De Anima (On the Soul)
43. Speaking About God: Wise vs. Wisdom, and the Two Objections on Undergoing
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/043-speaking-about-god-wise-vs-wisdom-and-the-two-objections/

[0:00] Now, I was giving a little consequence of this for theology, right? And just come back to that moment now. And saying this is the project object of our reason, the object that's kind of proportioned to our reason. When we try to think about what God is,

[0:31] we're kind of limited here. By our own what kind of natural object here, and in both natural things and in mathematical things, you have a composition of matter and what form, right? Okay.

[1:01] And sometimes Aristotle will say that there is no matter in mathematics. Sometimes he'll say that there is a kind of what understandable matter, meaning the continuous, right? But the imaginable matter. Okay. So you have something like matter and form even in mathematics as well as in natural things. So when we try to understand something that is not a composition of matter and form, right? Our way of our natural way of understanding is kind of inadequate,

[1:38] as Avicenna says, "Divina Substantia, Forma est." Form is something actual; right? It's a pure act, no matter there. Now, notice we think of matter as something that can be something, and form as that by which it is that thing. Okay.

[2:13] So when the wood has been formed, it's now a chair or a table, whatever form has been received, right? And the shape is not the chair, but the shape is that by which the wood is a what chair, right? Okay.

[2:36] So we think of being something as something different than that by which you are that something. And so, when you think about God, we have these two ways of speaking about God.

[2:57] We can say that God is what good, right? Or God is goodness itself. Now, no, it's a material thing. So we sometimes call the abstract and concrete word for one a better name, right? Yeah. But take an example of that for the material world. Take health and healthy.

[3:28] Health and healthy. What's the difference in the way health and healthy signify? Easier terms, health is abstract. Healthy is more concrete. Okay. But now, what is the actual connection between health and healthy? Oh, is health healthy, or something else healthy? Something else is healthy. Yeah. Healthy by the health. Yeah, yeah. I would say something else. I would say a body. Let's say

[4:04] a body is healthy by what? Having health, right? Okay. So health is that by which the body is healthy. So it's not the same thing to be healthy and to be health, right? Okay.

[4:42] A body is healthy, therefore, by health. So the body is like the matter or the subject, and the health is like the what form.

[5:01] And the body is said to be healthy, and health is not said to be healthy, but that by which something else is healthy, right? Yeah. But notice that implies, in that way of speaking, a distinction between health and what has the health, right?

[5:22] Distinction between those two. Let's take another example, right? Suppose you say that. The mind of Thomas, or the mind of Aristotle, is wise, right? Okay. Say the mind is wise.

[5:53] Does "wise" mean the same thing there as wisdom? I wouldn't say if the mind of Aristotle is wisdom. I might say the mind of Aristotle is wise, huh?

[6:09] Why? Because it has some wisdom in it, right? Okay. The mind in this case as wisdom. Wisdom is again like a form, right? The mind is the subject, huh? Let's say the mind is wise by the wisdom it has, huh?

[6:40] Fragment. The wisdom it has is wise. No, it's the mind that's wise. It's not the wisdom that is wise, but the wisdom is that by which the mind can be said to be wise. Okay. You get a little bit of the idea, huh?

[7:03] Would you say that sugar is sweet? Hmm. Yeah. Would you say that sugar is sweetness? No. It's incorrect, isn't it? But is there a connection between sweetness there and being sweet? Yeah. It's because the sugar has sweetness that it is sweet, right? But the haver and the had are they the same?

[7:41] No. No. No. And it's by sweetness that the sugar is sweet, right? Okay. And is this book colored? Hmm. Mhm. Yeah. Is it color? Yeah. No. But it has a color, right? Mhm. And color is that by which the colored is colored, right? Mhm. Okay. So notice how how what has the color, or what has the wisdom, or what has the health, right? What has the sweetness is like matter or like the subject, right?

[8:22] And the health or the sweetness or the wisdom or the color is as a what form, right? By which it is something, right? Okay.

