De Anima (On the Soul)
24. The Kinds of Sensibles (De Anima II.6), Sweetness as Metaphor, and Happiness vs. Joy
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[0:00] Now, chapter six here is kind of the prelude to a consideration of what we call the what exterior or outward senses, huh? Senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. And the rest of of book two is going to be taken up now with a consideration of the outward senses, right? But the outward senses have to be known by their acts, and their acts have to be known by their object, right?

[0:30] Which is a sensible and. As he's going to point out in chapter six, sensible is said in more than one way, and you've got to see the distinctions of the meanings of sensible before you can understand

[0:47] how an understanding of the sensible enables you to what distinguish the different senses. Now, in the beginning of book three, he's going to be talking about inward senses,

[1:03] like memory and things of that sort. A little bit about that, but though the inward senses are more apt to be confused with understanding and reason than the outward senses. Just like with most of our contemporaries, nobody thinks that the eye is reason, or the ear is reason, or the tongue is reason, or the hand is reason. But they think the brain, right? You know, this inward thing is reason, right?

[1:36] And so he starts to take up in the beginning of book three the inward senses and to see eventually this difference between even them and what and reason, right? And that's why he begins. Thomas thinks, you know, book three there, you know, because there he's getting really into what is really close to the consideration of what a reason, right? But now he's going to in chapter six here distinguish the various meanings of sensible, and this is a prelude necessary to understand the distinctions of sensibles that would give rise to different outward senses.

[2:19] So let's start to look at chapter six here. One must first, however, according to each sense, speak about the sensibles, and that's according to the order of learning we saw, right?

[2:35] That you have to what distinguish the abilities or powers of the soul by their acts, and their acts by their what object, right? So the ability to see and the ability to walk, or the ability to see and the ability to hear, are different because seeing and hearing are different, right? Or seeing and walking are different. But as seeing and hearing are both a kind of sensing, and sensing, seeing is sensing what color, and hearing is sensing sound.

[3:13] So you have to see the difference between color and sound to see the difference between seeing and hearing, and through that the difference between the ability to see and the ability to hear, right? So this is fundamental. Now,

[3:29] in daily life, all three senses of sensible that he'll bring out here. Are spoken of as the object of sight. So I might say, you know, you see the color of this wine, okay? See the color of the table, right?

[3:54] You see the shape of the table. You see the shape of this glass, huh? Right. Um. You see a man over here. Right. See.

[4:12] So all of these are said to be the object of the sensing, isn't it? Right. Just look at those things. I see the color of the wine. Right, wine. Okay.

[4:37] The wine dark sea is over. Okay. I see the shape of the table. Okay. I might say I see the color of the man, a white man or a black man or something, right? I see the color of the man. I see the shape of the man, right? You might also say I see a man, right? Okay.

[5:10] Use it differently, right? Or you might say I hear a sound, right? Okay. Let's say three. I hear a sound, or I hear a number of sounds. Okay.

[5:46] And I hear a cat. Meow. Okay. I hear a dog. Ooh. I hear a mosquito these days. Okay. Um. A sound, a number of sounds, a cat—they're all said to be things I hear, right?

[6:19] But is color and shape in the man an object of sight in the same way? Is a sound a number of sounds? Do I hear a cat reading the way I hear a sound? No.

[6:43] See, you'll notice in daily speech, everybody speaks of all these three things as what they see or hear, right? Aristotle's saying there's three meanings here.

[6:57] He'll say these two are seen as such. This is not seen as such, but he says it's seen accidentally. What does that mean? He means that something else in us is aware of it when we sense these. We don't sense the man as such.

[7:31] I hear the sound of the cat as such, right? I hear a number of sounds as such. Do I hear the cat as such, or is it when I hear this sound, I think of what Of a cat? See, I've learned that that's the sound that a cat makes, right? So something else in me recognizes that there's a cat at the back door when I hear a meow, right?

[8:11] Do you hear Moppet? you'll see in the morning there, you know, because Moppet's a. It's an awful one. She's old age now. She's crazy now. We fed. I said, "What's there to hear this horrible sound? " I've been feeding Moppet now. But I said, "Do you hear Moppet? " Yeah, yeah, I heard Moppet. Yeah. See, but we all speak that way, right? But do I really hear Moppet as such, or do I hear this awful sound that Moppet makes in the morning?

[8:39] See. See. Or you're upstairs and someplace, and you and somebody you know comes in there talking, you know. Well, I hear someone. So now I hear Joe, you know. Do you really hear Joe? But we do say that we hear Joe, don't we? See, and why do we say that? See.

[9:04] When we don't really hear Joe as such, see. But when we hear the sounds that Joe makes, I recognize the tone of voice and so on, right? Something else in me recognizes that Joe is at the what? door, right? Huh? Okay.

[9:26] Do you see that? Now he's going to distinguish between what is sensible as such. Sometimes we see the Latin word per se. huh? Okay. He uses the word per se, you know, the Greek is kath' hauto See.

