] It's the cause for your thinking that such a thing is so. Okay. So it's not necessarily the cause of the statement being true, right? The best reason I can give for saying a statement is true. Is the reason why it must be so, right? In which case, my reason is

[36:10] containing the cause of the statement being true, okay? But if I say my reason for saying you are sitting is that I see you there, right, sitting? That's not why you are, in fact, sitting, is it? No, no. But it's why I think you are sitting, right? Okay. So you could say really the reasons of a sense is a thought, right, of the cause or a thought of why someone thinks some statement is true, or why they think some statement, in some cases, is false, right?

[36:49] Okay. Now, are those two meanings of the word reason? Are they connected? Yeah. Because reason in one sense gives reasons in the other sense, okay? And reason in one sense has many reasons in the second sense, right?

[37:18] One reason has many reasons, and this is always a nice way to what first distinguish things by the one and the what many, right? You know, when you are talking about defining, for example, every time in the dialogues, almost when Socrates asks somebody what something is, they'll come out with many examples of it rather than the one definition he's looking for, right? And Socrates will play. I asked you for one thing, and you gave me what many, right?

[37:53] And sometimes he'll play that Greek proverb, you know, where when a man hands you a dish and you know he drops it, he breaks it into many. I ask you for one, and you give me many. Okay. Now this is not, you know, going to the most essential differences, but that's the first thing you see. The difference between examples of a thing and the definition is that there are many examples of a thing, maybe potentially infinity in some cases, but there is only really one, maybe complete definition, right?

[38:26] Okay. And when we distinguish between a a word that's univocal, when it's equivocal, we first do so by the one and the what many, right? Okay. But now,

[38:43] when you say that a word is equivocal by by chance, as opposed to the reason, you are really saying that it just happened that these two meanings or these two things that stand under the word or more have the same what name, right? But in some case, it didn't just what. Happen, right? Okay, and perhaps you can use reason in either sense here to explain it, right?

[39:12] There's a reason why these two or three things, or whatever it is, have the same what name, right? Huh? There's a reason why those two meanings of reason have the same name, huh? Because they are connected between the two, right? And you can say also that reason here, as opposed to chance, is the what cause, huh? Okay. So perhaps when you say equivocal by reason, you're thinking more of reason as a cause, right?

[39:40] Although in some sense they're both a cause, right? Okay. There's a reason why these different things have the same name, right? There's a reason. It's by my my reason, right, rather than by chance as a cause, that this word was placed upon many things, huh? Mm Okay As my old teacher, De Konin correctly said, he says, kind of offhand, every respectable word in philosophy is equivocal by reason, right?

[40:21] It's amazing, you know, how how many words are out of the sort, right? But the words in the axioms are all of this sort. The words that are used in wisdom are all of this sort. The words that can be used everywhere are of the sort.

[40:44] Now, sometimes you find people using the word equivocal, period, to mean equivocal by chance. And sometimes they give a new name to this, and they call it an analogous name, right?

[41:02] Which in itself is a a a example of one way that we sometimes name things equivocally, right? Where why does equivocal by chance keep the name?

[41:20] The equivocal in the broad sense, and you say by chance and by reason. Why does the equivocal by chance sometimes keep the common name as its own, and the other get a new name like the C Sometimes analogous name? There's something over and above? Yeah, yeah. The name or the particular kind that adds nothing over the common meaning, right?

[41:59] Keeps the common name, and the one that adds something noteworthy, right, gets the new name. So I always quote my mother as saying, you know, she didn't like it when I called man an animal, right? And I said, well, man is not just an animal, right? Okay. So sometimes the beast keeps the name animal, and then man is given his own name, man. And so we contrast man against the animals, right?

[42:34] So I just mentioned that, you know, thing. I think there's a certain danger, though, in using the word analogous, because analogous is the Greek word for proportion, right? And not all names equivocal by reason are so by reason of proportion. So I think sometimes people are kind of led astray by that, and they get you know more narrow and not as broad an understanding as they should, right?

