De Anima (On the Soul)
14. De Anima II.2: Definition and Demonstration, Wonder, and Reasoning from the Soul's Activities
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[0:00] Now let's look at the second chapter. What is Aristotle going to do now? He's arrived at the definition of the soul by those six divisions that we talked about. to be on the side of the soul itself, and to be on the side of that of which the soul is a is is an act, and he's manifested that definition by these two proportions, these two likenesses or ratios.

[0:27] What's he going to do now in the second chapter? Well, what he's going to do here is, in a way, syllogize. He's going to demonstrate the definition of the soul,

[0:43] but what he's going to use as a middle term to demonstrate this again something more known to us, right? So he's like starting over again, right, to manifest the definition of the soul. But since from what is unclear, but more apparent comes to be what is clear, and more known according to account, one must try once more to recount the soul. Thus, okay. Now I don't know if I like that translation altogether.

[1:15] You. Well, what can a man do? It's hard to translate these things. In a sense, I think he's he's touching upon what we saw back in the beginning of the first book of the natural hearing, right? The first book. What is more known to us, right? Towards what is more known by what nature, right? But it's not said as clearly.

[2:04] Sense, he says, from things that are unclear, but what more manifest, right? Meaning to us, I think, right? Comes about what is clear and more known, kata ton logon, according to reason, right? We're not to try again to go through about this. And he has that word, one must try, peratea, in Greek, right? Showing the difficulty of this, right? Okay.

[2:37] In a way, what he's going to do is to what reason from the second act to the first act, right? From what is more known to us, right? To what is more fundamental in reality, right? Okay.

[3:00] Now it's kind of a strange comparison here at first he's making here at one twenty four. For it is not only necessary for the definitive account to show that that as most terms do, but also to include and show the cause. But now the account of terms are like conclusions.

[3:29] For example, what is squaring? Making an equilateral triangle equal to an oblong rectangle. But such a term has the account of a conclusion. But the one saying that squaring is the finding of a mean proportional, says the cause of the thing.

[3:52] Now, are you geometrists? Can you expound that to me? What is something I think after by finding the mean proportional? You find the square. Okay. Okay.

[4:19] The mean proportional square would be equal to the extremes multiplied together. Okay. Okay. So. You exemplify that in numbers, but not there. Four is the sixth, just what?

[4:56] Six is six. Yes. Nine. Yeah. Now, six times six is what? Thirty-six. Thirty-six. Yeah. And four times nine is what? Thirty-six, right? Okay. So four and nine are what? That the sides of a what? Oblong, right? Trying to make an oblong a square, right? So trying to find between four and nine a number that is a what? Mean proportional. What does that mean? It means that one of the numbers is to it, and is it is to the other, right?

[5:59] In this example here, that would be what six, right? Okay. So we do this in lines rather than with numbers, right? At the end of what? With two, I think he shows how to make it what. Yeah, actually, you need? that one. You know, but the immediate thing is to it what? A rectangle, right? Any rectangle that's not a square, right? Turn it into a square or equal area, right?

[6:34] Okay. So you're trying to find a mean proportional. right? Okay. That gives, in a way, the reason why I'm saying, right? Okay. So if you say, um,

[6:53] it's what you're trying to find here is a square that's equal to the rectangle, right? Okay. But that's going to be a square whose side is a what?

[7:04] Mean proportional. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So which is like a middle term, and which is like a conclusion? Conclusion. The middle term is the mean proportional. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so if you have, if you find a square whose sides are mean proportional between the sides of the oblong, right, then you will find a square which is equal to the what Oblong. oblong, right? Okay.

[7:45] Now, people a lot of times have discussed this here because it's kind of a interesting thing about that. In the Posterior Analytics in Logic, then, they talk about

[8:05] the questions, what is it, and the question, why is it so, right? Okay. And I've been talking about this a little bit before in Logic, but it's reviewed it, we call it it. let's go back to something very fundamental.

[8:28] Logic is the tool of the man who what? Thinks Thinks But he's the practical man, who thinks right? Okay. Okay. Let's go back to something we learned in the premium to wisdom, right? What was the beginning of philosophy, according to? One, yeah, yeah.

[8:58] Wonder is the beginning of philosophy, right? Remember how we looked at the text in metaphysics, Aristotle's *Proemium to Wisdom and then the text before that in *Temporality* and Plato, right?

