De Anima (On the Soul)
42. The Object of Reason: What a Thing Is, Universals and Immaterial Understanding
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[0:00] there still another obstacle for the angel to know our thoughts? Would God have to reveal our thoughts to him, even if we made an act of the will? Since then.

[0:18] How about when Saint Thomas says the angel can order our images, but he can also strengthen the light of our mind? So he must have some direct contact with our mind besides through our body, if he's going to strengthen the light of our mind.

[0:37] A stronger light fortifies a lesser light. Or does he light our mind by the images, ordering them? Yeah, but Thomas, the second thing, Thomas speaks of both of those, yeah.

[0:57] So that it seems like a contradiction there to say that the angel can only act on us through our body, and to say the angel can strengthen the light of our mind. How would you resolve that?

[1:17] I don't know if I was say- if I was asserting the first thing that you said. I thought Saint Thomas was because he'll say. Well, I know you talk about about the devils and so on, right? Yeah. But they don't want to strengthen the light of our mind because they want to deceive us. It's interesting, huh? That distinction of grasping and judging, right? You know, sometimes Thomas when he speaks is kind of interesting.

[1:47] That the images are more directly related to grasping, right, and the light of reason to judging, right. Okay, because in a sense, it's from the images that we get our ideas, our basic ideas. We separate out what's common to these things. Remember. And so that's kind of pretty easy to grasp it, right? But the light of reason enables us to judge, see. So the devil might, you know, move our images he tempts us and so on, right?

[2:38] Okay. But he doesn't want to speak to the light of our reason because he doesn't want to be able to judge he wants, to deceive us, right? So he doesn't want to give us, help us to separate the truth from the false, right? The good from the bad, right?

[3:01] And the great Shakespeare, right? You know what he puts it there, huh? Because the witches, huh, are kind of, the devil, too, at least.

[3:14] Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air Okay You were talking about one time, see. The first line. and notice the the the it's it's written in what? What meter? Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air Trochaic Yeah, In clinic, right? Yeah. When they say incline, is you know, spirit and what kinds of things they're stronger, you know, light in the ordinary sense.

[4:03] A week or later. So, but they do have some direct access to the spiritual part of us, even without the body. Yeah, so. Or do they administer the graces to us sometimes? They. They don't give us grace directly, no. But they, but you know, they, they reveal things to us, right? With God.

[4:47] You know, with the cure, yeah. St. Thomas said they also know what we can sense. So, like, they would know if I'm hungry. An angel even knows if I'm hungry. Yeah, yeah, he could, he could pre-estimate. You know, all these images of food, you know, he kind of's up to you know. He seems to even tell what our body's doing, like if we're excited, our heart's racing, you know, and all that other emotional states.

[5:18] He knows what we're seeing. He knows what I'm seeing. That's through the images. What I'm smelling. Appeal to greatness, now that's going to come out fully in the thirty-sixth, the Linz Symphony, and the Jupiter, right? This representation of magnanimity, you know, It's kind of appeal to greatness, now. It's very, very wise to appeal to the greatness of them. So I was kind of, you know, Sometimes C major of course, is used by Mozart, you know, for joy rather than magnanimity, right?

[5:51] Like in the C major quintet, say, you know, and the C look at the car. Undergoing understanding. Later on, he's going to talk about another power called the act of understanding. Okay, the next chapter, in fact. But forget about that right now. Okay. Now, there's three main parts to this consideration of our reason or understanding in this fourth chapter. And the first part, which is down to about through 328 during your text, part we looked at last time.

[9:01] And there he's showing that our reason or understanding is to begin with an undergoing ability, right? An ability that is acted upon by its object.

[9:19] And he makes a comparison there between our understanding or reason and the senses, not to the what vegetative powers, the powers of digestion, right, and growth and so on, right? And the comparison is there not only because the sense powers are knowing powers and the plant powers are not knowing powers, but also because the sense powers are undergoing powers, and the vegetative powers are acting upon powers.

[10:03] Okay. Now this is one way you could divide the powers or the abilities of the soul by whether their object originally acts upon them or they act upon their object.