[10:00] Okay. Two of them, he calls kath' hauto and in the plural, kath' hauta you know, which is translated always in Latin by per se, and in English as as such or through itself, right? I think as such is probably a little better here. So these things are sensed as such. This is sensed what By happening, we say, right? They speak in English, right? Accidentally, huh? But it's not sensed as such?

[10:28] Right. That's maybe don't mistake that at first when you see that thing. Says I quote Shakespeare's sonnet there, the one about the mistress, and the line goes, "I love to hear my mistress's voice, although I know that music hath a far more pleasant sound. " See,

[11:01] no, he rejoices when he hears the voice of his mistress because the voice is beautiful. No, oh, because the voice of music, the music, the sound of music is more beautiful, right? Okay, so you might say it's per accidens, right? It's not as such that he rejoices when he hears the sound of his voice, huh? Okay, In, the same way, you know, if you pick up the telephone and you hear, you know, Pavarotti or some other great guy singing, you might not rejoice as much if you hear the voice of somebody you love very much, right?

[11:44] But doesn't happen to hear the, you know, Pavarotti voice, right, or the sonorous, the beautiful voice, huh? But you rejoice more, right? Not in the sound as such, though, right? because it happens to someone that you love very much, right? Okay, you see that, right? Distinction between the two. Could you say by belonging to or by happening? I think by happening is better because that brings out the fact that it's not as such, right?

[12:24] You know, sometimes people, you know, they hear a melody, right? It reminds them of some place they were that melody was being played, right? It reminds them of some person that they like, you know, they associate the melody with, right?

[12:41] So they love that melody not because it's really their favorite melody as such, but really because something else that happens to them, right? See, that melody was played when they were with so and so, right? When they're having good times, so and so, right? Okay, when they associate, I associate certain, you know, melodies with San Francisco, right? You know, they you know played when I was in San Francisco, you know, you know, but that's kind of accidental, right?

[13:10] They associate a particular melody with a particular, what, place or person, right? That's accidental. Yeah. See, doesn't pertain to that person or place as such, does it? But something had happened, right? The time I was in San Francisco, they were playing this, you know, basically. Google You see that? Okay.

[13:45] Okay. Now again, down here, I hear the sound. A number of sounds, as such, I don't hear the cat as such, right? Okay. What this is by happening or accidentally, kata symbebekos. So he says the sensible is said in three ways, two of which we say are sensed in virtue themselves, or as such, while the one is sensed accidentally, per accidens kata symbebekos in Greek.

[14:29] It's not really sensed as such at all. See, you might say, well, why do we say that, right? See, I know Aristotle is the philosopher who tries to remain close to everybody's way of speaking so far as we can, right? And we all will say, I hear the cat.

[14:49] We all say that, right? And is there a reason why we say that when we don't hear the cat? Right? Is there a reason why we do that? Yeah. The

[15:05] way you could say to be a cat happens to that sound, or that sound happens to a cat, right? Okay. But there has to be something else in us that knows that, huh?

[15:22] Now Aristotle, sometimes Thomas too, more explicitly, sometimes we speak of something as being an accidental sensible in the complete sense, the full sense, that no sense as such knows it. Okay. And the example of that would be the individual substances,

[15:46] only understanding knows substance, as they indicated the word substance before, right? Okay. Only the understanding, the reason knows substance, huh? But sometimes the object of one sense is said to be accidental to the object of another sense, huh? Um. So I might be, you know, looking at dessert and say, that looks awful sweet, right? You know, and so sweet there is what

[16:21] accidental to what I see. I don't see the sweetness. You see? Okay. But when I see something, something else in me recognizes that as associated in some way with with sweet desserts, right? See a lot of frosting on the thing, so you know. See, looks sweet, huh? I don't actually see the sweetness of it. I have to use plaster instead of. Have to be deceived, right? You see.

[17:01] You know some of these artificial fruits that people have in these bowls, huh? Occasionally, somebody's grabbed one of them, you know, thinking it's a real fruit. You know, looks, you know, you know, delicious, sweet, you know. Realize it isn't, huh?

[17:18] Okay. Now, he makes a distinction among the two sensibles as such. One is perceived by only one sense. And he also adds, and is not apt to be deceived about that. The other is perceived by more than one sense, right?

[17:49] Some by all of them, some by more than one, but in general, right? Okay. Now, you translate this one, proper sensible. That's the way I always grew up hearing it referred to as a proper sensible, right? Again, that's probably working on the Latin word proprium, right? The Greek word, of course, is idios, okay? Idion. But I think sometimes we we don't translate this Latin word proprium properly.

[18:44] It's like when we speak of the common good sometimes, and what's the other good? Proper good. But maybe the sense is more really the private, private, idios, private. In other words, I mean private is really the opposite there to be contrasted with common, right? What is sensed as such, right, is either sensed by only one sense, right, and therefore it's private to that one sense, or it's common to more than one sense, huh?

[19:27] So people are so apt to translate that proprium by proper that they kind of are scandalized when I translate it by private. But I think that really has the meaning better.

