De Anima (On the Soul)
39. De Anima III.4: Grasping and Judging, and Why the Mind Is Not a Body
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/039-de-anima-iii-4-grasping-and-judging-and-why-the-mind-is-not/

[0:01] knows in some way. When do you sense, right, a certain shape or a certain color, or you get a certain what, smell, and so on, right? And of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Glad our enlightenment, guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, or to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, Amen. help us to understand all that you have written.

[0:31] In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Okay. In Chapter Four, here now on page thirty-six of your text, Aristotle is beginning the consideration now of the part of the soul by which the soul knows and judges. about our reason or understanding, he's going to be talking about here, and Thomas points out that if we want to take the division of this part as a whole, he'll go through everything he has to say about the mind or reason, and then afterwards he'll talk about what should be said about the soul.

[1:19] On the basis of the fact that it has both sensation and understanding, so if you look just a moment ahead there, to page forty-four, Chapter Eight, there.

[1:42] Page forty-four. There, beginning in Chapter Eight, it's in this text. This would be the thirteenth lesson in Thomas, thirteenth reading. Now, however, summing up the things said about the soul, let us say again that the soul is somehow all beings or all things, right? For beings or things are either sensible or understandable, right? Okay. I'm not going to go into that now, but that's what he's going to do when he finishes talking about the what reason or understanding of man.

[2:16] He's going to talk about what can be said about the soul, right? Especially the human soul, from the fact that it both senses and understands, and the amazing thing will be that in some way it's all things. Okay. Do you see that? Okay. So Thomas divides that eighth chapter, or in his his division in the thirteenth reading, against these readings leading up to it, starting with the one we'll be doing today here, chapter four, right?

[2:53] Now, how is that part divided, huh? Well, there he divides kind of the consideration of the understanding or reason by itself in these first chapters here, four, five, six, and then in chapter seven there, or reading the second paragraph in chapter seven, which is the beginning the twelfth lesson in Thomas, he's going to compare reason understanding with the what senses, huh? Okay.

[3:37] Now again, how is the first part of that divided, huh? Okay. Was going to talk about the reason understanding that receives. He's going to talk about an active understanding. We'll see in chapter five and the result of the two in that same chapter five, and then in chapter six he's going to go into some more details about the different operations of the what soul, right? And Thomas Aquinas, when he writes his *Proemium to Logic*, he comes back to his chapter six, where Aristotle distinguishes some of the operations of reason.

[4:21] Okay. So what's four? So chapter four and chapter five are talking about the reason understanding, but as we'll see when we get to the fifth chapter, there's an active understanding as well as a what undergoing understanding. Okay. That's kind of interesting thing to find out, right? And then the result of these two together, that's where it's going to be divided, huh? Okay. But the second and the third of those things come up in that fifth chapter.

[4:57] Okay. But today and probably next time we'll be looking especially at this chapter what four, huh? Okay. And in the seventh reading here and going out into perhaps just the first paragraph there in the eighth reading there, that's three twenty eight in your text, he's going to be talking about

[5:24] reason being what an undergoing power, right? Okay. What can be said about it because it what undergoes and so on. And then in the eighth reading there, starting in 329, that part there, he's going to talk more precisely about the object that acts upon the undergoing understanding. And then in the ninth reading in Aristotle or in Thomas, starting with number 331 here, he's going to talk about a what?

[5:59] Little difficulty, right? That arises, huh? Okay. So chapter four really corresponds to seven, eight, and nine; those readings in the way Thomas divides the text. I don't think the chapters or the readings go back to Aristotle, but different people divide them in different ways. But seven, eight, and nine are about the what we'll call the undergoing. Understanding, huh? What they call Matins sometimes a possible understanding. Intellectus possibilis, right?

[6:37] Okay. The part of us that knows and judges, as he says here. Okay. So let's look now at the beginning here of chapter 4.

[6:53] About that part of the soul, that power of the soul, by which the soul both knows and judges. Now, if you have access to Thomas's commentary, he sees a little distinction there between knowing and judging, although it might be more clear if he'd used the word, what, grasping and judging, because that's the distinction that Thomas is, what, seeing in knowing, huh? Okay. Um, I think we mentioned that before.

[7:31] Um, usually when Thomas talks about it in his own words, he'll speak of, in knowing, there's two things, huh? And one is grasping, which in Latin would be called apprehensio, grasping, and the other is what? Judging. Okay.

[7:58] You can see that perhaps most easily in the case of the mind, that when you read an author, for example, it's one thing to grasp what he's saying, right? It's one thing to grasp his meaning, huh? And it's another thing to what? To judge whether it's true or what? False, huh? Okay. And you've heard my complaint about the modern philosophers, huh? And about other authors, right? Who write in an obscure way, right?