[10:26] Now, if you stop and think about it, that seems to be a complete division. That either the object right acts upon the power, or the power or ability acts upon the object. If neither one or the other took place, there'd really be no connection between the power and the object. So no reason to call this the object of that power if one didn't affect the other at all.

[10:56] If one neither acted upon the other or was acted upon by the other. So in a way, he's saying something very general about the object of the understanding or reason. He's going to be more detailed in this 329 and 330 as to what the object is of the understanding, right? But in that first part, he's bringing out that it's an object that acts upon the power. And therefore, understanding is an undergoing, as he says,

[11:36] okay, suffering, but not in the original sense of suffering, a receiving in some way, and he brings out at the same time that because it's able to receive all the natures of material things, which is shown from the fact that we know what material bodies are material bodies, at least in general, universally, and therefore open to receiving all their natures, that it must lack any bodily nature.

[12:13] Okay, do you see that? Just as the sense organs lack the object that they receive to begin with, so in the example there, the eye, the fluid not having color, right, or your tongue not being sweet or bitter or oily or salty or something else, because if it had some definite taste or flavor, in my tongue, it'd prevent it from receiving the flavours of the sweet and the bitter, the salty and the oily, receiving all the tastes of these things.

[12:51] And if the eye had some color inborn or ingrained in it, that prevented from receiving all colors, huh? It would be like having on, you know, glasses tinted to green or red or something like that. If that was part of the eye, right, everything would be other than that would be kind of impeded from being received in the eye. But because the reason or understanding has this universality, it's open to receiving all the natures of these things.

[13:26] It must lack any bodily nature, and therefore, it's not a what a body, okay? It's not in the brain, okay? And after this comparison and developing the consequences of that, at the end he comes back and points out a sign of the difference in the way the two receive. That when the sense organs receive an object very strong, that kind of impedes them temporarily from what. Perceiving other things because they are a bodily organ, and the bodily organ has been somewhat interfered with.

[14:11] But when the understanding or the reason considers something very understandable, when it turns to lesser things, it's not prevented from what seeing them. If anything, it sees them what more clearly, right? So when I get through studying the the Trinity, right, and I turn my mind back to the isosceles triangle, I'm not, you know, can't quite see the isosceles Triangle for having considered the

[14:43] Trinity, right? If anything, it's easier for me to see now the truth about the isosceles what triangle, and the reason for that difference is the one that we discovered there just before that doesn't have a bodily what organ, huh? Okay.

[15:05] Now, 329 in 330, he's going to go more into what that object is, but you can see in a way he's going from the general to the particular. When you begin with the fact that the object acts upon the what knowing power, right? But that's in a way common to the sense powers. It's also common to the what desiring powers. When we study those, huh? So that loving is really originally a what undergoing of being acted upon by the object.

[15:50] And this is especially seen in things too like pity and sadness and so on that you're being acted upon, right? You're being moved. You see someone else's misfortune there, right? Some little three-year-old girl there runs out in the traffic there, my wife's looking at the newspaper there, you know, and she's feeling sorry for this little girl and the parents and so on, right? Huh? Okay. So you're moved by the object, huh?

[16:17] Somewhere. And that's why, you know, even the poets thought of what Cupid there, right? You know, well the arrow is acting upon what the heart, huh? You've been wounded, as they say, right? In your heart, huh? Okay. But even you know, talking about the the dating or social situations and so on, you say you made a big impression upon her, or she made a big impression upon your friend, huh?

[16:51] But impress means what? You've acted upon this other person's heart, huh? Okay. So that it's an undergoing power, right? But now in 329 and 330, he's going to be more particular, more precise now as to what is this object, right? That acts upon us. What is the object of our reason understanding, huh? And you got to read them very carefully here because he unfolds himself, huh? So let's look again at 329 there.