[9:17] In *Theaetetus*, in *Theaetetus*, Theodorus introduces his pupil Theaetetus to Socrates, and this is his prized pupil. And he says to Socrates, "He's something of a philosopher, okay? " In *Theaetetus*, you know, Socrates and Theaetetus. In the course of the conversation, if you recall, Theaetetus breaks out in wonder, right? And that's an occasion for Socrates to say, "Theodorus, I used to have guessed right about what you said.

[9:52] " For there is no other beginning of philosophy than what wonder. So Socrates is very precise about that thing. There is no other beginning of philosophy than wonder. That's it.

[10:09] Aristotle teaches the same thing there in *the premium to wisdom, the beginning of the metaphysics. It's in the place where he's trying to show that wisdom is knowledge that is pursued for the sake of understanding. It's looking knowledge, theoretical knowledge, speculative knowledge. It's not practical knowledge, right? It's not knowledge pursued for the sake of doing or making something. And he gives as a sign of that the fact that men, in the beginning and now, begin to philosophize out of what wonder, right?

[10:46] Okay. So the two chief philosophers, as Thomas calls them, Plato and Aristotle, both agree in saying that wonder is the beginning of what philosophy. And so, if you're doing something not out of wonder, you're not doing philosophy, except in an equivocal sense, right? It's not philosophy in the original sense at all.

[11:15] And notice how that harmonizes with the word "philosopher," right? The word "philosopher" means what? Yeah, yeah. Now, when I try to explain to students what the word "philosopher" means, that is to be a lover of wisdom. I explain to them something what wisdom is. You know, a knowledge of first causes, ultimately a knowledge of God, and so on. But I also point out, in order to really have a right to be called a philosopher, a man has to not only love wisdom, but he must love it in a certain way.

[11:53] See, and the first thing I point out. Is that he's got to love wisdom for its own sake. If he loves wisdom for the sake of making money, he loves wisdom for the sake of being admired by his students or admired by the public, for that matter, right? He's not really a lover of wisdom. He's a lover of what money, or he's a lover of fame, or something of this sort, right?

[12:21] Now I always make a simple comparison. I say, if the man loves the woman for her money, would you say he loves the woman or he loves money?

[12:34] I say, if the girl confronts him and says, "You love me or your money," and in an honest fit, he says, "I love you for your money," then she's going to say tearfully, Right, then you don't love me." And we'd all say that she's right, don't we? You see, I think I told you that I saw one time that the the heiress, Did you ever see that thing?

[13:00] It's about a the daughter of a wealthy man on the Hudson. There, the Dutch patroon, you know, and Olivia De Havilland. The one version I saw, Olivia De Havilland plays the young lady, right? You know how Olivia De Havilland is probably better for Oscar than the other woman actors, right? But handsome young man comes courting her, right? And the father is suspicious that this young man is courting his daughter because the dad is money, right?

[13:30] And of course, she's caught up with this young man, and she doesn't want to believe that he doesn't really love her, right? But the father finally decides to confront the young man, you know, and so he meets the young man privately, right? And he offers him a sum of money, right? That's a considerable sum of money that he can take, go free, and not be encumbered with this somewhat homely woman, right?

[14:00] But first, he decides to take the money, right? Well, obviously, if he really loved the girl, he'd be, you know, indignant, you know, hurt to himself, right, Even the author, right? But obviously, his taking the money is a sign, you know, sure sign that he's a lover of the money, not the girl, right? But then, of course, you know the rest of this is a psychological effect upon the girl, right?

[14:26] And reacts towards her father because of this, right? He's just really trying to protect her, really, against a man who might be pursuing her for money. But that's the point. See, I'm saying that if I love the woman for her money, if I could have the money without the woman. I said that I don't really love the woman. It's as simple as that, right? It's such a secundum quid, you know.

[14:53] Okay, the same way, if I love wisdom for the sake of anything other than wisdom, that's why I'm a lover of. You see the harmony there between, therefore, the meaning of a lover of wisdom and the fact that it begins in what wonder.

[15:12] Because wonder is a desire to know, not for the sake of making you doing, but simply out of what a desire to understand. You see that. So logic is the tool of the philosopher, right? Could also say logic is the tool of the man who wonders. Now, when we define the wonder, the wonder of the philosopher, especially,

[15:46] usually what Aristotle or Thomas would,Say is that it's a desire to know the cause, right? Okay. It's a desire to know the unknown cause of a known what? Effect, right? Okay.