[19:41] See, I noticed that in logic they're in general talking about roads, and Thomas distinguishes in Latin between the communis modus procedendi, right? He's going to speak of the communis modus procedendi, right? The common way of proceeding in the sciences. He says this is studied in logic, right? Okay. And then he speaks of the proprius modus, right? Proprius modus, say in geometry, let's say, right? Well, they translate that.

[20:15] I'm going to translate proprium, proprius. I would speak of the private way? When I say private, I don't mean it's private to one man, but it's private to that particular science, right? You'd call it special, you know. What's called the proper way of proceeding? Translation of it, you know. Because proper having a sense of like correct. Yeah, proper is more the opposite of improper, right? Like private is more contrasted with what common, you know.

[21:00] So he says, I call proper or private, but cannot be sense in other sense, right? And about which it cannot err unless it's what accidental sensible right And notice the difference he's making there, right? This is something the moderns don't do. You know, the moderns are very anxious to talk about the unreliability of the senses, right? And they don't see the difference between the private sensible and the common sensible and the common sensible and the what accidental sensible.

[21:39] That one is more apt. That's the private sensible. That one is more apt to be deceived about the common sensible, or about the private one, right? I mean, excuse me, the accidental sensible. Then one is about the private sensible. And what we call optical illusions, for example, you see, they are concerned with the length of lines or the shape of the lines. And one is easy to deceive by those things.

[22:15] And again, when my you call somebody's house, you know, and one of the children answers, and you think it's one. My wife is getting mixed up to the. The grandchildren there, right? Sometimes, huh? And I have a pretty good meow. People really think there's a cat around. me, you know? I mean, you know, meow sounds. Much like a cat, right? And you know the famous guy wants to have an alibi for crime, you know, and he has recording, right?

[22:46] And he has recording playing, you know, so they hear the voices upstairs talking, right? And then he goes on, quits the murder, and gets back, And of course he's got people downstairs with us saying that, you know, yeah, they were upstairs all the time here talking. He wasn't up there at all, right? So was he deceived about the sound? He didn't hear what he heard. When they hear my meow, did they do that?

[23:10] Hear that? Or take this example, you know, the old the old joke, you know, where they say you have a little bowl of sugar there, right? The nasty little kid, you know, pours out the sugar and fills it up with salt, right? And so Uncle Sonso takes a spoonful of. Well, he thinks it's sugar and stirs it up into his cup, and and is is mad afterwards, right?

[23:37] Was he mistaken about the private sensible? No, no. See, if there was something black in there instead of white, he would have hesitated to put it in his coffee because it could be pepper or something, right? See, but being that it has the same color, the the salt is the sugar, right? And it's in the same place, right? He's easily what deceived, but he's deceived not about it being white, which is the private sensible, but about the accidental sensible.

[24:07] Is it salt or sugar, right? Substance. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's very easily deceived by that, right? Right. Yeah. So Aristotle is seeing, you know, a a a distinction, right? That the senses are easily deceived about the common sensibles or the accidental sensibles in a way they're not deceived by their private sensible.

[24:35] And in a way, as we'll see, if you think about this a little more deeply, you can see that the common sensibles are known as a kind of modification of the what? Private sensible. So I know, for example, the shape of this card here, let's say, because the color only goes that far, right? See, so it's through color that I, in a way, know the shape of this card by my eye, huh?

[25:09] But if I know it by sense of touch, I don't know it through color. I know it through what hardness, right? What resists and what gives way, right? See, so I can kind of feel the the shape of the thing the same way the shape of this, right? So the common sensible is known not really by what we call discourse so much, you know, like reason goes from one thing to another.

[25:34] But it's known in a way through the private sensible because it's a kind of what modification, you might say, huh? Of the private sensible. How far does the color extend, right? But still sensible as such, and the kind of the stock example is there, you know, looking at something white, let's say, on a bright sunny day. And if it's a little piece of white paper like that, not hard to look at, but suddenly the sight of a barn or something that's all white was kind of you know too much for the eyes, right?

[26:09] So the eye is acted upon differently as such by a small surface and by a what? A long surface, right? You know, a large surface. Um.

[26:25] But the accidental sensible, as such, in no way what affects it, huh? As such. Okay. So I call proper or private, idios Forget the word idiot, right? Idiot is a man who lives in a world of his own.

[26:52] I call private what cannot be sensed by other senses, and about which it cannot err. As sight is of color, hearing of sound, taste of flavor. While touch indeed is reference to many differences, but each sense discerns these things, and does not err that this is color, nor that it is sound. But about what is colored, or where the colored is, right? Or what or where the sounding is.

[27:22] Such things, therefore, are called the proper or private sensibles of each sense. Idia. is the plural idia flextes Now someone might you know say, "Why aren't the senses sometimes maybe deceived? " Well, if the organ maybe is affected, right? Like my mother used to say to me as a child, you know, eat your orange before you eat your candy, right?