[17:30] But since the magnitude or a magnitude is other than being magnitude, huh? Now, and water in being water. Now as. I mentioned that phrase, being magnitude. Actually, in the Greek, it's a a

[17:53] infinitive, right? To be magnitude, right? And a magnitude to be water, right? But that to be is a contraction of the formula that Aristotle uses. Very often he talks about what the thing is, so

[18:15] okay. And the Greek phrase that you'll find if you take the whole phrase is what was to be. What was to be? And in fact, he uses later on here that whole phrase. Let me see if he's got a transit here. He got a little different translation in 330 there, but the what it was to be, right? The Greek is to, you know, actually the article to ti en einai, the what was to be, right?

[19:04] And it's always a little bit hard to see why he he uses that phrase more than the phrase what a thing is. I tend to use the phrase what a thing is, but Aristotle uses this what was to be. And I can give what I think is the reason why he uses that phrase. Okay. But because of unfamiliarity and why he uses it, unfamiliarity of that, a lot of times I just translate it as what a thing is.

[19:45] Okay. I was looking at the beginning of the book about places there, the so-called Topics in English there. When he's talking about a definition, instead of using what a thing is, uses that same phrase, the what was to be. Okay. Now, I think part of the reason why he does that is this. If you go back to Aristotle's four kinds of causes, the first kind of cause and the most known kind of cause was called matter, and if you recall the definition of matter, it had two parts.

[20:26] Matter is that from which something comes to be, and then he adds existing within it. Okay. This is the definition of matter. It had two parts: that from which something comes to be, but you have to add the second part, existing within it. So a wooden chair, for example, comes to be from wood, right? And the wood is inside the wooden chair, right? Now sometimes we say that something comes to be from its opposite, like the wet comes to be from the dry, but the dry is not the matter out of which the wet is made.

[21:25] It doesn't exist within it, and we might even say at some time that the chair came from the carpenter. Okay, it came from this factory, right? And these workmen, right? But they're not a cause in the sense of matter. They're a cause in the sense of like maker, huh? And the maker is not within the thing he made, so you have to add that second part. Now,

[21:56] is wood from which a chair comes to be? Is that wood what a chair is? It's the form, really, that the wood acquires through the carpenter that makes it to be what a chair is, right?

[22:21] And so Aristotle defines form. He defines it as the definition of what was to be. Okay, the definition of what was to be. So that's, I think, the origin of this phrase, "what was to be." You're thinking of the fact that the matter, the wood, for example, was able to become a chair, a table, a door, right? But it's through its form that it's actually a chair, a table, or a door, right?

[23:09] And so, to say what was to be, you're looking back to the matter that it came to be from, right? But the matter was not yet what it what was to be. It wasn't yet what a chair is, or what a table is, or what a door is, right? Okay.

[23:31] So it's kind of interesting the way Aristotle, I think, because the way he arrives using this phrase a lot. Okay. But then the second thing that makes it more difficult for us is that sometimes he just what

[23:50] contracts it to be. Okay. Mean the same thing, eni in Greek, huh? To be, right? So that form, that formula itself. Is not as clear to us maybe as this right here, right? And then when it's contracted, you have a double thing, right? Okay.

[24:17] So now let's translate a little bit here, right? But since a magnitude, right? It could be a line, or it could be a a square, or it could be a sphere, right? Okay. Any continuous thing like that is other than what it is, huh?

[24:40] Is a a line, and what a line is identical. Is a circle, and what a circle is identical. See? Is a sphere, and what a sphere is identical. See?

[25:04] Well, the fact that you have what more than one circle, more than one straight line, more than one cube, or more than one sphere.

[25:20] Each of them is a cube, or each of them is a circle, or each of them is a line, right? And you could say each of each of them what it is, right? But can you identify with any one of those individuals? See? If a circle like this circle right here, if this circle and what a circle is are exactly the same, there's no distinction between a circle and what a circle is.

[25:53] Could you have another circle next to it? No. Then to be a circle would be this circle. Would be the same thing, right? Yeah. And then it couldn't be another circle, right? Okay.

[26:14] Now the same thing is true about a natural thing like water, huh? See this water here? Okay. Now is this water and what water is entirely the same? Or can you in some way distinguish between this water and what water is?

