Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
86. Shakespeare Introductions and Aquinas's First Way: The Infinite Regress of Moved Movers
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[0:01] Aristotle does distinguish and say what is that which is first moved. Well, he said you can, you can, in some sense, speak of it. You know, you can designate a. You know. There.

[0:23] Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our minds images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, Pray for us. and help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:52] These are the most complete editions, the Arden Shakespeare editions. You know, they have you know these long introductions here, like in this one, it's sixty-four pages. You know, and then half the pages taken up with long notes. You know, look at them. You know,

[1:14] there's actually several editions have come out of that. You know, like some of these are like the third or the second. You know, you have to look in the thing. This is the

[1:27] this is the eighth edition, but I mean sometimes they'll put a new series out and someone else will do a new edition of the work and bring it up to date and so on. But I like is these old, you know, high school editions, the New Hudson Shakespeare, and they give you more what you want, you know, to know, and

[1:49] they have a little thing on diction, versification, so you can get a little more sized up. But they're also older ones, and the people were more more common sense in those days, right? And

[2:05] one of my favorite introductions to Shakespeare is this thing here. It's just in the addition to as you like it, huh? Shakespeare generally preferred to make up his plots and stories out of such materials as were most familiar to his audience. Okay, like for example, in this edition here, you can get in the appendices a lot of these excerpts from these other sources, right?

[2:39] Of this, we have many examples. But the fact is too well known to need dwelling upon. Okay, he starts with observation, right? Shakespeare is very rarely, if ever, original, right? And since he takes characters or plots that have some antecedent, and sometimes many antecedents, huh? Okay, of this we have many examples, but the fact is too well known to need dwelling upon. Now he starts to reflect on this, right?

[3:12] Though surpassingly rich in fertility and force of invention. He was, notwithstanding, singularly economical and sparing in the use of it, which aptly shows how free he was from everything like a sensational spirit or habit of mind. Nature was everything to him; novelty, nothing, or next to nothing. The true, not the new, was always the soul of his purpose.

[3:52] Then this nothing could better prove the moral healthiness of his genius; hence, in great part, his noble superiority to the intellectual and literary fashions of his time.

[4:13] And incidentally, you know the best discourse on fashion is in Shakespeare on Troilus and Cressida. He understood these fashions perfectly, but he deliberately rejected them, or rather, struck quite above or beyond them. We rarely meet with anything that savors of modishness or modishness in his workmanship. Probably the best judgment ever pronounced upon him is Ben Jonson's. He was not of an age, but for all time.

[4:53] For even so, it is with the permanences of our intellectual and imaginative being that he deals, and not with any transiences of popular or fashionable excitement or pursuit. And as he cared little for the new, so he was all the stronger in that which does not grow old, and which lives on from age to age in the perennial, unwithering freshness of truth and nature. To be carried hither and thither by the shifting mental epidemics of the day is but a tacit confession of weakness or disease.

[5:39] It only proves that one has not strength of mind enough to feel the soul of nature, or to live at peace with the solidities of reason. I never have anybody in the twentieth century writing this way, right?

[5:54] And because the attractions of mere novelty had no force with Shakespeare, because his mind dwelt far above the currents of intellectual fashion and convention, his dramas stand exempt from the wrongs of time. And the study of them is a wholesome discipline. In those forms and sources of interest, which underlie and outlast all the fitting specialties of mode and custom. And then ends up this with a little quote from a poet, huh?

[6:29] Kind of a nice, appropriate, huh? Truths that wake to perish never, which neither listlessness, nor Nor a mad endeavor, nor man nor a boy, nor all that is at enmity with joy, can utterly abolish or destroy. I like those old things. That's my favorite thing. I, you know, Kittredge is very good too. You know, Kittredge taught at Harvard there a long time ago.

[7:06] Sometimes you get, you know, and all these people, you know, you from time to time get a very interesting note. Huh? Take for example this note on Antony's speech, huh? Act three, scene two. Here.

[7:46] Twas not a private speech. There he says, "I am no orator, as Brutus is, but as you know me all, a plain, blunt man that loved my friend, and that they know full well that gave me public leave to speak of him. Now listen to this next couple lines. For I have neither wit nor words nor worth, action or utterance, nor the power of speech to stir men's blood.

[8:19] I only speak right on. I tell you that between yourselves, you know. But notice those words, huh? For I have neither wit nor words nor worth, action or utterance, nor the power of speech to stir men's blood. Listen to Kittredge's note on that. A complete list of the qualities of a good orator.