[28:00] Because if eat my candy before my orange, my orange is going to taste what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if the organ is in some way, you know, affected that way, right? Then there can be some corruption, right? But if the organ is is sound, right, and not affected that way, you're not going to be deceived about the taste of a thing, right? But what it's, a what Taste of.

[28:29] Okay. Okay. Now in one eighty six, he gives enumeration here of the common sensibles. And notice the order in which he gives them. Right. Motion and rest and number. Those first three seem to be known by all five outward senses.

[29:05] But shape and magnitude. they continuous, in other words. They are known by only what two senses? Sight, touch. Yeah, yeah. Now I notice the translator here. You know, has translated the chapter on sight and the some of the chapter on touch here. Right. He chose those. Huh. It's interesting, right? Uh I I'm sorry. I'm confused. It seems to me I can hear. the

[29:36] Can you hear the shape of something? Well, I get a little confused. you know, That, the poets say yes. I don't know. I mean, I guess no. No. You can't really smell smell the shape of something, right? Well, see. And you can't really taste the shape I mean except insofar as taste is the kind of touch. But it's really only touch and sight that know the shape of a thing, huh?

[29:57] Right. Now, doesn't Shakespeare somewhere, you know, use mix the senses? Sort of, you know, the shape of the color or the. There might be some metaphorical use in some case, you know, but you have to examine that. But I am sure it'd be metaphorical use of it, huh?

[30:15] You know, or something, you know. Accident, you know, like for example, Shakespeare will speak of your sweet form. Okay, that's a good one. Yeah, yeah. But notice, sweet, there is a metaphor, huh? Now Thomas Aquinas gives the best explanation of the metaphor sweet. I think I mentioned that before. In the commentary on the Psalms, it says, "Taste and see how sweet is the Lord." Well, the Lord is said to be sweet metaphorically.

[30:49] This is a metaphor. A metaphor is based upon likeness, huh? And Thomas says, "Well, what is the likeness in metaphor sweet?" And he explains three things about the metaphor sweet.

[31:15] The sweet is what pleasant, okay? And you notice with children how all children, you know, seem to like candy, right? Remember the old priest. My mother came from a small town in Minnesota, Watertown. You know, one priest, you know, one church in the town, right? And he came over from Ireland, you know, priest town. And so sometimes when I go back to visit grandmother or something like that, my mother would take me up to see father.

[31:48] We read, you know, little kid, you know, he'd go up to the shelter, He'd have a little sack And he'd go down, And he'd have some candy in that sack, you know. We really thought that he was quite the thing. So

[32:03] some things are called sweet because they are pleasant, right? How sweet it is, right? How pleasant it is, huh? And second thing Thomas points out. Second thing he points out in the sweet is that it's what restful. And I always

[32:24] take two examples of that. In the old days, you know, it was customary in the police departments if they picked up a kid, little kid who was lost, right? And maybe somebody picked You know, brought him in or something. You know, kid doesn't know where his home is. Well, you got a bawling kid, a crying kid in the police station. You got to shut him up some way.

[32:45] And what before you find the parents? right? Until you find the parents. And so what they do is they go out and buy an ice cream cone. They kind of shut the kid down. And I found that you know one time we were driving across the country with three little kids, my wife and I, and they get pretty restless in the car for a while. So what I did beforehand was I I got a bunch of little packages, you know, like M and M's and three different kinds, and I put them in a little bag, you see, and staple it.

[33:17] And then I get the other different kinds, the other M and M's, and put them in a little bag and staple them. I have a bunch of little bags, but one big bag. Gets in the front seat there, and then when they got too much of the noise in the back seat, you know, the two little kids, it's time for a daddy treat, huh? So I'd call one of these bags and pass it back, and each of them would get their one and would share, you know, and they'd talk and laugh and.

[33:38] And be you know quiet for half hour and then they come. So it's restful, see. And then you know all these machines now they're coming up there. The radio is on and the guy is saying you know that

[34:03] children are getting obese, right? Because there's too many of these slot machines in their schools, you know. They're getting all these candy bars and things, okay? But people, you know, often go get a candy bar in the day afternoon or something, or a soda to pick them up, right? So it's what?

[34:24] Kind of. Not juicy. Yeah, yeah, it refreshes you, let's say, right? That's the word times use refresh Okay, I think that's really Beautiful explanation of it, huh? So, "thou made us for thyself, O Lord. " And our hearts are restless till they rest in thee. That's one reason why he said to be sweet, right? But also because he's what pleasant to think about, right? Come to me, all you who are, you know.

[35:00] Birds and I refresh you, right? Okay. So for all three reasons, God could be said to be sweet, right? Okay. Now, but take something more known than God, where we use that same thing. Take for example, we speak of sweetheart, huh? Okay, a very common metaphor, right?

[35:25] Well, there's heart here is a metonym, or not a metonym. It's a synecdoche, right? And heart for the whole, right? But why is that heart that loves you? It's a heart that loves you, right? Why is that heart that loves you said to be sweet?