[26:46] Distinguish. Yeah, because I'm sure you have other water, a pond out there, and other things, right? Okay. The pipes and so on. Okay. Now.

[27:09] Why is that so? Right? That what a circle is, or what a sphere is, or what a cube is, is not identical, right, with a circle or a sphere or a cube, right? Why is it that you take a natural thing like water? Why is it that a dog and what a dog is are identical, right? Why is that so?

[27:44] Well, it has something to do with the fact that these things are material, in the case of sensible things, natural things, or at least that they are in the what? Continuous. In the case of the mathematical things,

[28:03] you can get two circles, right? Because you put one here and one what? There. That's why you get two circles, right? Okay. Now you can get many individual window panes of exactly the same kind because you have enough what? Glass, right? You can get many chairs of exactly the same kind because you have enough wood if they're wooden chairs, right? Or if they're metal chairs, you have enough metal, right?

[28:41] But in general, because you have enough matter of some kind, right? And enough there refers to what? The fact that matter is what subject to quantity. It's continuous, right? It is part outside of part, okay?

[29:07] Now I remember the definitions of the continuous that we gave in natural philosophy before. First definition of the continuous is that whose what parts meet at a common boundary, right? So the parts of a line meet at a point, right? The parts of a circle and a line, the parts of a solid at a surface, a plane.

[29:34] And notice what's implied in that is the parts are outside of each other, okay? And because of that, you can cut it up into many pieces, right? Or you can place something here or something somewhere else, right? But if you did away with that matter or did away with that continuous quantity, could you have? Many things of the same kind.

[30:09] Would there be a distinction between a thing and what it is? Like there is a distinction between a dog and what a dog is, a circle and what a circle is.

[30:29] If you take away quantity, right, which is rooted in matter, you take away that part outside the part. You couldn't have many individuals of the same kind.

[30:43] Now it belongs, of course, to the wise man to wisdom to consider those immaterial things. It doesn't belong to natural philosophy or even geometry to consider those immaterial things. But Aristotle hints, right,

[31:10] that there are some things where the thing and what it is are identical and not different, huh? So look at what is in parentheses in the translation here. And so it is also many others, like I'll say, besides water, a dog and what a dog is, right? A cat and what a cat is, a man and what a man is, right? Okay. But it's not so in all, meaning not so in all things, right?

[31:46] For in some they are the same, right? And that's why when Thomas Aquinas, for example, talks about the angels, and a fortiori about God, right? There can't be two angels of exactly the same kind.

[32:12] And likewise, there can't be two gods. Okay. The Church is very careful in saying there are three persons, right? But these three persons are one what God, right?

[32:34] And each one is one and the same what God, right? You remember the prayer of our Lord there in the seventeenth chapter, isn't it, the Gospel of Saint John?

[33:01] And Christ, you know, addresses the Father, you the the one true God, right? And of course, some of the heretics would say, well, he's saying the Father is the one true God, but he's not really the true God; he's just the highest creature or something, right? Okay. And you have a similar phrase in the creed there, you know, "To solus, you alone are the most high." Okay.

[33:33] And there's various things to be said about that, but one thing that Thomas does there in the commentary in John is he quotes something Saint Augustine says, right? And Augustine says there are some who say that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together are one God. If You can't say the Father is God, and the Son is God, the Holy Spirit only all three of them together.

[34:05] But that's wrong. The Father alone is God, and the Son alone is God, and the Holy Spirit alone is God. Each one is God, but one and the same God. Okay. Not in the way which Socrates alone is a man, and Plato alone is a man, right? Because they're different individual men, right? But it's one and the same individual God, right? But there can't be in the immaterial nature, like the divine nature, any difference between God and what God is.

[34:46] Okay, maybe one of the articles there, right, in the question of simplicity of God, right? That God and what God is are identical. It's one of the eight articles there in the question three of the Summa, and you have the same thing in the Summa contra Gentiles when he takes up the simplicity of God. Okay, but this is also true about the angels because they are immaterial.