[8:41] And he starts to enumerate the six of them, right? Of course, you know Aristotle's rhetoric, and see this is complete, huh? He doesn't give them in the logical order because he wants to what? Alliterate, right? I have no wit, nor words, nor worth, right? But you touch in there upon the three means of persuasion: the character of the speaker, the way he moves the audience, right? The arguments or apparent arguments he gives, and then the words in which he puts them, and the style and so on, right?

[9:11] That Aristotle talks about in the third book. Now, why does Shakespeare do that? Huh? A complete list of the qualities of a good orator. There's an incredible precision in Shakespeare, right? And why is that so? You know,

[9:33] wisdom. Wisdom on the part of Shakespeare. I mean, it's not the sort of thing you'd catch it. You know, you hear the play in the in the theater, and you weren't supposed to anyway, because it would be it would be too distracting, right? And you know, but but but why does he have that? You know, precision.

[9:55] I apply that part of philosophy. He says in one play, the character says, "Apply that part of philosophy that treats of happiness by virtue, especially to be achieved." I can hardly give a better succinct summary of what the Nicomachean ethics is about? It's about happiness by virtue, to be achieved. That's what it's about. It's about happiness and virtue, right? And virtue being necessary to achieve to happiness, huh?

[10:26] You won't find that sort of thing on every page of Critic, but I mean, in case you find a thing like that, you know, very, very impressive.

[10:36] You just have to discover things yourself. So, set aside Shakespeare for the time being and go back to to Tommaso here from Aquino. Okay, I think last time we were in the first argument, and we saw with Thomas that there are really two statements, two premises to be proven and to be

[11:10] backed up that are used in the main argument. And one statement is that everything that is in motion is moved by a what? Another, right?

[11:23] And we saw three arguments that Thomas gives from Aristotle to that, huh? And one was based upon what we learned in the sixth book. That was the first argument, huh? The third argument was based on the definition of motion, huh? And then the middle argument was a what? Inductive argument, if you recall, huh? Okay.

[11:52] I don't know if we looked at the part there where right after that where he refers to a different use of the word motion there by Plato. Did we talk about that last time? Okay. That's kind of an aside here, but it's okay to take it up here a bit, huh? So let's look at that passage, huh? It's right after he gives those three arguments, huh?

[12:16] It should be known, however, that Plato, who lays down that every mover is moved, huh? He takes the name of motion more generally than what Aristotle does, huh? He says this. For Aristotle takes

[12:38] motion or the word motion strictly, right? According as it is the act of what exists in potency or in ability, as such, right? In which way it is not except in divisible things and in bodies, as is proved in the sixth book of the Physics, and he saw that.

[13:05] However, according to Plato, however, the thing moving itself is not a body, huh? For he takes motion for what? Any operation, huh? Thus, that to understand and to opine, to think, would be a certain what to be moved, right?

[13:31] Now, schematically, you could signify understanding by a verb, right? Just as walking, right, or falling, or growing, right? Okay. So he's understanding the word motion there in this broader sense, huh? Which he says, which way of speaking, Aristotle himself touches upon in the third book about the what soul, right? Okay. Or just like in the definition of what reason there in Shakespeare, right? You have the word what running, discourse running.

[14:09] Okay, but it's not really motion in this strict sense. So, according to this way of speaking, therefore Plato says that the first mover moves itself, right? Not by motion that way we defined it in the physics, but because he what understands himself, right, and wills himself or loves himself, right? Okay.

[14:42] So, because God what understands himself and loves himself, he what moves other things, right? By loving himself, he loves what other things, huh? Although he loves them freely, right? Okay. So, by moving himself, That is to say by understanding and loving himself, right? He moves other things, right? But that's using the word motion there in a what loose sense, yeah, yeah, okay.

[15:14] Which is not in anything repugnant to the reasons or the arguments of Aristotle, huh? For it differs nothing to arrive at something first that moves itself, according to Plato, understood in that way, right? And to arrive at something first that is altogether immobile, right, according to what Aristotle? Okay.

[15:39] So that's an interesting law. Thing that Aristotle points out there, that Thomas points out. Okay. Now he goes to the second proposition, to it that in movers and moved, one cannot what go on, go forward, proceed forever, right, infinitely. And again, he proves this by what three reasons, right?

[16:22] Okay. Of which the first is such: if in movers and moved one proceeded forever, it would be necessary that all these infinite movers and moved would be what bodies, right? Okay. Because everything that is moved is divisible, and a body, as was proved in the what sixth book of the physics, huh? Okay. So again, he's going back here to the sixth book of the physics, right? In the first proof.