[35:49] Well, one because it's pleasant to be loved, right? Okay. Unpleasant to be hated, right? Okay. Is it restful to be loved? Desires fulfilled. Yeah, you know, like to be with someone you know who loves us, huh? Where our our rest with that person, right? At our ease, you might say, right? Huh? Okay. Okay. And we find it very refreshing to be loved, right? Okay. Like Shakespeare says in the sonnet, right?

[36:22] If I goes to all the miseries of life, you know, but if I think of you, dear friend, and you know all things are restored and so on. Okay, I was saying a little a meteorite here last night. Remember? A gunshot there, right? Very refreshing to see her, right? Okay, fix me up every time I see her.

[36:43] So you have those three things there, right now. Now, when Shakespeare says "your sweet form," okay, that's a a metaphor, sweet there for what?

[37:00] Beautiful. Beautiful, yeah. See, this is what he's talking about: a beautiful form. Now, we often define the beautiful as what pleases when seen, right? Right. Okay. Well, we often describe a beautiful scenery, you know, as restful. How restful! I hear people say it all the time. If you go to a place and you look out, it's a beautiful lake or a beautiful, you know, something. How restful!

[37:27] You know, see, you kind of rest in the beautiful. huh Now, people can look, you know, at a beautiful painting, you know, and just kind of, you know, study it in there at rest, right? Tranquil. And you know we speak of you know a sight for sore eyes. It's the old saying, right? You know, something refreshing about seeing something beautiful, huh? And as you know, it's like when I'd be in a reading room and you're reading these pages and get kind of tired reading.

[37:57] You look up and there's a beautiful painting there. How refreshing it is to look at that beautiful painting. So I think Thomas Aquinas to my knowledge, gave the best understanding explanation of the metaphor "sweet," right?

[38:17] So that's a metaphor, right? But the properly speaking, not metaphorically, right? The form is not sweet, right? Properly speaking, here the heart is not

[38:45] sweet, huh? You know, in the sense of which sweet is the private object, right? Private sensible, the sense of what taste, huh? So shape and magnitude are known just by the sense of sight and the sense of touch. It's interesting that one one of the fragments we have of, Empedocles, where he's talking about the broadest road that leads into the mind of man, right? He's talking about how we can't see God, right, or get a hold of him with our hands, which is the broadest road leading into the mind of man, right?

[39:39] He's talking about the road from the senses into reason, right? But in that fragment, he singles out the sense of sight and the sense of what touch, right? And when I talk about those two senses in particular, I say, well,

[39:56] does the sense of sight and the sense of touch has some excellence that the other senses don't have? Well, together, they have an excellence the other senses don't have that they alone seem to know the shape or the form of things.

[40:12] And notice how important form is. Also using logic on the forms of government, okay? So is the substantial form of the body, right? Forms of fiction,

[40:41] huh? But then, in particular, the sense of sight is important for its clarity, right? And knowing things at a distance. But the sense of touch is important for its what certitude. The doubting Thomas will trust his sense of touch more than sense of sight, right? Unless you put my hand, right, in his side, my fingers in the nails.

[41:12] Maybe we should stop here. Come back to this, huh? Because everybody can't stay now for this. We'll talk again about chapter six, and then we'll look at what chapter seven, chapter eleven here. We may get to twelve. We won't go beyond that.

[41:33] We won't even get that far, right? Seven is mainly about sight and has a little bit of chapter eleven touch, but just the end of it, right? We're going to be looking at chapter twelve carefully later on. Because there he's bringing out how sensing, in a way, is immaterial, receiving, in a way, but not as immaterial as understanding will be.

[42:01] We'll come back to chapter six in this distinction here, talking about common sensibles. I want to ask and say the distinction between like joy and delight and happiness. Is there?

[42:22] Well, is that kind of complicated? Well, yeah, but you got to be careful there because when we use happiness say, as a translation there, or eudaimonia in Greek, right, or felicitas in Latin. There, it's naming the end or purpose of man, right? Yeah. And it's not naming the the joy we have when we reach that end or purpose. Yeah. But I think in English now the word "happy" right has taken on the sense of of joyful, right?

[43:02] Yeah. So happy is sometimes in English taken as the opposite of like sad, right? But that's using the word "happy" in a different sense. Yeah. Happy, in the sense tied up with happiness in Nicomachean Ethics, the opposite of happy would be miserable, wretched, right? And again, wretchedness there doesn't mean the sadness itself, right? As. Thomas says in the Summa Contra Gentiles, you know, to be mistaken is a great part of misery.

[43:38] That's not a kind of sadness, right? The man is mistaken, doesn't know he's mistaken, so he's not sad about it. Yeah. But still. Something very bad to be mistaken, especially about important things.

[43:52] Now, you know, I was always struck by, you know, when I first read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Of course, I read it in English, and then I read it later in Latin in Thomas's commentary. Finally, I read it in what? In Greek, right? Okay. So the Greek word was eudaimonia.