[8:32] And Aristotle himself complains about the so-called theological poets, huh? Who kind of, uh, expressed their thoughts in a very obscure way, so that no one was exactly sure what they meant, huh? Well, sometimes you find the modern philosophers doing that, right? In fact, I guess they have a letter of Hegel where he admits that he's writing in an obscure way because if he wrote in a clear way, nobody would think he's, he's wiser than them, right?

[9:01] But if he writes in an obscure way, he tends to, what, impress them, right? I think I told you a little anecdote about De Koninck, I guess, when he'd go around sometimes and give his public talks, as he did with 12 children. He, um, essentially stick in for the fun of it a sentence that had no meaning at all, not even to him. And people would come afterwards and say how much they enjoyed his talk, and they'd single off the sentence, right?

[9:29] But shows something kind of screwy about the human condition, right, huh? That, we admire something we don't, what, understand, right? And, so that's why it's always a difficulty, it seems to me, in trying to explain something, right? To make it plain, you know, that you're not admired anymore, right?

[9:52] Um... I see that sometimes in, uh, Sherlock Holmes there, you know, where he explains it, it's, oh, it's so simple, you know? But no one else could what? Figure it out, you see? So, anyway, you have these two things, grasping and judging. And so, um, when I defend some famous things, like, maybe you remember when we were talking about whether nature acts for an end, you remember that?

[10:25] Uh, the question whether end or purpose is a cause in the natural world. Well, a lot of people misunderstand what that means to say that. And they reject it because they don't understand what it means. They haven't grasped what it means, huh? But grasping what it means is presupposed to what? Judging whether it's true or not, huh? So if I say, for example, that the interior angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, if you don't know what a triangle is, or what a right angle is, or what an angle is, period, you're in no position to begin to judge whether that's true or not, huh?

[11:10] You see the idea? So it's kind of interesting distinction that Thomas makes there between grasping and what? Judging. And as I was saying about the moderns and in general, um, the greatest difficulty should be in judging whether what someone says is true or false, huh? But, um, uh, there's something maybe disproportionate there if you have to spend so much time trying to grasp what somebody means, and you're still not sure what he means.

[11:43] You're not in a position to what? Judge. Judge, right? And so, um, we try to, or should try to, express ourselves as clearly as possible, right? And as simply as possible, and spend our time more trying to what? Judge, right? Okay. Now notice, um, repeat the definition here of judging, right? Judging is the separation

[12:17] of the true from the false by some beginning in our knowledge. Okay. So the very first beginning of our knowledge, of course, is our senses, huh? And sometimes we go all the way back to our senses to make a judgment. So if the question was, is Berkus standing, or is that true or false, Berkus is standing? You have to go back to your senses, right, in order to judge that, huh?

[13:04] Um... Of course, that's the way you judge, especially in what? Uh, natural science, philosophy, go back to the senses. But in an abstract science like geometry, you might judge by going back to the what? Imagination.

[13:29] Like something like, you know, between two points, how many straight lines can you draw? One. One. I think you, you see that in your imagination, right? Yeah. Okay. That could be many curved lines, right? Yeah. But only one straight line, huh? The rest out somewhere, huh? Or as they say sometimes in the notes to you, could you know, there were lines at two end points, right, huh?

[14:02] Everything lies evenly along. There can't really be two, but you got to see that in a way in your, what, imagination, right? Okay. Or my brother Mark used to say, you know, the fourth theorem of Euclid is not really a theorem maybe in the strictest sense, huh? Something a little more obvious than that, right? Well, if you have two triangles, right, with an equal angle, contained by equal sides.

[14:33] Well, if you imagine this triangle placed on top of that one at this point, right? And this line laid on that line, they'd obviously what? Coincide because they're equal. And because the angle's equal, this line would fall on that line, right? And because it's what? Uh, equal, it would coincide. And then the third side, you can see, would have to coincide, huh? Yeah. There's only one line between the two points, right?

[15:03] Mm-hmm. Okay. But you see that in your imagination, right? Which is the beginning of what? Geometry, huh? Mm. Okay. Um... That's why, as my brother Mark pointed out, the, um, the axiom there, not the axiom, the postulate there about, uh, parallel lines is not really about parallel lines. It's about lines that actually, what, meet, huh? You know, that postulate there from Geometry. It falls upon straight lines and makes what?

[15:39] Angles, what? Less than two right angles, Uh-huh. then those two lines extended will meet. Yeah. You can imagine two lines being extended and meeting, right? Yeah. But in the case of the parallel straight lines, um, where they're equal to right angles, right? Uh, they don't meet extended to infinity, right? We can't imagine something going on forever. You can talk about it, but you can't really imagine it, right?

[16:06] So you have to go back to something you can imagine, in a sense, because that's the starting point in what? Geometry, right? Okay. Now you get into logic, and you try to judge the truth in logic. Well, what's most basic in logic is, is as Albert the Great says, the universal. And can you... Sense or imagine a universal?