[17:02] But every body that moves something else, being moved itself, at the same time while it moves, being moves another, is moved. Therefore, all these infinite bodies are at once moved when one of them is moved.

[17:26] But one of them, since it is finite, moves in a finite time. Therefore, all those infinite things are moved in a what finite time. But this was shown to be impossible again back in the sixth book, right? That a infinite body, right, cannot move what. In a finite time. Yeah, a finite distance, right? I don't. I don't understand that argument. Could you? Well, we don't go back to the sixth book right now, okay?

[18:02] What I'm trying to indicate now is how he's building, basing himself upon what we saw in the sixth book, huh? Okay. And therefore, it is impossible that in

[18:15] movers and moved one proceeds what forever. That, however, is impossible. That the aforesaid infinite things be moved in a finite time, he proves thus: the mover and the moved are necessarily what together, right?

[18:42] As he as is proved, inducing in the singular or in each of the species or forms of motion. But bodies are not able to be together except through either what being continuous or by touching. Since, therefore, all the aforesaid said movers and moved are bodies, as has been proven, it is necessary that they be, as it were, one mobile, right? Because they're all what together, right? So it it amounts to what the same thing as saying that you have an infinite body, right?

[19:17] A single body, huh? Moving, right. Over a finite distance in a what finite time, okay? And thus, one infinite thing is moved in a finite time, which is impossible, as was proved in the sixth book of the what physics, huh? Okay. You know the way he does it is basically by proportions, right? He's going to say that if you go back to the sixth book, right, it's going to, in some period of time, right, in part of that finite time, it's going to move what?

[20:05] Part of the distance, right, huh? Okay. And therefore, whatever that part of the time is of the whole time, right, so the distance it moves, right, will be of The what? The whole distance Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes a difference whether you have a finite body moving an infinite distance in that period of time, right? Or you have an infinite body moving a what? Finite distance, huh?

[20:32] In both cases, you have the infinite going over the what? Finite, right? Okay. But in a part of that time, the finite is going to go over the infinite, or vice versa, only part of it, right? And whatever part that amount of time you took is, right, of the whole time, so you won't be able to multiply that much, right, of the infinite body, right? Or take that much of the infinite body to go over.

[21:03] And so you cannot have gone a whole infinite distance, nor an infinite body have gone over a finite distance in that particular period of time, huh? Okay, with the argument. Yeah.

[21:22] So that's based upon the sixth book again of the physics, huh? Now the second and third arguments are going to be very similar, but let's look at the second argument here first. The second reason to proving the same is such: in movers in moved that are ordered, huh, of which one in order is moved by another. This is necessary to be found that when the first mover is removed or it ceases from motion, none of the others will move or nor be moved, because the first is the cause of moving to what?

[22:06] All the others, right? But if the movers in moved in order are infinite, there will not be a first what mover, right? But all will be, as it were, middle what movers, huh? Therefore, nothing, none of the others is able to be moved, and thus nothing is moved in the world, huh? Now,

[22:36] the argument is very, very simple. But Shakespeare says in a sonnet, you know, you know, he has a summary complains about a whole bunch of things, and simple truth miscalled what? Simplicity. Kind of putting on the two meanings there, right? Huh? You say somebody's a simpleton, right? Huh? You know, okay. But he's complaining about simple truth sometimes miscalled what? Simplicity. Okay. Now, notice where this argument is proceeding here.

[23:12] Let's take something very concrete. Let's deal with this a bit, huh? Suppose you've got the locomotive here, right? Okay, and that's pulling a wagon here, okay? Box car, they call it, right? And then that's pulling what they sometimes call the what? Caboose, right? Okay. Caboose is what? At the end of the train, huh? Okay, These little platforms out there, right? huh? Okay. They used to do the old campaigns, right?

[24:02] They'd go out of the country, and the speaker would like the train to stop, and he'd speak from the what? Little platform at the end. Actually, it

[24:14] happened, you know, one time when Dewey was running for presidency, and he was speaking from the back platform, and I don't know what the engineer did something up here, and all of a sudden the train jerked, right?

[24:27] He's supposed to, you know, say something about such and such, you know. And of course, the the press picked it up, you know, and the Democrats made, you know, oh this, you know, brow-beating the poor. Gets the workers, eh? Yeah. so, I don't know how many boats have lost him, you know, huh? But uh, anyway, now if you were to say about these three things, the engine, the box car here in the middle, right, and the caboose, huh?