[44:18] The Latin word was felicitas. The English and Merriam-Webster by felicitas and Latin, right? And in English by happiness, right? So these were used as synonyms of eudaimonia. Okay. Now,

[44:39] if you examine these three words, though the etymology, the origin of the word, is different. Eudaimonia means that you are well-aimed. See, a daemon didn't originally have a bad sense necessarily in Greek, right? Sure. A daemon is a little more like what you might call an angel or some other being, right, so you could have a good daemon or a bad daemon. Sure. I mean, like we speak of a good angel or a bad angel, right?

[45:10] An angel of touch Okay. Felicitas comes from the word "Felix, meaning fruitful. So it means, you know, fruitfulness. Okay. Happiness comes from the word "hap," which means luck. Okay.

[45:37] Now, if you want to see that original meaning you would have to go read the Tuda Norona. You'll see, the original meaning "of hap" It" means luck. Okay. Happy means lucky. Now, what's interesting about those three words?

[45:57] which happen to be used as synonyms in that context, right? To name the end or purpose of man, right? But they're taken from three possible causes, right?

[46:16] Oh man! Eudaimonia hints at the idea that maybe our happiness depends upon a higher being right. Okay Like the daimon that guides Socrates right? Mm hmm Okay Felicitas, right? Fruitfulness, right? Is in some ways the most appropriate word for what Aristotle is doing there. Because fruit is something ultimate and sweet, right? But it's a natural result of the plant, right?

[46:57] So you could say that happiness is a natural result of virtuous deeds, right? And in a way, misery is the natural, you might say, result of vicious deeds, right?

[47:22] You know what Shakespeare says there? in in the great play there Macbeth. You remember when Lady Macbeth can't sleep anymore, and the doctor, I think it says, "Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles."See

[47:42] In other words quidditas is is emphasizing, you know, that what we do or don't do has as a result, right, happiness or what misery, right? Instead of emphasizing the necessity of a higher being, right, emphasizing our own what?

[48:08] Yeah, yeah. While happiness is saying that depends upon hap or luck, right? Now, sometimes I take the etymology of a few words and say, well, maybe there is an element of truth, right, in all three. Maybe our happiness depends to some extent upon what we choose to do or not do, right? So people are happy or miserable because of what they've chosen. There is a lot of truth to that, You know.

[48:44] People, have, you know, are to some extent responsible for their own misery, you know, or in a sense responsible for their own. Virtue is its own reward, right? Meaning, right? That's your happiness, huh?

[49:10] Shakespeare says, you know, he's going to apply that part of philosophy that creates that happiness by virtue, especially to be achieved, right? Okay, but maybe our happiness also depends, you know, even you know, this in this life, right? Depends upon what some higher being, right? Even the common man will sometimes say, "Somebody upstairs likes me," or you know, or somebody upstairs doesn't like me or something. But they have an idea that they're being, you know, like thinking there, right?

[49:42] They're being guided by somehow a higher power, right? But then luck seems to have to do with this too, right? I mean, you can get in an accident and crippled for life. Yeah. That's bad luck, right? Or you can be in the right place, right? You know, are you inherit a piece of property and they discover oil or something, right? Makes life a little bit easier and stuff.

[50:09] So, are you meet the right person, right? You see, we often meet people. I tell you this funny story. I first came to Boston. I happened to be in Boston one time. I first came. Keep first came to Syria. Second, went on to Boston, kind of you know, explore the place a bit. So, going down, and I was kind of wandering around down by the Commons there, right?

[50:36] And so I went myself. So I went into this kind of a fancy tobacco shop there. So I go in there. I got these English opal cigarettes, and I just walk around, I smoke these things. Anyways, you know, probably the only pack of cigarettes I ever bought was in in here. Can't remember who I just got. So I'm going around, and I get thirsty, right? So I decide to go into this.

[51:00] The hotels there, right? Go to the bar, get a beer. And so I go and I sit down and I order my beer and so on. Some of myself, another guy sits down next to me, you know. He's wearing this thing. I notice he has a book of poetry, so I figure he must be some kind of an academic type, you know. So I start up a conversation with him, and he's he's a big shot at some Canadian university, right?

[51:22] He's a and he's down taking some course in management, you know, at Harvard, you know, for the semester, right? So we get talking, you know, and we start talking some time. And I said, "Would you like a cigarette?" I said, "You know." He said, "I only smoke English opals." He says, "Oh." I pulled him out. So before you know, he's giving me his address. He said, "Look me up," you know.

[51:44] And I need a job. I mean, you know, if I need a job like that, you know, see, I mean, this is the only time I probably bought cigarettes. Yeah. Just yeah, obviously, you know, he decided to do it again, and and English opals, you know, remember these things, and and met this guy, right? And I guess finally I found Boulay one time. He's like the son.

[52:08] He's going down to Florida. He's laying on the beach there, you know. And he gets talking just haphazard with the guy next to him, right? And Boulay was a pretty fascinating character, the guy, you know. He wanted to hire Boulay, you know, he's some some guy from college, you know. Boulay didn't want to live live all on Mont Sainte Anne, but I mean, you know, my brother Mark, you know, was applying for a job when he's living in La Valse.