[16:34] That's a problem that we mentioned with with John Locke, there, right? He's trying to understand the general idea of triangle, so he's trying to imagine a triangle that's common to all triangles. What any triangle you imagine would be what? Either equilateral or isosceles or scaling, right? And for that matter, a singular scaling or a singular one, right? Yeah. So you can't really imagine universal. Yeah. And in the

[17:10] Parmenides there, you know, when Socrates is a young man talking to Parmenides, and he's trying to imagine the universal like a sheet spread over all of us, right? Like man covers all of us. Well, is that the way man covers all of us, like a sheet does? Because you have only part of what a man is, and you have another part of what a man is, and so the whole of what is signified by man is found in each of us, right?

[17:37] So you can't really imagine the universal, and you can't, the a fortiori sense the the universal. So you have to judge by going back to reason itself, and that's why Monsignor Dionne said that in one way logic is more like the way you judge in wisdom when you're judging about immaterial things, because you can't judge them by what you can sense or imagine, because they're not the sort of thing that is continuous or extended.

[18:20] So this is what Thomas sees. Those two words there, he takes knowing there in the more narrow sense for what grasping, right? And then the other for judging, right? That's kind of interesting distinction, huh? In English, sometimes we take understanding as a part of knowing, and therefore mean the same thing as grasping, right? Other times, you take understanding as a form of knowing, as opposed to sensing, right?

[18:51] That's two different uses of the word understand. Yeah. Did you say that Aristotle and Thomas are in the original, of course, are easy, simple to grasp? Yeah, they're always easier to grasp somebody in the original language. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even in terms of you know,

[19:34] gross reading of Latin, Thomas is much easier to read, say, than Augustine or Cicero or some uses a more you know, sophisticated style, right? Sure. Now, if you look at Thomas's the Golden Chain there, you know the Golden Chain was commanded by by Urban the Fourth, was it one of the popes? And you have the dedicatory letter to Urban the Fourth, right? And then Thomas writes like Cicero, Augustine.

[20:00] He could do that, right? But he, but you know, that's that's to me much harder to read than than you know what he's saying, you know. You know, it's a difficult Latin, huh? But I notice Thomas there was in the commentary in the Psalms, you know. Well, there's three styles we have, you know, and he distinguishes the three styles, and so I mean, what is this ornate one, right?

[20:26] And then the other one is this more, you know, simple everyday one. So when you speak philosophically, right, you should try to use the more known word, right? And usually the the native word in your language is more known than the what word that's come in from Greek or Latin, huh? No, sometimes you don't have exact exact equivalents, so we so we have to use the word syllogism, right, or something.

[21:01] But if we have a a a word in English, right, then it's more clear, right? I always give a simple example there. We used to have you know for senior majors and different majors, they'd have kind of a senior seminar, right? And these they have three professors in the seminar, and two of them would be from your major, and the third would be from some other department, right?

[21:35] And so I was on the ones for a lot of the science majors, huh? So, no student is giving reading his paper, right? Yeah. He's saying desiccation is a greater problem with land animals than with water animals.

[21:52] And so sometimes you know I'll take as an example in a regular class. I said, "What does that mean? " You know. Well, desiccation means what? Drying up, drying up. Now, if you said it with the native English word and said "drying up" or "drying out" is a greater problem for land animals than for water animals, you're saying the same thing, but it's much more what? Much more clear, right?

[22:19] Said. But he's using the sophisticated word desiccation, right, from the Latin word for, but just. Not so clear to the students. If you want to build on that and go on and say, well, we think maybe you know that life began in the water and so on, right? And then gradually it became what later on life on land, that they had to solve the problem of retaining their moisture, right?

[22:46] You know, you know, see, you'll dry up like a dish towel does, and you put down the line, it dries up in a short time, and you walk out the door, and don't walk for an hour today, you'll dry up. You see, yet there is some way of retaining your moisture, which is not a problem for the fish or for the water animal. So you can not only see more clearly the statement, but what follows from that.

[23:12] But now, like a little bit that student I was mentioning before, you see, if you use the native English word, people are accustomed, you know, in academic circles, to use the what? Technical. Yeah, and therefore they don't do what you mean. You see, for them, the word method is more clear than the word road. But method comes from odas, the Greek word for what? Road, right? Why not use the English word?

[23:44] People get accustomed. It's a bad custom. They get accustomed to to using the more sophisticated word, right? I remember back home one time my brothers and I were talking there, and my mother says, "You know, she went to college. You know, how come we don't use more big words?" You see. Oh man. And so we started using all these big words, you know, and of course my mother couldn't follow the conversation at all.

[24:10] Everything lost her. You see, but that's what people do, right? They they toss around words and they they don't know what they're saying. As Thomas says, they say it with their mouth, but they don't attain it with their mind. So.

[24:37] So I don't tell the students that wisdom is theoretical. Philosophy, it's looking philosophy. People kind of choke at that, see, but that's all theoretical means in Greek, theoria.

[24:54] So theoretical would be the Greek word. Speculative would be the Latin word, right? Looking would be the what? English word, right? A theorem, you know, it's a beautiful word. I use it myself, but a theorem is something what to look at.