[16:13] So basically, it's a desire to know causes, and Aristotle brings it out in bringing the wisdom from the philosopher. And that's why we go back to that fragment of Democritus that we mentioned before, right? Where Democritus said, "Um, the fragment we have. I would rather discover one cause

[16:44] than be master of the kingdom of the Persians. " Yeah. I would rather discover one cause than be master of the kingdom of Persians. Now, as I often explain to students, the kingdom of the Persians would be the greatest kingdom in the world that the Greeks would know about or be acquainted with them. And so, if I was master of the kingdom of Persians, I would be the wealthiest man in the world.

[17:22] I would be the most powerful man in the world, right? The I would be worshipped as a what? As a god, right? The most honored man in the center of the world. I read that the Persian kings had a thousand chefs to prepare an excellent meal every night, And if they didn't. they would be up with their heads, right? And I'm sure they have a heir, right?

[17:46] Okay. So what men in general want, you know, power or money, wealth, right? Fame and honor, sense, pleasure, right? All of these things that men seem to want, to master the kingdom of the Persians would have to what? Excess, right? Okay. Superabundance of all these things. So it's a very strong statement he's making there, right? I would rather discover one cause than be master of the kingdom of Persians.

[18:17] He has an intense desire, right, to know causes, and therefore it's theori to know the very first causes if he can. So that's a good expression in that fragment that we have in Democritus of the wonder that moved men to philosophize. And as you go through and read, you know, from Thales who's supposed to have said that water was the beginning of all things, right? And all these other opinions, they all have a desire to know what.

[18:47] The causes of natural things, which are apparently the first causes of all things. Okay, so Aristotle and Thomas will often put cause in the definition of this wonder, right? It's the starting of the cause. But if you go to the text equally famous of Plato there in the Theaetetus, I mean Theaetetus—when he picks up wonder, he says, "I wonder what these things are." Okay, and there the object of wonder there is what,

[19:32] and when Socrates talks about the wonder and what afterwards about what they've been talking about, he says, "Now do you begin to understand why these things are so?" Right.

[19:44] So sometimes we define wonder as a desire to know what and why, and in that childhood rhyme, "Twinkle twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are," right. That wonder then is expressed as it is. So now in the second book of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle is talking about these two questions, what and why, and how these two questions can be answered. Okay, so there you see how logic in its culminating part.

[20:22] in posterior analytics, is the tool of the man who wonders, right? And that's why it's relevant to the man who wonders. Logic for him to talk about these two questions, what and why.

[20:43] But there, Aristotle sees the distinction between what and why, and cause. Another thing we're talking about, and why is very clearly is asking for the cause of some effect, right? When you answer the question what, you also give the causes responsible for the thing being what it is.

[21:05] Now Aristotle will talk there about definition, which is the speech that answers the question what, and how we can arrive at definitions. And you talk about demonstration,

[21:21] which is the syllogism that answers the question why. And so his comparison of these questions and a comparison of definition and what demonstration, right? It's a very important comparison he makes, and to sum up, I'm going to finish in a moment. But to sum up his teaching here. He says that definition can be the beginning of a demonstration, or it can be the conclusion of a demonstration,

[21:56] or it can be, in a way, the whole demonstration, but in a different form. Okay. Now, in order to understand that, you have to understand the connection between cause and definition, of demonstration, and you have to understand what we understood in our study of four kinds of causes: that there's more than one kind of cause. Okay. And

[22:33] how does that play out in this? Let's take a very simple example. Let's talk about let's talk about a knife. Okay. Now, I might define the knife as a tool for cutting. Okay.

[23:11] And there, I am defining the knife by one of its causes, namely the end or purpose of the knife. Okay. Notice the kind of cause involved here. It would be the end.

[23:30] Now, I might also define the knife more by its parts, right? It's a tool composed of a blade and a handle, right? Okay. To be more explicit, let's say it's a tool having a blade inserted in a handle. And this, speak kind of roughly, is a definition by parts.

[24:16] Or, since parts like matter, you can see it's a definition by matter, right? Okay. Two different definitions, right? Because there's different kinds of causes. Okay.

[24:34] Now, I could also combine these two and make one grand definition, right? I can say a knife is a tool for cutting, composed of a blade and handle.

[25:03] Okay. Or I can say it's a tool composed of a blade and handle for the sake of cutting. Notice the difference here, right? Can these be definitions, right? Now, if I wanted to, I could reason from one of these definitions to another one. If the knife is a tool for cutting, and a tool for cutting has to have a blade, right, to cut with, and something that we can hold without being cut ourselves, then a tool for cutting is going to be a tool composed of a blade and a handle.