[52:32] He he had applied for some job here in the east, you know, rather than the west. And one of the questions they asked him, you know, was he all through with his scholarity, you know, because sometimes a person has to go back to take more courses, you know. And my brother Mark had said no, and they hadn't read the letter right or something. They thought he'd done some more scholarity to do, right?

[52:51] And so, in the time in which he was correcting that misimpression from the letter, right, he got another offer from California, right. And you know, burn the bird in the hand is worth two in the hand, right? Excuse me. Burn the hand is worth two in the bush. And so you know, but if that guy in the other place had not misread the letter, right, and then the delay and the correction, you know, and the misreading, right, he would have got an offer to go there, and he would have gone there instead of to California, and he would have met Brian McCarthy.

[53:24] Yeah. Think it would not happen because of this, right? Yes, sir. So you can point to I can point to all kinds of you know things that happen to you for good or for bad, right? Yeah. In your life, huh? You say, well, there's some reason to say that our happiness depends, to some extent, upon hap or luck, right? You might get a job because you were happened to be in the right place at the right time, right?

[53:51] Someone else gets a lousy job because he because he was in the right place at the right time, right? What about the word "beatitudo What? Beatitudo Yeah, that's a word used more properly for you know in the context of the highest, see, happiness. Aristotle has a word like that. Okay. You know, makarios. Oh, okay. The highest of the blessed, right? Okay. But these two words here are kind of sticking my mind because this is the word used in Nicomachean Ethics, right?

[54:28] This is the word that they translate for in Thomas's commentary Herbergius, and this is the English word. But now, if you go to Aristotle's

[54:48] poetics, right, and he makes a famous saying, you know that the play is about happiness and misery, right? You know, the tragedy is more you know happiness going towards misery, right? And comedy is more you know going the reverse direction. They use the word happiness mainly in his translation, probably, but the Greek word is eutuchia. Good luck. Aristotle uses a different word for happiness in the Poetics and in the what?

[55:34] The ethics. Yeah. The ethics is there, right? You go back to Shakespeare now. He's a master here. You know, when Romeo goes out there and tries to stop a fight between Mercutio and Tybalt, he's secretly or secretly married Juliet, right? And so he wants to. You know, unite the two families, right? So he wants to stop a fight between Tybalt and Mercutio, and the accidental result of his trying to stop the fight is that Mercutio gets what?

[56:12] Yeah. Gets killed, and Romeo loses his head, and he strikes Tybalt, and then gets banished and all that rest of it. Yeah. But he says, "I'm fortune's what? Fool. " Oh yeah. See. As if fortune is a determining thing in his happiness or misery, right? Yeah. See.

[56:34] He was fortunate to meet Juliet that night, right? He didn't—he didn't go there for the sake of meeting Juliet, did he? He went there for the sake of seeing Rosalind, right? So this great happiness of Juliet, right, seemed to be results of what? Good luck, right? And now this misery of his banishment of what? Bad luck, right? Well, of course, things could turn out good if Friar Lawrence's what plan worked, right?

[57:10] But he sends a friar to Romeo to tell him that Juliet has not really died, but she's she's taking this potion he's giving her, right? And he should come at a certain time, you know, to you know to when she wakes up, right? Well, what happens is that the friar gets what by bad luck, right? Gets delayed, right? You know, he's going to a town which is a plague or something, you know, and he goes in to see somebody who's dying. or something. Like that, and then they board the house like they did those days and he can't get to Romeo, right?

[57:43] So by bad luck, the messenger to Romeo that would have made everything fine, right? So the emphasis in the play, much more maybe in real life, is to give a great role to what, to fortune or luck, see? And so it's interesting Aristotle uses the word eutychia there in the poetics, which corresponds etymologically to happiness, right?

[58:11] Now in Latin, sometimes instead of felicitas, we'll speak of bona fortuna, see, as being happiness, bona fortuna, and that's exactly like these words, right? And sometimes we say about somebody in life, you know, he's been fortunate, you know, in life, or somebody else who's miserable and wretched, we say he's been unfortunate in life, right? How we say it, you know? And so we're using one for being happy, as being miserable, but it's being named from fortune, right?

[58:48] I know that I don't know the reason for it, but although we can speak of good luck and bad luck, right? It's funny that we use the word lucky for meaning good luck and unlucky for bad luck, right? The same with fortune, you know. If you're fortunate, we think that it's good, by good fortune. If you're unfortunate, it's by bad, right? So it's interesting that the the

[59:20] the poets emphasize very much the role of fortune, so Aristotle uses that word there, right? But there's some truth to that, right? And there's some truth that our happiness depends, you know, Aristotle says himself, upon a higher being, right?

[59:40] You know, see, in ethics, in ethics, in a way, felicitas fits it the best in a sense because we don't really have we're being taught in the ethics here, you know, not how to make God or the higher beings right favorable towards us, or how to control fortune because you can't control that, right? But how, by what you do or don't do, you can become happy or miserable, you know.