[25:15] Theoria. Of course, theoretical and speculative, besides not being so clear, they have all kinds of other connotations now. You know. Speculative thinking now means what? Guessing, right? Speculation, stock market, or something that sort, right? And theoretically, that sometimes you know, has to do with the real world somehow. See, why looking at things is is is what you're really doing. You see, so there's a

[25:49] corrupt intellectual customs. We don't know how to use words anymore. As I say, sometimes we don't have any word in English to name something, and we have to maybe borrow words in some cases. And the word syllogism is an example of that, but it's not so, you know, good for that reason.

[26:21] I always tell the students, you know, when you hear the word metaphysics, it's not one word; it's three words: metataphusica. and I think of you know we have a course in the catalog says metaphysics, but I think I should change the name to Meta Ta Physica, or even better to wisdom.

[26:43] The books after the books of natural philosophy—that's what it means. Meta Ta Physica Meta after Ta Physica, because the road says this: these books belong after the books of natural philosophy, so we'll put'em after. Why. I cringe when I go in the Borders bookstore or some other bookstore and you see occult sciences, you know, metaphysics, They kind of lump together one section. What do you do with what I'm teaching, you know.

[27:10] I mean, I don't want to be associated right with this use of the word, right? So, excuse me, Dr. Berkowitz. By the way, do I understand right that Aristotle didn't use that word? that that was someone who put together his books later? Yeah, it was Andronicus of Rhodes. Andronicus of Rhodes, who was kind of the catalog, you might say, Aristotle's works, and he gave it that title, right?

[27:39] And and we think he understood something about the fact that these books were to be learned after the books of natural philosophy, right? And so even in the you know if you get today the the the key in there the basic books of Aristotle they put the metaphysics after the physics, huh? See, but Aristotle, the the name he uses in the beginning there in the proemium is Sophia, wisdom, and then later on he uses the term what first philosophy.

[28:08] See, and when he refers to the what we call the metaphysics today, he always refers to it as what first philosophy, right? I like to call it the fourteen books of wisdom. That's what it is. It's all much better than metaphysics. Fourteen books of wisdom.

[28:31] But you have to know the three books about the soul before you can get to the fourteen books of wisdom. Yeah. Okay. So he says about that part of the soul by which the soul both knows and judges, huh? Okay. But notice the order there, right? Because judging is what comes second, but it's first in dignity or perfection, right? Okay. And that's why

[29:09] Aristotle and Boethius, following him, and Thomas Aquinas say you have to know the way of judging in different sciences, huh? And I mentioned how natural philosophy, mathematics, and logic—they all judge differently.

[29:32] Natural philosophy mainly by going back to the senses, mathematics, geometry to the imagination, but logic has to go back to reason itself. That's why it's most difficult to judge in that way.

[29:49] And notice, in theology, you would judge in another way, right? So you might go back to to scripture or the magisterium or the tradition or something of this sort, right? So it's a different way of judging,

[30:09] and you have to find the way of judging in each science that's appropriate to what you're studying and how your mind is towards that.

[30:23] Now he says, whether that part be separable or not separable according to magnitude. Well, he's making allusion here. Thomas says to Plato, right? Because Plato or Socrates in the Republic, right, other places, he sometimes says that the what reason is up here and the irascible here and the concupiscible down here, vegetative down here. They're different parts of the body, right? Okay, but actually Aristotle is going to show that the reason is not bodily at all, right?

[30:57] And therefore, it's not in one part of the body, right? So he says about this part of the soul, one must see by what it differs from the other parts, right? And how at some time understanding can come to be. And how does he proceed here, right? Well, he's first of all going to make a what comparison, huh? Of reason and sensing. understanding, I should say, rather understanding is in some way like sensing.

[31:31] And then he's going to bring out from that the character or the nature of our understanding of our reason, and he's going to end up by talking a little bit about the difference, right, between the undergoing of reason and the undergoing of the senses. But in that middle part, he's going to bring out that the reason or understanding is immaterial.

[31:59] If therefore he says understanding is like sensing, either it would be a suffering something from the intelligible, I would say, the understandable, right? Or it would be something like this. Okay, now let's stop on that, right? In what way is understanding like sensing? Let's bring out

[32:30] the way he's going to. Proceed from there as we go on. We'll see. Understanding is like sensing in being, and and you use the word suffering there, but again in English the word suffering, as I mentioned before, has been what stuck on its first meaning, right?

[33:03] So I have to use the word what undergoing, right? Understanding is like sensing in being and undergoing, in being a what receiving, right? In a being acted upon in some way, right? But not in the way in which matter is acted upon, right? Because even the senses we saw before were acted upon in a different way than what matters, huh? Remember my example. here, I said

[33:42] if we have Michelangelo or somebody around here, through his effort, a piece of wood or a piece of marble could receive your shape, right? Right. Okay. But my eye also receives your shape.