[25:44] Okay. Notice I made a syllogism out of this haven't I Right? The conclusion of the syllogism is the knife is a tool composed of a what blade and handle.

[25:57] This definition is like the conclusion of the demonstration. This here is like the middle term, which is the beginning, the beginning of a demonstration.

[26:12] Now remember that the demonstration, if you remember from logic, the demonstration is a syllogism, right? And the syllogism has a very much rigor in terms of premises. So Aristotle says a definition can be as a conclusion of a demonstration or as a beginning of a demonstration, or it can contain everything the demonstration does but in another form. Okay. So in a way, this is including everything I had in the demonstration, but in the form of a what definition, right?

[26:47] Okay. So this is extreme interest to the man who wonders to know all about this. Or take my definition of marriage, right? So I give a definition of marriage

[27:03] in terms of the four causes, right? So I say marriage is a stable union of a man and woman by mutual choice for the sake of what children. That's a definition of which of these three senses? Third.

[27:28] Yeah, it's a definition that differs from a demonstration in form and position, as Aristotle says, But it contains in a sense everything the demonstration might contain. But suppose I reasoned in this way, and I said that marriage is a society for children, the sake of children, For the sake of generating children and educating them, raising them to mature citizens and mature members of the church, right? That would be like a what middle term.

[28:08] But society for generating children has to be composed not of two men or two women because they can't generate, etc. But must be one composed of a man and woman, right? And it was going to be you know suitable for raising the children and so on. It's got to be a stable union and so on, right? Okay. In that case, then that that marriage is a stable union of a man and woman would be like the conclusion of a demonstration, right?

[28:42] That's a society, or for the sake of children and so on, would be like a what beginning of a demonstration, right? Okay. But Berquist's definition, his complete definition of marriage, as the stable union of a man and woman by mutual choice in the sake of children, that's like a what? Complete demonstration, but differs in position, right? It's not set out as one part as middle term to conclude the other, right?

[29:13] But it includes all that, right? Okay, includes what would be the conclusion of a a demonstration and what would be a premise, right? Remember

[29:27] the efficient and formal causes within the definition. Now, sometimes we talk about those two because in that definition, I have something in the form when I say stable union, right? Okay, and when I say by by mutual choice, that's blue, right? But we emphasize more in the discussion of the matter that that's very clearly something has to be the definition that's going to be complete, right? And it's very much a conclusion of that, right?

[30:01] From the end, right? It's got to have these parts. Now, actually, when Aristotle is taking up demonstration in Book One, you have an illustration of this, son, because he gives a definition of demonstration from the end or purpose of demonstration, and then he reasons from that to what the premises have to be. Okay, but it'd be a little bit like if, if in logic, if I define definition in logic the first act, if I define definition as speech making known distinctly what a thing is, okay, and then I define definition as speech composed of the genus and differences of a thing, okay.

[30:47] I might be able to reason from one to the other, right? If a speech is going to what make known distinctly what a thing is, it's got to say in general what it is, which is to give its genus, right, and also bring out its differences and other things that share that, right? So I can make a syllogism and say a definition is speech making known distinctly what a thing is, and speech making known distinctly what a thing is is speech composed of the genus and differences of that thing, and there are one definition, speech making known what a thing is, would be as the middle term and as the beginning of the demonstration, and speech composed of the genus and differences of a thing

[31:33] would be as the conclusion of that demonstration. But then I can combine those two together and make a grand definition of definition and say it's speech composed of the genus and differences of a thing, making known distinctly what that thing is, right? And then I have everything the demonstration, but in a different way. Position, position of the grand definition, rather than position of demonstration. So I kind of imitate a definition now.

[32:06] Aristotle does a demonstration in Book One, right? But in Book Two, there he talks about this in general. Okay. Now he's going to do something like that with the soul,

[32:31] because he wants to, in a way, demonstrate, so, that the soul is what we found by division and combination. There, the soul is the first act or the substantial form, as one says, of a natural body composed of tools. I think it's a serious point of being the first act, right? It's being the form of such a body, right? Okay. Now, what's he going to use as a middle term, right?