[43:00] So I like to use the terms equivocal by reason rather than analogous because I think that tends to mislead a lot of people. You know, although Thomas will use that a lot. Thomas doesn't I don't think. Thomas does, right? Yeah. How does how would St. Thomas define his his term in analogous? Well, sometimes you divide names said of many things, um, need to be into three, right?

[43:37] And he'll say if they have entirely the same meaning, then we call it univocal, or entirely different meanings, and we call it equivocal, or purely equivocal is not a phrase I use, but they mean equivocal by chance, right? And then they have meanings that are partly the same and partly what different, right? Okay. And he calls that analogous, right? So that's one way of looking at it as in between the other what two, right?

[44:10] Okay. But the other way of dividing it is into equivocal univocal and then subdividing equivocal into equivocal by reason and equivocal by what? chance yeah, and both ways of dividing are quite acceptable, right? I say just like when I talk about the goods of man, right? But the Greeks usually divide them right away into the goods of the soul, goods of the body, exterior goods, right? Now sometimes I put the goods of the soul and the goods of the body together because they are what goods inside us, right?

[44:49] So the inside goods and the outside goods. That's okay, and then subdivide the inside goods into the goods of the soul and the goods of the body, right? But sometimes you know, like when St. Paul, somebody speaks of the inner man, he's thinking of the the soul, right? And sometimes people lump the goods of the body with exterior goods as material goods, right? Okay. But you can either divide them into three right away or into two and then subdivide one.

[45:19] In both cases, it what you're you're getting the same thing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, and I don't say one is correct and the other is incorrect. I think they both might have some what.

[45:32] Yeah, some usefulness, huh? Dividing both ways, huh? Okay. You know, if one wants to divide, you know, I've never seen them do it this so much explicitly but you can say names said of many things by chance, names said of many things by reason, and then subdivide names said of many things by reason, where it means entirely the same thing, right? Or because the meanings are not the same but they're connected, right?

[46:03] But in both cases, you have a reason, right? Yeah. So if I say man of each one of you, it's not by chance I say man of each one of you. But if I say man of you and that man there, meaning right, well then we call that a man not because it's an animal with reason, but because it's a likeness of a man with reason. So it points back to you, right?

[46:34] But if I say the word bat, you know the baseball bat, and that comes out of the belfry, that's more or less just by chance, right? That those two should have the same name. Okay.

[46:49] So that's another thing if you wanted to, right? You see something having in common, yeah. In his use of the term analogous with St. Thomas, taking cognizance of the Greek sense of the term meaning proportion, does he bring that in? In the, you know, you were mentioning that. He does sometimes more from Aristotle. You see, there is a famous text in the Nicomachean Ethics there where Aristotle distinguishes some of these, right?

[47:21] And then he divides the one by proportion or by analogy to the Greek word for proportion. If you look in Euclid there, you can see the word proportion there in the English translation, but the Greek word is analogia, right? Okay. But Aristotle distinguished that from other kinds of. Okay. So in a sense, you are giving the name of the the part to the whole, right? In a sense, but

[47:50] we didn't have a name for the whole, right? You know, that happened in other things, like like you take the word virtue, right? And the word virtue is really taken from one particular virtue, namely what? Courage. Courage, yeah. Yeah. See, and if you want to get the English equivalent of the word virtus, the English equivalent is manhood. Okay. A manhood seems to name especially courage. If you look at Shakespeare's use of the word manhood, it's usually in the sense of what courage, right?

[48:32] Okay. But when the boy there decides to to leave the company of those bad guys he's associating with because they're stealing and robbing and so on, he says because it goes against his manhood, right? But now he's moving the word manhood to what? Talk about virtue in general because he's talking about it goes against his sense of what justice, justice, yeah.

[48:58] But notice, huh? In Latin, you can see that the word virtus it comes from vir, the man, the male, as opposed to the woman, right? Because normally the soldier who is supposed to have this virtue is a vir, a man, right, and and not a woman. Okay.