[34:01] Now does my eye receive your shape in the same way that marble or wood would receive your shape? No. When the marble or wood receives your shape, it loses the shape it has. There's a contrariety in that.

[34:21] And your shape becomes now the shape of the marble. That's not the way I receive your shape. That is, my eye loses its shape, right? Okay. I receive your shape, not my own shape, right? But it's your shape. Okay. And so he's saying, understanding is like sensing in being an undergoing. Just as the senses are acted upon by the sensible, as the eye is saved by color and the ear by sound, each one by its object.

[34:55] So the understanding, the reason, is acted upon by the what understandable. It's receiving the understandable Okay. It's undergoing. this. Now, what's the basis? What's the reason for saying that understanding is like the sensing? Is like sensing in this way.

[35:20] Well, it's because in the beginning we're able to sense, we're able to understand before we actually sense, before we actually understand. Now the philosophers before Aristotle, like Empedocles huh May we discussion there briefly of Empedocles Empedocles says that we what know earth, air, fire, and water, and love and hate, because we actually have these things inside of us, because we're made up of these things, right? Okay.

[35:56] But in that case, if we're actually composed of these things, and that's the way we know them, then we'd always know these things, right? And wouldn't need the exterior object in order to what sense, for example? Okay.

[36:16] But I don't always actually know these things, right? And I'm never actually going to know the taste of licorice unless I eat some licorice, unless it. You know, acts upon them, and if I never see blue, I'm never going to know blue, right? Okay. So he sees the eye, then, in all the other senses as being in potency to, in ability to having their objects, rather than actually having them, right?

[36:48] Well, the same thing is true about our reason or our understanding, as you call it. It's able to know before it what actually knows, right? So it must be receiving its object, right? And therefore, understanding, like sensing, is a kind of what receiving, to put another way around, a kind of what undergoing, right? Okay. I use the word undergoing because it captures a little bit of the spirit of the Greek word, where the first meaning is that of a receiving that is painful or contrary to you, right?

[37:27] Okay. And then it became generalized the word, right? For any kind of receiving, huh? And even for this kind of immaterial receiving that you have in sensing, and even more immaterial as we see in the case of what understanding.

[37:55] So he says, if therefore understanding is like sensing, it's in potency or in ability, right, to receiving its object. Either it would be suffering and undergoing something from the understanding. understandable, or it would be something like this. It might be a receiving, right, that is not really what a suffering in the strict sense, right? It's not really an alteration, huh? Yeah. I remember this this friend of my brother Richard.

[38:26] You know, his first teaching philosophy, you know, and he described the impression of the he got from the student's face. You know, why are you doing this to me?

[38:38] So the students act as if you're acting upon them in the way that they are what suffering, right? Because the way you're acting upon them. But that means all the more so that that's why the word was carried over, right? It's kind of a striking thing, huh? Okay. It's more clear that I'm acting upon you and I'm sticking a pin in you, right? Than when you see me, right?

[39:04] You don't think about the fact, you know, that I'm acting upon your eyes when you see me. Don't think of that, do you? So much. But if I was here jabbing you with a pin or a knife or something, you'd be very much aware of the fact that I was acting upon you and that you were undergoing something as a result of this, right? But. In some other sense of undergoing, right?

[39:27] You are undergoing something when you see me, right? Your eye is undergoing something, and your ears are undergoing something, right? I hope your nose is not, but that happens sometimes too, you know. People, right? Okay. You know, I'm going to go to a meeting. I don't want to have too much garlicky food for dinner, right? I mean,

[39:52] you'd be persona non grata. You see, at a close thing, huh? Therefore, it must be something impassible. He means impassible in the sense in which matter undergoes, but it's receptive, huh? It's able to receive the species of the form, and as such, as a species is in potency, but not what as an act, not this species, huh? And it must have itself similarly as the sensitive, or as the senses are to the sensible, so the mind to the what understandable, huh?

[40:39] The intelligible is the Latin word, right? Okay, to the understandable. Well, what is impassible. Yeah, he's using that now in the stricter sense of the way matter undergoes, right? Unchanged Okay, yeah. So something is, if something is impassible, it can undergo something as a. Well, he means it's not changed in the way matter is, huh? Okay. See, in his first meaning, undergoing refers to

[41:18] something bad, right? But then, even in second sense, if you have a piece of clay in the shape of a sphere and you mold it into a cube, right? Then we say this thing has what undergone, right? Undergone a change here, okay? Well, sensing and a fortiori understanding is not an undergoing in that way.

[41:44] It's really more a perfecting of your knowing power rather than a what change, right? Although, in some way, like a change, right? Because you are able to see something before you actually see it, right? You are able to understand something before you actually understand it, right?

[42:08] But you come to sense something or to understand something by in a way receiving that thing, huh? Okay, but you're not being changed from what you were to something different, right? Which is what happens when matter receives, huh? but you are being really what more perfected by this.