[8:35] So can we avoid using words of that kind in talking about God? Right? I mean, is God wise? Isn't that wise? Let me say we're wise, and God is not wise. Remember the very beginning there, right? You know they said to Pythagoras, "You're wise, huh? " Because he discovered these wonderful things like the Pythagorean theorem, and other things, I guess. And he says, "Don't call me wise, right?

[9:17] God alone is wise, huh? " Okay. And all the great Greek philosophers say either God alone should be called wise, as Pythagoras said, right? Or only God in the four perfect senses wise, huh? Okay. So now we're saying God is wise. Maybe the philosopher is wise in some imperfect way, right?

[9:41] But when you say wise of the philosopher, you don't mean that he's wisdom itself, do you? You mean that he has wisdom, and his wisdom is not himself, right? Okay.

[9:57] Maybe Heraclitus is trying to get at this, when he said, you know, the divine nature has, you know, judgment, you know, but the human nature does not, right? It's something that we're added to it, right? Okay. Okay. So anyway, the wisdom of Aristotle or the wisdom of any philosopher is not that philosopher. It's something that he may have, right? But what he has is not himself. It's a real distinction, right?

[10:27] And by it, he's wise, huh? Okay. Now, could God be wise if he had no wisdom? Right. Could he? So you're kind of forced to say that, you know, from you know, it doesn't even make sense to say that God has no wisdom and yet he's wise. Right. But on the other hand, if you say that God does has has wisdom, like Socrates has wisdom or Aristotle does, then you seem to be admitting composition in God, right?

[11:19] Okay. Well, now, can you avoid these ways that all seem defective, right? In speaking about God, or must you, like Dionysius and Thomas Aquinas, say both affirm and deny these words of God?

[11:48] Right, so you can both say that God is wisdom, right? Because there is no distinction between God and His wisdom, right? There is no distinction between the haver and the had here, right? As Thomas often says, God is whatever He has, which almost seems to be contrary to saying that He has something, right? Because that seems to signify a distinction or imply a distinction between the haver and the had, right?

[12:30] But we're forced to speak that way, right? Because of what Aristotle said here, right? That's the way our mind naturally what understands. It naturally understands as its, you know, proportional object. You might say what it is, right, of a thing sensed or imagined, and so as a way of thinking about things, is not adequate to thinking about God or even about an angel, for that matter, right?

[12:59] So we might say about an angel, you know, does an angel have a nature? You see, does Gabriel have a nature? Well, yeah, in some sense you have to say that, right?

[13:24] But in saying that angel has a nature, you seem to be saying that what an angel is and the angel are not identical, right?

[13:36] Like when you say Socrates has human nature, there is some distinction between Socrates and human nature, right? So we have to, therefore, what both affirm and deny that God is wise, huh?

[14:08] We have to affirm that He is wise because He is wise, but we have to deny that the distinction between God and His wisdom, right? Which wise

[14:21] seems to imply what has wisdom, and then we can affirm that God is wisdom, right? Because God is whatever He has, because God is altogether simple, right? So we say God is wisdom, but then we seem to be saying that God is that by which something is wise. And therefore, he's not wise. Just like health is not healthy, but something else is healthy, it doesn't help, right?

[14:51] So, if we say God is wisdom, we seem to be saying that God is that by which things or something is wise. He's not wise himself. So we have to, in that sense, we deny God is wisdom itself, right? He's not just that by which something is wise, but he's also wise. But there's no distinction between himself and his wisdom. So he is wisdom. God is wisdom itself.

[15:21] That's what we come up in everything we say about God. We say, "Is God just? Is God merciful? " Yeah, he is. Isn't he just and merciful? Right. But does just signify? Justice, or does it have a different meaning? Just.

[15:51] Well, justice seems to signify what has justice, right? Not justice itself, right? But is there really a distinction between God and His virtue of justice?

[16:07] There's no composition at all in God, so we're forced to say God is what? Justice itself, right? He is mercy itself, right? Okay. But we can deny these

[16:29] mercy or justice itself because he's not that by which something is just, right? And not just, right? Okay. But we can affirm that he's justice itself because he's altogether simple, right? And he is whatever he has, right? Even that way of speaking, you know, looks back to this, right? That's why I should use the word "has" at all. We have to, though.