[24:59] Is that the way you spell it Something like that What would you say is the mover, huh? Of these three, would you say the caboose is the mover? No, because the caboose is not really pulling anything, is it? Okay, it's just being pulled, right? Okay. Now you could say that the what? Box car here, in some sense, is pulling the caboose, right? Okay. But it's pulling the caboose only because it is what?

[25:35] Being pulled. itself. Pulled by the engine, right? So most of all, you'd say it's the engine that's pulling the whole what? Train, right? Although in some way you could say that the car in the middle here, right, is pulling the caboose, okay? So you could say it's a moved mover, right? Or if I'd be more particular, you could say it's a pulled puller, okay? In general, it's a example of a moved mover, right?

[26:13] And Thomas uses the term there a middle mover, right? Huh? Media movencia, right? Okay. Now, why do you call the move mover or a pulled puller in particular here? Why do you call that a a middle mover or a middle puller? Because there there has to be something in front of it which is pulling it, in virtue of which it's pulling. Yeah, yeah. So there's something before it and something what after, right?

[26:50] And if it had nothing before it, it wouldn't pull the what caboose at all, would it, huh? Okay. If you take away the engine, does it make any difference whether you have one or many of these wagons in between here, right?

[27:13] Because whether you have one or many, huh? That that series of of linked are like what? Move movers, pull pullers. Like one grand move mover, right? It wouldn't make any difference because that series of move movers, if it's many, whether it be in some number or whether it be infinity, then would still be as one what move mover, right? Okay. Now,

[27:53] if you say then that all you have is move movers, right? All you have is these middle movers, right? And nothing before them. But you've already admitted that a middle mover, a move mover, doesn't move anything unless there's something before it. It makes no difference whether that middle mover is one in number, like in my example here, right? Or whether there be many move movers, right? And it makes no difference whether those many are finite, infinite, right?

[28:29] They're still like one grand what moved mover, right? Which can't move anything without something what Before it. before it. But if every mover is a move mover, then there is nothing before the move mover, is there? And you've already admitted there's nothing before the move mover. It can't what move anything, right? So it must be a what an unmoved mover, right? An unpulled puller in this case, right?

[29:06] Before the pulled puller. You see that again? Okay. It's a little bit like those. You know, like a chandelier or some kind of a lamp in the house you often have, where it's attached to the ceiling there, right? And then you come down, you have the little links, you know, and you can add links you want to, or subtract links depending on how high you want the the light to be above the table, right?

[29:40] Okay. So over our kind of our family room table, kitchen table in a sense, breakfast there, we have one of these chains coming down, right? Okay. Now,

[29:53] the last chain, right, or let's say the lamp itself, it's not holding up anything, is it? But all these intermediary links are what? They're held up holders, right? They hold up something because, in so far as they're being held themselves up by something above them, right? Okay.

[30:18] Now, if you never Attach it to the ceiling. You just went up into the air out here, right? Would make any difference as to how many links you added going up into the sky? Would it hold up anything?

[30:32] No. You got to get to a link that's attached, not to another what? Link that's being held up by another link. You got to come to something like the roof or some or a beam or something, right? That you can screw it into or something, right? And then you can all be held up, right? Is it? No. As far as the force that I'm going to sing, it makes no difference, right?

[30:58] Whether you have one little link in between the lamp and the thing above, right? Or many, right? And if many, would you have a limited number or going on forever, right? It's still not going to hold up anything unless you get to something that is not what held up by another link in the same way. Okay. What's example of the train here? This might be more exact, right?

[31:20] To see the point. Okay. Aristotle repeats this argument in the second book of wisdom, huh? But basically, you could generalize that if you wanted to to all the other kinds of causes besides the mover, huh?

[31:50] Just touch on a little bit, huh? Suppose A is desired for the sake of B, huh? And A is in no way desired for its own sake. Desired is A to B. And B is desired for the sake of C.

[32:12] Now, would A be desired if B was not desired? No. And B would not be desired unless what? C was desired, right? Okay. Now, can this go on forever? Can there be an infinite chain here?

[32:41] If you had an infinite chain here, what you'd have would be an infinity of means, really. And that whole chain of means is like one grand means that presupposes what? Some end to which they are means.

[33:01] But there would be no end, right? Okay. It makes no difference whether between A and C I have one or many, right? As far as presupposing something before them. Okay.

[33:18] So there must be some end. Aristotle argues in the Nicomachean Ethics. He's talking about happiness, right? There must be some end, some good that is not desired for the sake of something what other, yeah, yeah. Because if everything was desired only for the sake of something else, everything would be desired as a means, and nothing really is an end. And whether it's one or anything so desired, right?