[1:00:11] I mean Aristotle, you know, is nuanced, right? Because he'll take up what Solon said: "Call no man happy until he be dead, right? Because you don't know what turn of fortune he may have to go, you know. And Oedipus might have seemed happy one time, but the gods have awful things, in, you know, unfortunate things to happen, to him, you know? And you know, Shakespeare emphasizes that in the terrible play there.

[1:00:43] Titus, Andronicus right? That disgusting play. I mean, this idea that happiness, you know, when you come back from battle, right? And some of the sons of Titus, you know, died glorious in battle, right? And they're assured of their happiness because they died glorious, right? Those who've been come home successful, and they still got some other life to lead, right? What's going to happen to them? Except for some misfortune, of course, they do in a horrible play.

[1:01:13] you know. It's terrible things that happened there. disgusting. But anyway, but I mean, you know, they touch upon that idea, you know, in a very exaggerated form. So instead, right? So

[1:01:28] if you use the word happiness, which is is the only English word we really have, you've got to realize that etymology originally, you know, was pointing to one thing, but it's not the etymology. of the word is not the meaning of the word. When we use it in the ethics, or Shakespeare's in the ethics, in taking the truth, happiness there means the end, the purpose of man, right?

[1:01:54] Yeah. He says ethics, you know, is applying that part of philosophy that treats of happiness by virtue, especially to be achieved Uh huh That's more the etymology, of felicitas than happiness, right? Yeah, right. He does say it treats of happiness by good luck, especially to be achieved, but by virtue, right? Yeah, yeah. So you could say that felicitas is the natural result of of virtuous deeds, right?

[1:02:23] Yeah, right. In a sense, you could use the word natural, though no one says unnatural But unnatural deeds to breed unnatural troubles, right? Because there is something kind of natural about that, right?

[1:02:40] Like joy and delight, like delectatio um gaudium Well, you see, you see, if you achieve or gain the end of man, right? Yeah. Then you will find that pleasant, you'll be joyful, right? Yeah. Because that's what you wanted most of all. So when you get what you want most of all, this will have a natural result of joyful, right? Of joy. But that doesn't mean that that the end is joy.

[1:03:12] Yeah. That's something that naturally accompanies it, right? See, and so people get mixed up there. It's because joy accompanies happiness, right? Yeah. They think that they're the same thing, and so happy then came to mean what joyful, right? Yeah. So happy, you know, using the the formula of dialectic there, right? If a word has more than one opposite, it has more than one meaning, right? See, so nowadays people usually think of happy as the opposite of what?

[1:03:53] Sad. You know, happy days, sad days. Okay. But happy and miserable to use the Latin word, or wretched to use the native English word, right? Happy as opposed to miserable or wretched

[1:04:18] is a different meaning than happy as opposed to sad. And when you use the word happiness to name the end of man, that's this is denominative from happiness in this sense. Happiness here doesn't mean joy.

[1:04:40] Happiness is defined, you know, he first draws a line on happiness that it's man's own act, right? Done well throughout life, it's more man's own act, according to virtue, throughout life.

[1:05:01] But people have kind of, you know, it's kind of lost its other meaning in this one here, right? You know. But etymologically, happy originally means means what? Lucky.

[1:05:16] If you want to see that original use of the word, there you go back to see to the two gentlemen of Verona, you see that in the beginning and the end of the play. You see, you meet with good hap, you know. Which means particular

[1:05:33] your happiness and so on. Two gentlemen of Verona. and then later on, you know, the end there. You see what has happened, right? You said you used the word hap. So this joy and delight would be more properly synonyms than happy and joy or something. Well, as I say, the word happiness now might have taken on this other meaning, right? Yeah. Certainly the word happy, has taken on the sense of joyful, right?

[1:06:04] Yeah. See, but that's not the happy that is um that is a denominative from happiness. Yeah. As the using the ethics, you know, the translation. See, the other thing I was looking at last time I talked to you, I asked you about purity, and we went through that a little bit. Yeah. One more thing here. Okay. The word happiness, you know, has been very much degraded in meaning in English, right?

[1:06:30] Yeah. You know, so in Einstein talks about happiness, that's for the beast, you know. Oh yeah. You know, instead of thinking happy is contentment or something like that. Yeah. The cat purring there, you know, and having no no higher life than eating and sleeping, you know, huh? Yeah, the cat sleeping there contentedly, you know, the cat's happy.

[1:06:51] I mean that that's for beasts, Einstein says, right? See, and and you have that, you know, starting with Kant too. You know, Kant is kind of a false understanding of happiness. It's just so you got to be a problem there, you know, people's understanding. And that's actually how the question first came up because I read somewhere someone was talking about their impression of a certain religious order, and they were talking about how they wouldn't describe the men as happy, but joyous, and kind of made this distinction, and it seemed to be a false kind of thing based on something.

[1:07:28] Yeah, but sometimes they use the word happiness. They say sometimes it's just for kind of a mindless contentment, you know. Yeah. Um. anyhow the whole of purity.