[17:06] Um. Something grammatically, you know, you don't see so clearly as those examples. That's why I took those examples. But when you say, "Does God love? "

[17:21] Yeah, he loves himself. He loves us, right? Okay. Um. But now, when when Saint John says that God is love, right? Well, there grammatically it's a little harder to see, right? But in a sense, you're saying what? It's like saying that God is wisdom, right? Okay. It's like if I say, you know, by my love, I'm loving you. Okay. Okay. But in God, there's no what. Distinction, right?

[18:05] Between His loving you and that by which He loves you. I see. The point is, can you avoid in speaking about God, right? Avoid both of those words, right?

[18:31] When he takes up the goodness of God, there, right? In the Summa Contra Gentiles, you have one capitulum, one little chapter there that shows that God is good, right? And then you have another one that shows that God is goodness itself.

[18:46] See. Can you invent, in other words, a word that would be adequate to God, right? Well, you just be using words without any thoughts to correspond, huh?

[19:17] In other words, in this life at least, now we can't transcend, right, our natural way of understanding, and so we're forced to to use both ways of speaking, and to see a defect in both, huh? Because of that,

[19:43] even you know, Thomas says a nice thing. in Summa Contra Gentiles there. he's talking about the fact that we have statements about God. Now, if these statements that we show about God are true about God, if we're really learning something about God, we show that God is good, or God is knowing, or God is just, or whatever we show about Him, right? God is simple. Is the subject and the predicate have the same meaning?

[20:20] When I say God is just, God is merciful, God is good, God is knowing. Yeah, we're saying something different in each case, aren't we?

[20:35] So there is some difference in meaning there between the subject and the predicate, isn't it? That's that's just saying the same thing over again, We've got roses, a rose a rose a rose, Are we?

[20:51] But the multiplicity there in meaning, I say God is good, God is just, God is merciful, right? The multiplicity in meaning there is in our mind. Multiplicity is not in God, but when we say that God is this, right?

[21:13] We say God is goodness, right? God is love itself. We mean that in the thing they're identical, right? But nevertheless, we have two thoughts there.

[21:30] What's one in God is multiplied in the creature. That's why you know Thomas quotes one. of the Old Testament I can't find. like one of that book in the old testament. But he quotes one of the prophets saying, in that day there will be only one name for God. He's referring, therefore, to what The beatific vision, right? The beatific vision there's going to be only unity there, even our knowledge, right?

[22:03] There won't be any multiplicity there, right? Because then you wouldn't be seeing God as He is, right? In this life, we know God through creatures, right?

[22:19] And therefore, through the multiplicity which is the origin, right? But the origin it has no multiplicity. And of course, I always compare that a bit to

[22:36] the circle, right? I mean it's The simplest way of seeing a little bit the way you proceed there, and you take the circle, right? And you take as many radii as you want to, and the beginning of all these radii is one point, right? But the end point of all these is what different, right? Well, these many end points correspond to what the creatures, right? What's one in God?

[23:13] It proceeds from God to creatures. It's what necessarily multiply them. Um? But our mind is, of course, as Sherlock Holmes says, naturally backwards, right? So we're starting with the multiplicity of creatures, and we're going back to the one what origin of it, right? You see, so that's why there's a multiplicity of thoughts in our mind corresponding to the one God, right?

[23:49] Just like if I knew each one of these points here on the circumference of the circle by itself, right? Which is what we do when we know the creatures, right? And then he said, now God is the beginning of this line. He's also the beginning of this line. He's also the beginning of that line. I'm talking about one and the same point, but I'm what defining it or understanding it as the beginning of a different line in each case?

[24:21] Because God is the beginning of all the many perfections in the creatures, but there's no multiplicity in God of those perfections, right? So you say God is the beginning. Of all true love, right? Or God is the beginning of all true knowledge. Or God is the beginning of all true justice, and so on. Right? You see, and these things are multiplied in creatures, right? See, but I could speak at the one same point and say it's the beginning of this line.