[35:15] So there's no two angels of equal rank. You know, Teacher Casuarius would say God hates equality. But it's the truth about that, right? Yes, sir.

[35:29] And so he's hinting at that, right? Now, notice something else here too, huh? That when you distinguish between, say, a magnitude and what a magnitude is, yeah? Question. Is that why you said every angel is a different species? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is every circle a different species then? No, no. You can have in circles many circles of exactly the same kind, many squares of exactly the same kind, just like in the first theorem in what Euclid, right?

[36:16] It constructs two circles that are exactly what? Equal, right? Oh yes. But one's here and one's there. See? I guess because what it is to be a circle and a circle are not the same thing, and you don't have many species of circles. Yet what it is to be an angel and what an angel is are not to be the same thing. Yet you do have every individual is a different species.

[36:47] Yeah, each kind of angel. In other words, Gabriel, Gabriel, right? Right. And what Gabriel is identical, and Raphael, right? Right. And what Raphael is is the same, right? Mm-hmm. But Socrates and what Socrates is, a man, are not identical. See? Because we're made out of flesh and blood and bones. There's enough flesh and blood, enough flesh and blood and bones to go around to make up a number of us.

[37:15] See? Okay. So it's matter as subject to continuous quantity, which is divisible, right? Or where one can be here and one there, right? Huh? So that's the difference then. Yeah, that's the reason for it. Many circles not being many species and many angels being different species. That's the difference there. Well, it'd be better to say that's the reason why you can have many circles of exactly the same kind.

[37:40] See? Because one can be here and one can be there. It's because of the continuance. Okay. Okay. But so notice now when he's distinguishing here between, in fact, you better say a magnitude than the magnitude. But between a magnitude and what a magnitude is, between a circle and what a circle is, a circle would be an individual circle, right? But what a circle is would be something what?

[38:10] Universal. Okay. And this is another way that we see that the understanding is immaterial. What it's knowing directly is the universal, and the universal is separated from the continuous. So when we know continuous things, we know them in a what? Universal way, and therefore not in a continuous way. By the senses, our bodies, and the bodies are continuous, right? So they receive only what, singular. Because what is received in the continuous, from that very fact, is going to be here or there, and therefore singular.

[39:03] So this is another way that we come to know that the understanding of reason is not a body. If it were a body, it would be continuous, and it would receive that condition of things that received in the continuous, which would be to be received as what singular. So the fact that we receive it as something universal, because of what it is, is something universal here. Not not the what it is of God, see, not the what it is of Raphael, but the what it is of a circle or the what it is of a dog, right, It's something universal.

[39:43] The fact that we receive it in that way is a sign that our understanding of reason is not a body. It's not something continuous. Okay, it's a very subtle thing, huh?

[40:01] Now he goes on here. This is a very subtle thing he's going to say now. Since there's a distinction then, right, between a circle and what a circle is, right, and water and what water is, right, or a dog and what a dog is, right, and he gives another example in the next part of the sentence, right, between what what flesh is and some flesh, right, right.

[40:36] The soul will know what flesh is in some flesh, either by different powers, right, or by one having itself differently. Now, what does that second refer to, and why is he bringing that in there? Well, let's look at the first part there, right. Either I know what what flesh is by one power in me, by my reason and understanding, I understand what flesh is, right? And I know this flesh or that flesh there in your hand, right?

[41:16] By another power, by my what eye or by my finger, right? Okay. By one power, I know what water is, namely by my understanding or reason, and by another power, by my what sense, like by my eye or by my finger there. Ah, I know what this water, right? Yeah. Okay. By my reason, I know what a cat is, and one of these cats in here, come around here sometimes to my class.

[41:53] Um, I know this cat, right, or a cat, right? Do you see that? Okay. But now someone might say, what about the fact that we compare the universal to the singular?