[42:32] I see some people get stuck on that first meaning of what acting upon and undergoing, or even that second meaning where it's still tied to the way matter undergoes. I mentioned was that

[42:51] some of their Gabriel Marcel there criticizing Jean Paul Sartre, right? For Jean Paul Sartre, any receiving is opposed to your sovereignty, right? Imposition to receive anything.

[43:08] Well, even Gabriel Marcel can see there is something wrong with this, right? And it really would make what not only teaching but parenthood, even friendship among equals impossible, right? Because a friendship that's fruitful, you know, in some cases, you know,

[43:36] one friend is acting upon the other, and sometimes it's the what reverse, right? You know, because one friend sees something or is stronger in one area than another friend, another one in something else, right? And so they what act upon each other, molding each other in a sense, right? But what perfecting each other in some way, right? But Sartre can't see that, right? L'enfer c'est ultra, right?

[44:05] Hells is others, right? To be acted upon by another, right? Have them imposing themselves upon you in some way is is contrary to your freedom and so on, right? See, so he's always stuck with the first meaning of undergo, right? Which is to suffer. It's bad to suffer. It's bad to be acted upon in a way that is harmful to you and painful to you and contrary to your nature, right?

[44:41] But to be acted upon in a way that changes you, well, it's could be good or bad, right? But to be acted upon in a way that fulfills you, perfects you, completes you, right? That's what sensing and understanding I like, right?

[44:59] Do you see that? So that's why he has the hesitation in the words there, right? Because in the original sense, they're either something bad or at least something that involves an alteration of the thing. But in the last senses of it, it's merely a what. In a sense, increase in what you already are. You're able to understand, and now you're actually, understanding by reason of being acted upon in this way, right?

[45:27] You're able to sense, but now you're actually sensing as a result of being acted upon in this way, huh? You see? He's not really condicting himself, but it might seem at first with the word there, right? But he's going back to the original meaning. But it's simply receptive of the species of the form, and such as the species is in potency, and it's such as the species in potency, huh?

[45:58] It's able to receive these, but it's not it's not an act like Empedocles thought, right? You see that? So this is the this whole paragraph of sense is bringing out this likeness of understanding and sensing, right?

[46:19] So it must have itself similarly, or I would say, likewise, right? As the sensitive or as the sense is to the sensible, so the Mind is to the what understandable.

[46:34] Now he's going to reason from that a little bit like you hear about the senses. He's going to reason from that to the immateriality of the what reason or understanding, huh? The and it's not having a bodily organ, right? Okay. Now how's he going to reason that way? Well, you've already seen the case of the senses. If my tongue was actually sugary, if I had by nature a sugary tongue, could I taste sweet and bitter and and salty and oily and so on?

[47:21] Everything would taste what sweet, huh? If my tongue was salty, everything would what taste salty, right? So my tongue has to be neither sweet nor bitter nor what salty nor oily, so I can taste all those tastes, right? You see that? Okay.

[47:46] Um, my eye, right? And if I had that fluid in my eye so it was all green, everything would what look green a little bit like in the Wizard of Oz, you know, where you put on these special glasses, right? But if that color of the glass was the color of the eye itself, the eye had some definite color there, then that would prevent it from knowing what all colors, huh?

[48:13] So the eye has to be lacking in any color, but able to receive all. See? It needs to lack all colors, it is going to be able to receive all. Just as the tongue must lack all taste if it's able to receive, right? Okay. The same with the ear. If I had you know sound, you know Mozart symphony always playing in the ear, then I wouldn't be able to hear other things, right?

[48:45] People like a you know sound in your ear prevent you from hearing other things. So we see how the senses, in order to receive their object, to be able to receive the whole of their object, all their object, they have to be lacking in what what they're going to receive, to begin with then. With the possible exception, the sense of touch, which can't be completely what lacking in hot and cold, huh?

[49:17] But the senses, the sense of touch, senses what it lacks, right? Something that's warmer than it, like the weather or something, or something colder. The weather is colder. You sense the things, right? You don't have those, right? Okay. So Aristotle's going to reason from this that the mind is what not a body, right? And he's making a comparison now to the thinking of Anaxagoras that you some of you have seen there when we did the reading from Anaxagoras.

[49:57] But Aristotle's argument is similar, but it's it's different from Anaxagoras's. It is necessary, therefore, since it understands all things, it's able to understand all what these material things in some way. That the mind be what unmixed, right? Something like Anaxagoras says that it might command, but this is necessary that it might know, okay? And that's the comparison he's making there. As some of you maybe recall, but Anaxagoras said, Anaxagoras was talking not about so much the human mind, but this greater mind is responsible for the what distinction and order in the parts of animals and plants and so on.

[50:49] And Anaxagoras said that this greater mind is responsible for the order of natural things. It can't have any matter in it. It can't be mixed with matter. Remember that. And he gave a very good reason why it couldn't be that it couldn't command and direct and order all things if it was mixed up with them. That would prevent it from what

[51:19] ruling over them, right? Okay. And that's what he's saying there, saying that the ruler must be distinct from the rule, or the ruler must be separated in some way from the rule.