[33:25] Got to find some middle term, and all that middle term is right is the form of the body, right? The natural body and soul. Now, what's he going to take as a middle term, right? It's

[33:46] going to be something more known to us, right? But also, in a way, it seems to me something a little bit like the end or purpose, namely the operations of life themselves, the second acts, right? He's going to reason that that by which

[34:09] we first live, sense, move, and understand that by which we first live, sense, move, and understand is the form of the body, right? And the soul is that by which we first live, sense, move, and understand.

[34:46] Okay. So in a way, he's going to reason in a way from something like the end, right? But more known to us, right? The operations of life, right? To the soul being what the form of the body, right? Okay.

[35:08] A little bit like if I was going to try to what, you know, reason to a virtue, let's say, through its act, right? You say temperance is that by which I eat and drink moderately, right? And that by which I eat and drink moderately is that by appetite for food? Huh? No, it's a certain what disposition or habit of that, right? Okay. I'm making cute the appetite. Right?

[35:51] Because we all got it in us the appetite right? Right? But some of us is is called pretty wild. Most of us, it's it's Plato compares it to a horse that's a little bit wild, right? You're trying to, you know, steer the horses, okay? But it wants to run them up, so to speak, right? Okay. So it has to be what trained, habituated, right? To obey the man, right?

[36:22] Do you ever read Irving's Tour on the Prairies? Beautiful. And after he came back, you know, from all those years in Europe, the first time, not second, not the first time, but after a real long tour in Europe, right? He came back, and he he made a tour of the West. Of course, the whole public expected him to write something about the West, so he had to write an account of his tour on the prairies.

[36:45] It's very, very interesting. Very, very, well written. Everything he writes, he's a master of. English prose, right? And but he describes these wild horses that they would capture, and how quickly they would tame, these horses. You see, but you can kind of see Plato's proportion, right? You know, You know that that The emotions are to reason, something like a horse is to a man, right? And the horse at first, you know, will really try to what resist the man.

[37:18] Doesn't want to obey the man, right? But if the man, you know, really puts the pressure on the horse and so on, the horse succumbs and obeys the man, right? Okay. But the first reaction of the horse, you get on a horse, you know, try to throw you off, right? Well, if you give up, then the horse leads you. See? We get back on until the horse starts to, you know, calm down and start to obey, right?

[37:47] Okay. So if a person was to reason, right, that temperance or moderation, right, is that by which a man what eats and drinks, so on, pursues sense pleasures moderately, right? In accordance with reason, right? Well, what is that? Is that the ability that we're all born with to feel hunger and thirst and other desires for what is pleasant to the senses? No, we all have that, right?

[38:20] So it's not the subject, is it? It must be the what the form, right? The habit or disposition that that has received, right? Okay.

[38:37] Just like if you said, you know, the horse out there, you know, to go back to Plato's analogy and so on. Well, the horse has been tamed, and the horse. Out there in the field, they both got the same things by nature, right? But one has acquired a certain what?

[38:57] Custom or habit, right? Of course, it's man. Maybe you trained a dog or a cat or something, right? Train the dog more than the cat, I guess. But so you can train the cat over to go to this box or something, or do something anyway. You know, that makes life a little more agreeable. Do you see? So, what Aristotle is going to do is to syllogize, right?

[39:26] In a way to demonstrate this definition of the soul that we saw already, right? To some extent, we already understand, right? But he's going to reason from what the second acts, which are less fundamental in reality, but more known to us, right? Back to the definition.

[39:48] That's what he's going to do. So, in a way, you could also say it's something like having two definitions of the soul, right? The soul is the first act of a natural body composed of tools. The soul is that by which we first live, right? Sense, move, and understand, right? Living here, having the sense of what we have in common with the plants, right? Okay. So he's

[40:25] going to have to develop in a way those two what premises, right? He wants to manifest, in other words, that the soul is, in fact, that which we first live, sense, move, and understand. And secondly, the major premise here, right, that by which we first live, sense, move, and understand, is the form of the body rather than the matter. right?

[41:04] But notice, in general, even with other things that are known to us, all these tools that we use, right? You know, when are they first able to do their operation? When not when you just have the materials, right, out of which the tool is made, but when the materials have been shaped and formed, right, and ordered, right, in a way suitable to that. So it's really when it has its form that the tool is able to do what it does, right?

[41:41] Okay. About a couple more fans to the house there, you know. You know they come out of the box. You have to assemble the thing, right? You know, you assemble them. Then it, then it does what? Once it has its form, its arrangement, right? Then it does hopefully what it's supposed to do, right? Okay.