[42:18] So when we talk, for example, about lowest species there in logic, if you recall, well, the lowest species is not divided into different kinds, but it's said of many what singulars individuals. So we understand the relation, let's say, a circle to this circle, that circle, the next circle, or the relation of man, let's say, to me and you and the next man, right? Okay. And if you go back to the argument that we had in the discussion of common sense, um, you couldn't speak of the comparison of the universal to the singular unless it was possible for one and the same power to know what both, right?

[43:02] Okay. So it wouldn't be enough for reason to know the universal and the senses to know the singular when you're comparing universal to the singular. It's got to be the same power knowing both, right? And that's why he adds that, right? Because not only does our reason know directly, as he's going to say, what a man is, right? And the senses know directly this man, right? Okay.

[43:37] Or reason knows directly what a circle is, and the imagination, right, pictures this individual circle, right? Okay. In which case you have different powers knowing it, but sometimes we are aware of that connection between the universal and the what singular, right? We know that the universal is said of many individuals. Like man instead of many individual men, or circles instead of many circles, I might imagine in my imagination, right?

[44:09] In that case, the reason is in some way knowing the singular, but not what directly, huh? And Aristotle uses the word Reflecta, because coming back upon what the origin of the universal, which goes back to the singular. So it's not knowing the singular directly because it has to be a sense power to know that, right? But it knows it indirectly as the what? That from which, right?

[44:41] Its universal was taken. So he speaks of it as knowing it reflectively, so coming back upon its origin. But directly it knows the what? Universal. Okay.

[44:57] Now he says that as he goes on, you'll see the words that he uses. For the flesh is not without matter, but like the snub, it is of this in this. Therefore, the soul discerns the hot and the cold by the sense power, and the flesh is some ratio of these.

[45:20] But it discerns being fleshed by different power, either by a separate power from the one that knew the singular, right? Or by one which has itself as the bent has itself to itself when extended. Okay, that's what he's saying. There, beautiful way of speaking there. He's saying that what the reason understanding knows directly is the what it is, right? And therefore the universal, right? But because the what it is is is the what it is as something what singular, right?

[45:55] Okay, and it was taken from that, right? Well, then it can what? Come back upon its origin. And so it knows the singular as the origin of its what? Universal. See, but it doesn't know it what directly, right? Okay.

[46:19] And that's what he's saying there. Or by one which has itself as the bent has itself to itself when extended, huh? Now in three thirty there he's coming back and talking about the same thing in the mathematical. Again, in beings in abstraction, though that goes back to what we saw before. What is the difference between mathematics and natural science?

[46:55] Well, Plato thought, you know, that what. Natural science, you're knowing the sensible world, right? And in mathematics, you're knowing another world out there, the mathematical world, right? And apparently, the reason why Plato thought this was that he was convinced that you had truth in geometry. It's so clear the definitions and demonstrations of geometry. And he thought implicitly that truth would require, right, that the way you know something be the way it is.

[47:34] And in mathematics, in pure mathematics, that is to say, in geometry, you are knowing something in separation from ordinary matter, in separation from the sensible matter. So in geometry, say, when I consider what a cube is, how it's bound by six squares and so on, does that cube in geometry have any matter in the ordinary sense? Is it hard or soft or hot or cold? Is it a wooden cube or is it a?

[48:10] I have a plastic cube in my office, or is it an ice cube, or what is it? You know, all has been left behind, right? It's abstracted or separated from matter. Aristotle didn't think the mind would be false in understanding cube in separation from wood, like the little wood cube as a child maybe, you know, your toys, and the ice cube and the plastic cube that I have, or whatever other material cube that might be in this world, right?

[48:42] Because that shape is understandable without wood, without plastic, without any sensible matter, right? But you can't understand it without the what? Continuous, right? Because these geometrical things are continuous, huh? And because of the the continuous being there, you can have many individuals of the same kind, like many circles, as he said, one here, one there. And therefore, right? Just or it's like in the cube itself, right?

[49:22] You have six squares, right? The ones here, ones there, ones here, ones here, ones here, ones there, right? Because you have part outside of part. So because you have the continuous there, then a cube or a square and what a cube is or what a square is are not what identical, right? So he's pointing to the fact that the for the straight, like in the straight line, it exists with the what?