[25:00] It's the beginning of this line, right? And these lines are not the same. So when Thomas is trying to understand how we speak about God and how we can and cannot use words like good and goodness, right? Just and justice, right?

[25:27] Wise and and wisdom, right? Et cetera, right? He sees why we have that multiplicity, right? Going back to what Aristotle said here, and then he realizes how, like Dionysius says, right? We can affirm and deny these names, right? Of God, huh? That's the way we have to know God. So far, I think we can know Him in this

[26:02] less-than-perfect world. Okay. Now, of course, Plato thought that the not only there was a mathematical world, but also that there was a what world of universals, which he called the forms.

[26:32] Okay. And again, because he thought the truth required right that the way we know be the way things are. So, if we truly know the universal as we do in separation from the singulars, then it must what

[26:52] truly exist in separation from the singulars. See, then the universals particulars in that way, and sort of like then the reason is like sensible as you say, this other little world of universals or something. Yeah, well, see, for Plato, you see, the universals would exist in separation from the singulars and in separation from our mind, right? Yeah. Okay. And some way, you know, not fully explained by Plato, matter can partake of these forms, right?

[27:25] Right. And our mind can be in contact with these forms. Right. See, but Plato thought, if you read the Republic, there that you know we're kind of turned in the direction of sensible things,

[27:45] and we've got to turn the soul around, right? And the midway point is to turn the way to the mathematical world, which is sort of in between. It's more immaterial than the sensible world, but still somewhat material because you have the continuous there. And then turn the soul all way around to the what forms? Okay. Now,

[28:24] as if you could know the forms as a word directly, but you had to turn away from all these sensible things. That's why Plato had a certain maybe attraction for the Church Fathers when they're talking about what really is a supernatural knowledge, right? You know, what they call the dark night of the soul and so on, where the soul in a way is turning away from the sensible world, right?

[28:48] Uh huh But That's not really the natural way to know these higher things, huh? The natural way to know it is is by reasoning from the sensible things. So Aristotle shows in the physics, what a man is can't really exist outside the mind, in a world by itself, because then you'd have no what matter there at all, right? And so, what a man is would not really be an animal with reason.

[29:32] But to bring in matter, then you've got to bring back in the individual, right? Aristotle says the universals exist only in the mind as universal. But nevertheless, when Plato thought this way, in the forms, the world of forms is only one of each kind.

[29:53] And so, in a way, he's enabling us to see something. He suggested there, in a sense, right, that there really are a world of immaterial things, right? In those immaterial things, what they are in the individual would be the same, and so there'd be no two individuals in the immaterial world of the exact same kind. And Plato, way saw that, and they kind of falsely understood the nature of those immaterial things.

[30:24] One point Aristotle kind of makes fun of Plato. He says it's a little bit like the the Homer and the poets that he criticized, you know, who couldn't really understand God, so he made Zeus kind of a Superman, right?

[30:38] And you know, in some ways, Homer's gods and goddesses are very anthropomorphic, though. You know, and you know how Zeus and his wife Hera on opposite sides of the Trojan War, who wants to win, right? And he's terribly concerned Zeus about the domestic friction going to be between him and his wife. If he too openly, you know, supports the the one side, you know, against the side that she's supporting, and he's deeply troubled.

[31:12] his own sense My husband didn't realize this. Terribly upset about this, you know. And so, there's a lot of likelihood in terms of human beings, and so and of course, some of the early philosophers like Xenophon had said, you know, that if horses could make statues, they'd make their gods look like horses. He's making fun of the poets, right, for they can't really understand the nature of.

[31:38] So Aristotle said, in a way, Plato not really understanding, you know, the natures of these immaterial things, right? He imagined them to have the way the natures of material things, but kind of what. Elevated in some way, huh? So it's a little bit like what he's doing, right? Kind of a biting criticism there on Aristotle's part. But nevertheless, Plato is helping us to see, in a way, right, that if there were natures that were not material and not in the continuous, huh?