[49:17] I was looking at their that discussion about woman priests and so on. I was looking in the in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. There, you know, the official one now. Of course, it talks about who can be ordained, right? It says men, but then it has in parenthesis viri to make very clear. then it goes on to say that a

[49:56] Okay. Um So um let's come back to now. The word "bagger is an example of. a word that is what equivocal by reason, right? And I've heard people, you know, who make a somewhat superficial study of evil and the problem of evil and so on. You hear them sometimes say they don't agree with Thomas, you know, that or with Augustine that evil is really a what? A lack.

[50:23] A lack. Yeah, non-being, right? Of course, they're maybe thinking that Hitler is, you know, turning out in his tanks and harming more people people and and so on and and shooting at you and so on. There's some. That's not just a lack, right? This, but their misunderstanding what nature, the nature of the privation, because it has to exist in something. Yeah, well, but not that but to misunderstand the fact that the word bad is what equivocal by reason, and Thomas and Augustine are talking there about the first meaning.

[50:59] Okay. In reference to which you have to understand the other meanings. Yeah. Okay. So the first meaning of bad then is lack in the strict sense, which we'll come back to in a moment, right? What that means exactly, huh? Yeah. The second meaning of bad is what has this lack, right? Okay.

[51:27] And the third meaning is what causes something to have a lack, right? As a the three basic meanings, you might say. Okay. So I'll finish with an

[51:47] example. That you can say blindness is something bad, right? In that first sense, huh? It's a lack, right? Now, to be a blind man is that good? You want to be a blind man? No. See, you see, that's something bad to be a blind man, right? Bad to be a blind dog or a blind cat, right?

[52:20] And then you could say what blinds a man, right? Okay. So if I poke one of your eyes out, or during the Spanish Civil War, you know, they take you and they put you in a chair and prop your eyes open with a toothpick and then shine light into your eyes until you went what? Oh. Blind, then really horrible, right? Okay. So you know many things that might make you go blind, right?

[52:53] There's two examples there, right? You know people who took something out of the store, right? Okay. That's not good, right? You know the horrible scene there in King what Lear, right? Where they blind what's his name Gloucester. Gloucester, yeah, yeah. That's for the horrible scene, huh? I see that you know it's sort of done off stage, not particularly. Usually they had bandage around their eyes, and yes, it's really yeah.

[53:24] So when you say that evil is a a lack, we're talking about what primary sense? Yeah, first sense, yeah, yeah. To which the other is must be what Yeah? Yeah, and defined by right, you see? Okay, so this is closest to that, and then this is a little further away, right? Okay. Just like I was mentioning, you know, the word political there, we're exampled by you sometimes.

[53:56] The first meaning of political is the polis, the city, and the second meaning of political is a government. Well, the government is not the polis, but the government what rules or directs the polis, huh? So it's political in a second sense, but it's defined and refers to the first sense.

[54:23] And then we take up a revolution, okay? A revolution is a change of what government, right? Okay, so revolution is not as close to polis as government is, right? Okay, government is what rules the polis, huh? Revolution is a change of what governs the polis, right? Okay, the same way here. The first meaning of bad is a lack. The second meaning is what has that lack. Anything be said to have a lack, right?

[55:02] Somebody, you know, what lacks some, okay? And then the third meaning, what causes that lack in something? Do you see that? Okay. So everything has to be understood in terms of what lack is. Now, when they define lack, of course, the word lack. If you look it up in the fifth book of wisdom, and see as many meanings, but lack in the full sense here, huh? It's the non-being of something.

[55:44] First of all, in a subject able to have it, right? And also a subject that is what by nature apt to have it, right? Okay.

[56:05] By nature, apt to have it, and you can go on and maybe be more precise. And when it should have it, right, and so on, and what's that? And when it should have it, right? Okay, okay. So, if you understand what bad is in its first meaning, it's something opposed to what nature, right? Huh? Okay.

[56:31] You see that? It's something that you are apt to have by nature, that you don't have, right? Okay. So, in that sense, it's contrary to nature. So, the very meaning of bad there is, but can't be understood except in reference to what? Nature. Yeah. It's not bad for the chair not to see, right? Because the chair is not by nature apt to have that, nor should it by nature have that, right?