[49:46] Continuous, huh? But the what it was to be is other. If being straight, again being straight, that thing is contracted, and a straight are different, right? As if what a straight line is, let's say, or what a line is, and a line, right, or a straight line, are not identical, right? Let it be duality. That was that was Plato's notion, right? Point is one, a line is two, and a triangle is three, and a pyramid is four.

[50:26] Therefore, the soul discerns it by something different, right? Now, in this case, the soul would be knowing what a line is or what a circle is by reason or by the understanding, and by the imagination, it would be imagining an individual circle, right? A circle, a line, right? Okay. In that case, it would be knowing them by different what? Powers, right? As Thomas says in the commentary, you're seeing in a way here the difference between reason or the understanding and both the senses, right, and the imagination, huh?

[51:11] Because the senses and the imagination know only a man, right? A circle, right? See, why the reason or the understanding knows what a man is or what a circle is, right? So that reason is neither what sense nor imagination, but sense and imagination both have a bodily organ, huh? And that's why they receive only the singular, because they receive according to the conditions of a body, which are the conditions of the continuous.

[51:51] But reason directly knows the universal, which is separated then from the continuous, huh? And therefore separated from matter. So we're understanding a material thing in a immaterial way. We're understanding a continuous thing in a non-continuous way. That's why Boethius, you know, at the beginning of logic, and Albert the Great, he always quotes Boethius. You know, a thing is singular when sensed, but universal and understood. And that's why Albert goes on and says, the universal is, therefore, the first thing to be considered in what logic, right?

[52:45] Because logic is talking about the way things are when they're understood, or you could say the first thing to be considered in logic is names said of many things. That's tied up with universality that Albert talks about, huh?

[53:04] Now, that's very interesting, huh? And he shows you a real defect in the modern philosophers and, in particular, the modern logicians, right? Because when they try to do logic or something like logic, right, the thing that most of all suffers is the logic of definition. Now, if you read the dialogues of Plato, you'll see that almost all the dialogues are taken up with what is something. You know, what is virtue?

[53:39] He asks Meno, right? What is piety? He asks Euthyphro, right? He's always asking somebody what is something, right? And we're learning something about how to define and read the dialogues. And Aristotle says that the whole book or the topics there, the book about places, huh? He'd say to some extent the whole book is about defining. So this is an enormous part of of logic in ancient times, and it's kind of you know putting it all in modern, you know, mathematical or symbolic logic books.

[54:17] It's it's kind of a footnote, you know, not the main thing, right? Mill, John Stuart Mill, he says that there's no definitions of things, and it's very strange. But once you understand what the object of reason is, see, the sense that we're learning here is that the object of reason,

[54:48] the object of reason is the what it is of a natural or a mathematical thing that you can see from these examples. Perhaps you can see

[55:13] a little more generally. That's what it is of a sensible. Let's put it this way: what is of a thing sensed or imagined? So you got there are those

[55:41] examples there. Whether you take flesh or water or something else, right? Example of a natural thing, right? More generally, you can say of a sensible thing, you know. Or you take the mathematical examples, right? Something that you can imagine, right? Okay. So you could say that the proper object of our reason is what it is of a natural mathematical thing, the thing sensed or imagined. That's kind of the object that's proportioned to our what mind, right?

[56:13] Okay. But more generally speaking, the object is the what it is, right? And so even when we discover, as a natural philosopher does eventually, that there are immaterial things, right? Things that cannot be sensed or imagined, right? Our reason naturally asks, well, what is it? And if you read the life of Thomas Aquinas, he was famous for, you know, blurting out. What is God?

[56:48] Well, it shows that he was not using his reason, right? Knowing that there is a God, right? He naturally asks, "What is a God?" Right?

[57:01] But notice going back to the proper object here, it's definition that makes what brings out distinctly what a thing is. It makes what that is. So to say you're not interested in the definition of things is to say you're not interested in using your reason and your thinking, and that's basically what its object is.

[57:30] So definition is really fundamental there.