[32:12] In those natures, the individual, the nature, the what it is, would be identical, and there wouldn't be two of the same kind. So Plato, in some sense, is always mistaken. Other ways, is seeing something about the way these things will be, huh? So in just a world of forms, you you just have like a form of man, not a form of Socrates, right? Right, right. Just what a man is, yeah.

[32:39] Partake of this form of man, yeah, yeah, yeah. But see, it's the very nature of man to be material, yeah. And so, if we really had a man outside of our mind, he'd have to be material. In the same way, if we really had a triangle outside of our mind, right, would have to be in the continuous and therefore singular. Excuse me afterwards. So does that mean that the angels are perfectly simple and not composite?

[33:12] No, there's a composition of what they are in their existence, okay. But there's not a composition of matter and form. They are composite, but they're not composite the way we're composite. Yeah, yeah. See, in us there's a double composition of matter and form, right? And then of our whole nature with our existence. But in the angels, the nature is altogether simple, but the existence is not identical with the nature.

[33:43] Only in God are the existence and the nature identical. So when God says, "I am who am," right? He's pointing out that his nature and the existence of his nature, the being of it, are the same. Okay. But that's way ahead of ourselves. Another part of philosophy, right? So we don't even know that now. Okay. Like my old teacher Kasurik used to say, you know, when your soul leaves your body and you see your guardian angel, right?

[34:17] God, it's going to be a first impression. This is God. I mean, this is so wonderful. I mean, this must be God. And your guardian angel say, "No, no, I'm way down. Got a long way to go." Yeah, my angels are really something, huh? These are really.

[34:37] That's why when Thomas talks about the reasons of incarnation, one reason is so we won't what have devil worship, right? Because though the devil is extremely evil in his will, his nature is something really what tremendous, right? And so man can say, "I am so, you know, inferior to this creature, you know, that I have to, you know, subordinate myself to him." And that's a real temptation.

[35:02] Say, so what would God do? Come down and what become man, right, to give us a a proper respect for human nature, not to submit it to the the devil, right?

[35:19] Okay. Now, in the remaining part, we're starting in 331 down to 335. Aristotle is going to raise two objections and give an answer to both objections.

[35:47] And at the same time, I think these objections and the answers to them are going to be kind of a bridge into what he's going to talk about in the beginning of the next chapter. That there's in man, in addition to what we think of as our reason understanding, this understanding undergoes, right? There's going to have to be another ability or power, which he's going to call the active understanding, huh?

[36:25] Or in Latin, the agent intellect, they call, it, huh? Okay. And the reason for that is that those universals, huh? That act upon our reason directly.

[36:43] They don't exist in the world out there to act upon us. And the images and the sensations that we have are all of the what singular. And those material singulars cannot directly act upon the immaterial understanding. So Aristotle's sense is forced once he rejects, once he rejected the idea of Plato that there's a world of universal forms that can act upon our what reason directly in the same way that sensible things act upon the senses.

[37:24] There is no world of universal forms out there, right? So there's a kind of a hiatus there, kind of a gap there between the material, sensible, and imaginable things, which are all singular, right? And the universal forms, which the reason that we talk about so far, we see, right? And so he saw the need to recognize that man has another ability besides this—an active ability, an ability to separate the universal from the what singular—and therefore an ability that makes actually what understandable. Things that are only what potentially understandable, things that are singular, right?

[38:14] Okay. But I say we'll be talking about that next time, the next chapter. But I think something of these difficulties, um, they're kind of resolved in this part here. I mean, the two difficulties are raised and he gives answers. But as you think about it more and more, you start to see, hey, there's another piece here in the jigsaw puzzle, and that's partly because of the fact that he's disagreed with Plato, right?

[38:44] So if there was a world of universal forms as well as a sensible world, right, then the sensible world and the individuals could act directly upon the senses as they do, and the world of forms could some way act upon maybe our reason directly. But if that doesn't exist, right, and things are universal only in the undergoing, then you need some ability to separate the universal from the singular, an ability to make actually understandable, and immaterial and universal something that's only potentially so.