[51:52] Or put another way, the ruler must not be mixed with the rule because this would prevent it from what ruling them, huh? Okay. Now,

[52:14] you may recall I would manifest that a bit. I take the example, say, of human affairs of a judge, right? Okay. Well, what's the first thing we demand of a judge if he's going to rule between two conflicting parties? Huh.

[52:35] Yeah, the first thing we demand of a judge is that he be impartial. Impartial means what? not a part of. So if I have financial interest in you, and am I in a position to judge between you two, Okay? Or if you and my brother are in conflict, you know, should I be judging between you see? Okay? That's the first thing we demand of the charge, to he be what Impartial, not a part of.

[53:14] It's going to get in the way of his ruling well, right? And the same way in the army, right? You know, when they make a distinction between the man who commands and the man who obeys, huh? And if you commanding, I've got to salute first, right? And so on, huh? There's maybe a little difference in the insignia and so on, right? Okay. When the president comes in, they play "Hail to the Chief," right?

[53:41] They make a kind of distinction there, right? And the if the mother tried to join her teenage daughter's party and be one of the girls, then she'd lose her what authority, right? Or if the father tried to be just one of the boys, right? He would lose his what ability to command, huh? So

[54:18] the same way we're talking about about judging, remember? Judging is the separating of what the truth from the false, but by something outside of them, right? By some beginning in our knowledge, huh?

[54:34] So what rules distinguishes must be something other than the things being ruled or distinguished, right? Aristotle says we're going to reason not in exactly the same way as Anaxagoras is not talking about this greater mind, this divine mind or angelic mind. We're going to reason about the human mind, and our argument's going to be somewhat different, right? We're saying in order to know all material things, right?

[55:06] In order to be, therefore, in what ability to receiving all material things, it must lack any material things. It must lack any material nature itself. Just as the eye to be able to receive all colors must be lacking in any color of its own, and just as the tongue, in order to receive sweet and bitter and oily and salty and so on, must be lacking in any of these what tastes or flavors, huh?

[55:34] But because reason is altogether universal. You know, being an ability to knowing everything in the material world, it must lack any material nature in order to be able to receive all in this way that you receive it. So it's a very what fundamental argument, not the only argument by any means, but it's the fundamental argument, right? And it comes right out of seeing the likeness between understanding and sensing, and what we learned about the senses that they lack what they're going to be seeing, huh?

[56:14] You see that? But like if you said, you know, if you wanted to what show all colors in this glass, right? And pour in a blue liquid and it's so blue, right? Or to pour in a red liquid, or a green liquid, or a yellow liquid and show the colors, right? In order to show all colors, this mug has to be what? Clear. Transparent, right? If this was green, that would get in the way of it showing all what?

[56:49] Colors. Well, it's like that with the mind. You see, the mind, in a sense, has to be what? Transparent, right? In order to receive and to show all what material things, it must be lacking therefore any material nature. That's really a marvelous way of seeing this, huh? Not the only way, but the first way to see it, right? Okay. Now, Anaxagoras was the first one of the Greek philosophers who seems to have begun to see that the mind is something immaterial, and then Plato and Aristotle continuing that and developing it, right?

[57:35] So you can see Aristotle's great respect for what Anaxagoras. If you read the dialogue called the Phaedo, there Socrates talks about how excited he got when he first read Anaxagoras and heard about the the mind, huh?

[57:53] Anaxagoras is the man who brought philosophy to Athens, right? He came to Athens and became the friend of what? Pericles, right? Okay. So he says in three twenty four, it is necessary therefore since it understands all things is necessary. it it's able to understand all things that the mind be unmixed. Something like Anaxagoras says, right? In order to command all things, right, it has to be what unmixed with them, huh?

[58:27] But we're saying this is necessary that it might know all things, right? In other words, if be able to receive the natures of all material things. It must be itself lacking the nature of any material thing. For if there was one of if it had some definite material nature, as it would if there was a body, what is present in it would hinder and what screen out, as it were, the what others, huh?

[58:54] You see that? Just like in the things with the eye, there, right? The Wizard of Oz, right, huh? Everything looks green, right? Not just your neighbor's yard, but everything looks green, but it screens out other colors, huh?

[59:13] Once there is no one nature of this part but this, huh? That it is what dunaton, right? It's what able to receive, right? It's Ability, okay.

[59:31] Therefore, what is called the mind of the soul, I call the mind that which the soul thinks and assumes, is none of the beings, none of these material things, enact before it thinks. This is exactly contrary to what Empedocles thought, right? That because he thought that we're composed actually of earth, air, fire, water, love, and hate, that's why we actually know all these things. We don't actually know them at first at all, but we're able to receive them in some what immaterial way.