[33:51] And if you have a series of these things, they're desired each one for the sake of something else. The whole series is like one grand means, desired for the sake of something else. And so, there's nothing else besides it. If everything is in that series, then the whole series is one grand means desired for the sake of something else, but it can't be desired for the sake of something else because there's nothing else.

[34:19] Is it? So I mean, this argument could be applied to other what causes, right? Besides the mover, right? Okay. Of course, you could say that you couldn't begin. You couldn't begin to desire something because you can't desire A before you desire B, and you couldn't desire B before you desired C. If everything is desired for the sake of something else, how would you begin to desire anything?

[34:47] Anything you try to to begin to start your desire with, you couldn't begin with it because if you suppose you desire something else before you desired it, because it's not desired for itself, right? But for the sake of something else, do you follow me? Okay.

[35:07] When when you do apply it to the end, yeah, like this, do you have to have an actual knowledge, say, of the end? How do how do you have to have the end in mind? Can you have it there? Honestly, confused. Honestly, confused. What you have to have? No idea. But still, actually, it's there. Maybe I have a knowledge of, say, happiness in a confused manner. Yeah.

[35:30] But do I have to have that knowledge in me actually, or could is it essential? Is it a sufficiency to have it there virtually or something? I have to have it in a confused way, yeah. Because the will, the object, of the will is the good is known by reason. Okay.

[35:51] So what you're saying here, in general, is that a caused cause cannot be. There cannot be a caused cause. You want to generalize this without some what cause before it, right? And.

[36:15] The same way there can't be many caused causes without something before them, because that series of caused causes is like one what grand caused cause, okay? It makes no difference as far as that series being like one grand cause cause, whether it's a series of a a number of cause causes or a infinite series, right? Okay.

[36:54] But you can't really have the middle without having something what before, in a sense it's almost a contradiction in the words, almost, huh? To say that you have a a middle thing, right, with nothing before it. How can something be the middle? There's nothing before and after it, right? You look before and after, as he say.

[37:18] Can't be a middle without something before and after it. Even even in the poetics when we define beginning middle end, you know, a good plot is beginning middle end. Well, that's the definition of middle. But it comes after something and before something, right? Yeah. So this is what he what he means by a middle mover, right? It is essentially middle, right? There's something after it in the sense that it's moving something, right?

[37:47] But it's after something itself, right? Because it's a moved mover, right? And it's moving something only because it's being moved itself. So there cannot be a moved mover functioning as a moved mover, right? With nothing before it.

[38:07] Do you see that? Yeah. Okay. He says the third proof comes back to about almost the same thing, except that he proceeds in a what transposed order, right? And he begins from the superior, right? Okay. He's using now the distinction between the what principle or chief mover and what we would call the what tool, right? Okay. And the tool though is really like a what moved mover.

[38:50] That's what a tool is, huh? Okay. So he says that which moves instrumentally, that which moves as a tool, right, is not able to move unless to be something that chiefly or principally moves, huh? But if one proceeds forever in movers and moved, all will be as it were what. Instrumental movers, right? I will be as tools, because they'll be laid down as being movers, and nothing, therefore, will be what?

[39:30] As the chief mover, huh? Therefore, nothing will be what? Moved, huh? Okay. So, tool is something you use to achieve your end, right, huh? Okay. And if there's no one to use, use it. It's not going to be used for the end, is it? Right. Okay. It makes no difference whether you're using one thing or many things, right? They still can't. What?

[40:06] Yeah, yeah. If they're being used, right? If they are causes only insofar as they're used, that's what a tool is, huh? Okay. So. As I said, it doesn't amount to too much different from that second argument, except he's looking at a little bit differently, right? From the starting point of the, you know, the chief mover, right? The one who's using other things to achieve its end, right? As tools, right?

[40:37] But tools almost the same definition there as what the middle mover would be, right? Okay. So in a sense, no matter how many tools you have, there, right? You still can't accomplish anything. It's just one to to use the tools, right? It's just the principal mover.

[41:06] And thus the proof of both propositions, huh? Which are supposed in the first way of demonstrating this. Or he said, and thus it's clear, right? The proof of both propositions, which are supposed in the first way of demonstration, by which Aristotle proves that there is a first immobile mover.

[41:40] So notice, huh? You have only a part of that what he's gone through here in the Summa Theologiae and the argument for motion, right? Okay. You have, as were one reason for each of the premises, right? And here you have three reasons, right? And it's spelled out more, okay?