[39:24] But that's more explicitly to say for the next chapter. Yeah, maybe this one time or a break. Yeah, have what I did right. So in 331 and 332, now he's going to raise two objections, huh? And then he's going to um

[39:50] give us a reply to both, okay? Now the first objection he's saying, but if the mind is simple, right? If the reason or the understanding is simple, right?

[40:05] And impassable, it's not a body that can be what altered or something, right? And has nothing in common with anything. It has none of these what material natures, right? In it, huh? Which is something like what Anaxagoras said about the greater mind. It's not mixed with anything else, right?

[40:30] Someone will be at a loss about how to understand if understanding is, as we said, some kind of suffering or undergoing. For a thing seems to act while another suffers, undergo, insofar as there is something common present in what both, huh? See, he's looking back at the study of material things, right? And two material bodies, one acts upon the other, right?

[41:09] And it couldn't if there weren't both what material, right? Okay. So if the understanding or the reason, as we said in the first part of this chapter, is has no material nature at all, how can it be acted upon by a what material body, right? Okay.

[41:37] And especially, how can it be acted upon in the way that one material body acts upon another material body? Okay. Now he's going to give a reply to this, right? Somewhat, huh? But also, in a sense, maybe leaves you a little bit the idea that there is a little problem there, right? About how a material body can act upon something what immaterial, huh? Yeah. Notice, one body can act upon another body because they're both material, and if I take, you know, if I had a um, oh, let's say you had a cookie press, right?

[42:19] And you're hitting the dough there, right? Okay. And they come in contact the two bodies, and one is harder than the other, and one is softer, right? So the one acts upon the other, right? And imprints its shape upon it, right? Like in the old days when they'd stamp the wax with the thing, right? Okay. Well, how can a material body and an immaterial thing even come in contact?

[42:45] They don't have. Immaterial thing doesn't have any what surface, huh? Otherwise, it'd be like a body with a surface, huh? See, this is a problem, right? Okay. Um.

[43:02] Now you'll see that he'll reply to it, but but more in terms of the fact that the word suffering or undergoing, which is a word I use, has more than one meaning, right? And the way that reason or the understanding undergoes is not the way matter undergoes, right? And it's not even the way exactly the senses undergo. That's more like it, right? So that's going to be part of the answer, but still there's a little bit of a problem there, maybe remaining, right?

[43:37] It's not fully cleared up until he brings out that there must be something active in the soul in addition to what the senses, huh? In order for reason to be acted upon by the what universal, because what is in the senses or in the imagination even is not actually universal, and that therefore not actually understandable, and therefore not actually what able to act upon the the what reason, right?

[44:13] Okay. And when it's actually understandable, then already it's in a way what immaterial, right? Okay. Now, now the second part here. The difficulty is not really just with the the mind itself, how is it understandable? But going back to something that was touched upon, we talked about the senses and something that is said about reason here, and we'll come out later in this the end of the whole section here on the senses and the reason that the soul is in some way all things.

[45:09] Remember that thing we were going to anticipate? Because it senses and understands, right? And when you are actually sensing and understanding in a way, you are what you sense and what you understand. Okay. Now let's manifest this just a bit with reason. See,

[45:34] what has the nature of a dog? A dog. Yeah. Okay. What has the nature of a cat? Cat. Yeah. Okay. Now, when I have in my mind or reason a definition of what a dog is or the definition of what a cat is, I have the nature of a dog or cat, right? Right. Yes. In some way. Yeah. So in some way, both the dog and the cat.

[46:04] Right. So the same way, right? In sensing, what has the color red? Right. Is red, right? Has the color, yeah, I've got that little thing there is red, huh? Okay. But when I see the color red, I have the color red in my eye, right? So in a way, my eye is the color red and the color green and so on. When I actually what sense, huh?

[46:37] So in a way, the soul by sensing and understanding, as you'll say later on, there is in a way all things, huh? And that's why, in some ways, appears more like God, right, than anything else in the material world, huh? Because God, in some ways, all things, huh? Just like you know when Thomas interprets God's words to Moses or Abraham, you know, "I will show you every good."