[1:00:06] But if we had definitely some what material nature for the mind, that would prevent it from what receiving all things huh Okay. He says, thinks and assumes. Is that significant? Those two words. Well, I'll see what the Greek says there, because probably he's thinking a little bit of that knowing and what Judging. grasping, yeah, grasping and judging, yeah. Grasping and judging Grasping and judging yeah yeah. What the Greek says here, lego de noon.

[1:00:47] I say the nous the mind, the understanding, right? ho by which dia noeta is the Greek word he uses, which is translated here by. Yeah, yeah. Which is not really a bad translation, huh The word dia noia has some of the idea of discourse, like in Shakespeare, right? Dia through knowing something else, right? If you look at the again, in the Posture Analytics, Aristotle uses the adjective all now just dianoetic.

[1:01:20] He says is through preexisting knowledge, right? Okay. And hypolambanei, the other word which they translate here as assumes, yeah, hypolambanei is often taken in the sense of what opinion, right? Take up something, right? Okay. It has a sense of opinion very often in Greek, so assumes is is fairly close even etymologically, right? In Latin, right? Okay. So hypolambano in Greek and assume in Latin, the English equivalent etymologically is to take up, right?

[1:02:04] And we do use that expression sometimes. Take up a position, right? Sure. Okay. And when you say take up a position and defend it, you're not necessarily fully committed to that, but maybe see something in that position, right? Okay. It's kind of interesting thing to take up, huh?

[1:02:25] It's kind of the opposite side of what you have the definition of syllogism, right? Remember the definition of syllogism? It's speech in which some statements laid down, another follows necessarily because of those laid down, right? But before you can lay down a statement, you have to take it up, right? Okay. And you see this very much in dialectic, the way dialectic proceeds, because as Aristotle defines the dialectical premise, he says it's a asking of the probable, right?

[1:03:10] So the man you're speaking with in the dialectic conversation, he can take either affirmative or negative, right? He takes up one of them, right? You see. If he doesn't take up one, then it's a problem, right? Okay. Not a premise. It's going to be something that are reasoned about, right? But you've got to something to reason from. And so he said, now, you know, I've seen you that a cat is a four-footed animal, or a cat is not a four-footed animal, yeah?

[1:03:40] And you say, well, you give me a choice between those two, I take up that cat is a four-footed animal, right? Okay. Do you think the earth is flat or what? Round, huh? Say. Think water is H2O, say, or think it's a simple substance, huh? We might take up one of these, right? Okay. May, might not know it, right? Be sorry. Okay. But you can take something up without knowing whether it's strictly speaking knowing, in certain right, that it's true or what, false, right?

[1:04:20] Okay. So I got to take up something, and then I can put it down in my argument. Use the word take, you know, when you define too. See. You know, if you wanted to define, let's say, square, right?

[1:04:42] The first thing you should take is it's what genus, right? What's the genus of square? Quadrilateral Yeah. So I put that down, quadrilateral, right? Then I gotta take up the differences, right? Eventually, I'll take up right-angled, right, and equilateral, right, and I'll put these down, and I'll make my definition. So it's a little bit like, you know, what you do with statements, right? You take up statements and you place them down, and then something else follows from that.

[1:05:18] I think I mentioned how. I think the best explanation of that word in the definition. Laid down is one word in Greek or Latin. Is by Thomas in the commentaries on St. Paul,

[1:05:38] and where Thomas explains that laid down, well, something doesn't lay itself down; something else lays it down. But laid down implies what? Some firmness, right? And then an order to something else, right?

[1:05:55] And it's kind of marvelous because you know when I say to the kids, "I'm laying down the law," see, the law doesn't lay it down itself, right? I'm laying down the law, right? You shall be in bed by nine o'clock, right? Okay, I'm laying down the law, and a certain firmness in that, right? When somebody lays down the law, it's not just a suggestion, right? This is serious, because they have consequences, right?

[1:06:25] And and that law laid down expects a certain. course of what action, right? Conformity with it, right? See, that's practical reason, laying down the law, right? Okay.

[1:06:41] But in the syllogism, you lay down a statement from which, you're going to reason, right? So you lay down these statements with some firmness in the mind, right?

[1:06:54] But you lay them down in order to draw a certain what conclusion, right? But they have to be laid down firmly because if I lay down the major premise and that runs away, and then I take up the minor premise. I can't syllogize, can I? I got to get them both together firmly, right? Okay.

[1:07:18] So, but again, you know, one could take maybe thinks and assumes there. If you take thinking a little stronger, maybe a little stronger word than think, you could maybe use that same distinction that Thomas used before, right? Grasping and judging.

[1:07:51] So it's none of the beings in act before it thinks, It's none of these material things before it thinks. And then, whence also it is reasonable that it's not mixed with the body, for it would come to be qualified somehow, either cold or hot, or there would be even some organ sensitive. But as it is, there is none. Now, the reason for saying there is none is that it's what able to receive the natures of all material things.

[1:08:25] Therefore, it must be lacking, right, in the natures of all material things.