[57:06] Or for stone to take something, you know, natural is opposed to artificial, right? It's not bad for the stone to not see, but it is bad for a man not to see, or for a what dog not to see, right? Or these cats not to not to see. You see, it'd be bad, right?

[57:29] Because by nature they should have what sight. It's not bad for trees for them not to see, huh? But they don't have to go from one place to another, right? And maybe there are lower forms of even animal life. You know, the ones that Aristotle describes as marine animals, that don't move from place to place. They are affixed to the floor of the ocean or something, a clamming or something, and they might just what work by touch, right?

[58:04] When something comes in, they surround it, right, or catch it and get the nourishment that way because their their meal comes to them, so to speak, right. But these animals have to go out and hunt, like the cat that hunts the mouse, and they need the eyes, right? The big cats, bigger animals, right? They need eyes, right? And so on. So, by nature, they are apt to have this, and they should have this, right?

[58:32] So, for the cat, you know, the hunter, you know, that chases its its victim, its its meal, it'd be bad for them to not have sight, huh?

[58:48] So, if you understand what the bad is, you see, it's necessary connected with nature. That's very interesting. Yeah. Now, shakes with hitting the nail on the head, but it's something that the Greeks saw too, huh?

[59:07] Another place this comes up, you know, very interestingly, is when you study in logic first. When you study the category of quality, and Aristotle talks about quality, he divides it into four species of genus quality. And the first one he talks about is disposition or habit.

[59:45] The second one he talks about is innate ability or inability. The third he talks about is sense qualities. The fourth one is shape or figure.

[1:00:14] Now, why does he give disposition or habit first among the four species of quality? Even though innate ability or, inability might seem to be more fundamental than disposition or habit, right? But why this before these other three, right? In a way, the other three seem to presuppose, in at least, a disposition, wouldn't it? Yeah, well, although the second one here might seem to be more fundamental, the way habit or ability is disposed.

[1:00:50] Why does he begin with that one, right? So Aristotle enumerates things and looks before and after, right? You know, most ways you don't have to worry about finding any order or any reason for the order, just you know, by chance that they came out. But when Aristotle is, you know, considering the matter as such, he's very careful in the order he gives. He says,

[1:01:19] "Well, Thomas explains the reason for this in the Prima Secundae the Summa Theologiae. " When Thomas is going to take up human virtue and vice, right?

[1:01:35] He recalls the doctrine here of the categories, right? Because the human virtues or vices are certain what qualities of men, right? And so he has to say what kind of a quality they are, and of course they're going to turn out to be qualities in the sense of disposition or habit. So he recalls quality, the division of quality in these four, right? But there he explains why Aristotle begins with disposition or habit,

[1:02:01] and the reason he gives is that by disposition or habit, one is well or ill disposed towards one's nature. Oh, thing. And the nature of the thing, or what it is, is what is first in that thing, isn't it?

[1:02:21] You must be a thing; must be what it is before it can be anything else, right? So the nature of the thing, or what it is, is what's first in that thing. And since by disposition or habit you are will or ill disposed towards your nature, right? Looking back to the nature, it comes first. That's why this one is even first by Aristotle. That's kind of a very subtle explanation that Thomas there, isn't it?

[1:02:55] But notice when you speak of the disposition of habits, we have good ones and what bad ones? Is that right? Well, you're either well disposed towards your nature, or you're ill disposed towards your nature. Okay. And of course, you have virtues and vices of the soul, and you have virtues and vices of the body, right? So health, you might see, as a virtue of the body, right?

[1:03:19] Okay. And justice is a virtue of the soul. But again, you see, it's just you speak of good and bad primarily, right? Okay. Not these other ones, huh? If you start to speak of good or bad, you're really talking about a disposition or habit, right? Okay. So if you're talking about beauty, you're really up here. See, health or beauty or strength, right? Just talking about shape, period, without reference to good or bad, you put it down here, right?

[1:03:54] Okay. But if you're talking about beauty, right? Okay. That's not going to be up here. So you're well or ill disposed towards your nature. So again, you see that nature is the measure of what is good or bad. People who don't understand it don't understand the basic thing they have to understand in order to do, let's say, ethics. They don't know about other things, huh? Okay.