[47:07] Thomas says, "That is myself." You know, in some simple way, he's everything, huh? Okay. Now, if the understanding in act is the understandable in act, if they're the same, right?

[47:30] Why isn't it that everything that's understandable, why doesn't it also understand? This is the problem he's touching upon, right? If the understanding is able to understand, right? If when it actually understands, it is the understandable, right? Then there seems to be a kind of unity there between what understands and the understandable. Why not then? Why doesn't everything that's understandable also understand?

[48:07] It's kind of a strange problem, you know, but it's interesting problem, right? And now tied into this also is how the what, how the soul or how the the reason itself understands itself, right? Well, if it understands itself and it becomes understandable, right? Why doesn't everything else understand itself when it becomes understandable?

[48:40] Why isn't understanding found everywhere? Moreover, he says in three thirty-two there, someone will be at a loss as to whether mind, reason, understanding is itself intelligible or understandable, right?

[49:03] For either mind will be present in the other understandables, right? Other things because whatever is understandable will be what also understanding because the understanding and the understandable are the same.

[49:24] For either the mind will be present in the other understandables if it is not itself understandable due to something else, while the understandable is something one in species or in kind, or else it will have something mixed with it which something makes it understandable just like the other understandables?

[49:49] He's going to reply to these objections, huh? And now to the first one, he's going to point out that the word suffering, right, has more than one meaning. As I mentioned before, the English word suffering seems to be stuck on its first what meaning, right? Okay. Now in in Greek, paschein, right, the first meaning of paschein or the first meaning of passio in Latin way, which they translated, is suffering, right?

[50:29] So they speak of the passion of our Lord, right? That means his suffering, right? Is being acted upon in a way that is contrary to his nature, right? That is destructive, in fact, of his nature, right?

[50:50] Now you can see a little bit how the word passion, not only Latin but even English, was applied to other things. We speak of the passions of the soul. Sometimes we call the emotions, passions, or passionate love. Now, why do we call them passions? Are they always a suffering?

[51:18] Well, in this kind of clever dialogue between Benedict and Beatrice, there in the play, Beatrice says to Benedict, "Which of my good qualities did you first suffer love?" And he says, "Well, you know, it's a good epithet, suffer love, right? Because against his will, he loves her, right? Okay. So, in a way, he's been acted upon. His heart has been what acted upon, right? Despite himself, he can't help but what love her, right?

[51:57] Okay. But is this being acted upon contrary to your nature? Not necessarily, right? Okay. So there is a little bit with the Latin word passion has come into English, right? We speak of the passion of our Lord. That corresponds to the first meaning of passio in Latin, which and the first meaning of Greek word paschein there, which he translates by what suffering, right? Huh? That does catch the first meaning.

[52:29] But as they say, both in Greek and in Latin, the word was carried over, right? To receiving something that is not destructive of your nature, and then finally, even to receiving something that is not only not destructive of your nature, but is actually fulfilling you, perfecting you, right? Okay.

[52:57] But when he translates the word suffering, you can't see that in English word because the English word suffering is stuck on the what first meaning, right? I think I explained that a bit, right? This is part of the problem with with translation, right? That

[53:15] words and all key words, in fact, in philosophy, they have many meanings, right? And sometimes in one language, a word has acquired many meanings, and now when that word is used in that language, and now you have to translate it, and maybe they have a word in English that corresponds to one or two or something of the meanings, but not to all of them, then you have a little what impossibility, right, of really translating fully, right?

[53:50] Okay. Now, I told you the way I kind of tried to translate this. Instead of translating it suffering, I translated. Undergoing, right? Okay. And undergoing means that you're what being acted upon, right? Undergoing is almost a synonym of being acted upon, right? But I think to some extent, undergoing still has a little bit of the original meaning there, that you're being acted upon in a way that is harmful to you, okay?

[54:35] And you can see that a little bit when we speak of I'm under the weather. See? What does it mean to say you're under the weather? What's the original meaning of that?

[54:47] It means that the elements have acted upon you in a way that's made you kind of what sick, right? Right? I'm under the weather. That means a little bit sick, isn't it? See? So I've been acted upon in a way that's harmful. Or when we say about somebody that he's undergone a lot in life, right? Does that mean he's had a hell of a good time or what?

[55:17] No, we're thinking that he's what suffered many things in his life, right? He's undergone awful lot. You hear people saying that, don't you? See? So undergoing to some extent has something to be a suffering, but to some extent it's not as tied to that first meaning.

[55:44] And in many cases, you see undergoing as a synonym for what being acted upon. And you can be acted upon something in a way that is not harmful to you, right? And even can be acted upon something in a way that is fulfilling to one. Right? And I mentioned how Gabriel Marcel that he criticized Jean Paul Sartre for seeing all undergoing as what destructive of one's integrity, of one's freedom, of one's something.

[56:22] And you know, I think he's right to criticize Sartre there, right? That he's he's tied to that meaning of undergoing, right, which is harmful to one. But if you don't allow any receiving, how could there even be what friendship, right? Let alone father and child or teacher and student or all of this would be what imposing yourself upon somebody, right? Okay. No, the word "impose" probably you know, English, that first meaning is something bad, right?

[57:00] If I impose myself upon you, I'm kind of forcing myself upon you in a way that is. Not respectful of you and your nature and so on, right? Yes, but he sees all acting upon another person, right, as what imposing yourself upon them, and therefore to be what rejected. Well, then you'd have to give up father and son, or teacher and student, or even friends, right? Because friends act upon each other in many ways, huh?

[57:32] And you know, sometimes one friend is down and dumps, or one friend is upset, or one friend is in need, and the other friend acts upon him in a way that improves him, right? And vice versa, when the other friend is down, right? So you need friends among other reasons. So Monsignor Dionne you know, it's because those who are can't move the word, right? They're stuck on the first meaning of the word, and they can't what carry it over, right?

[58:03] Okay. I used to sometimes play with the word "loss right Is it is loss something good or not? What would you say? No, it's it's it's a loss. Okay, I say, but it's always bad, I say, to lose your mind.

[58:31] I'd say, you know, it's always bad to lose your heart. So it depends upon to whom you lose it, right? Okay. So, but notice, if you lose your heart to God, let's say,

[58:52] this is not a loss, really. This is a what? A gain, right? But notice how far you move from a loss, kind of a bad sense, right, to something that's really a gain. Because you're being perfected by loving God, right? Huh? You're being fulfilled, huh? Okay. Your heart was made for this, right? Okay. And so, likewise, with the senses, receive their object unless they're too too strong for the sense to break it down, right?

[59:26] You know, I mean, if you if you taste something that ruins your taste buds, you can't taste anything from then on, right? That would be suffering, right? You know. But if you receive something with your senses so that you know it, that's a fulfillment of the senses, right? They're for the sake of seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting these things around us, right? And so, when you receive these things in a way that you can know them, right, that's a what?

[59:57] That's a gain for the senses, right? By receiving that, huh? See. And if what's yours, this is the way the what reason receives, huh? Because it can't be corrupted like a bodily organ can be corrupted, right? So, its receiving, its undergoing is really a what? Perfecting of it, huh? See. It's a little bit hard to see that, but the word "suffering" that the translator has here, because although it it captures the first meaning of the word in in Greek or in Latin, in Greek here, the word is kind of stuck in English there, right?

[1:00:41] You see that? Okay. I think I mentioned another example of the same thing that's kind of popular too, but the the Greek word dunamis, right? Well, the first sense of dunamis in Greek is is an active power, right, to build, to to move other things, to change other things, huh? And you can see that in the English words derived from dunamis, like dynamo, right, that kind of thing, or dynamite, right?

[1:01:16] Okay. Now, sometimes they translate. That's why we use the word dunamis for the dunamis of the soul, right? The various powers of the soul they translate, and so when they'll translate it by potentia let's say in Latin, and sometimes they translate in English by the word what power, right? So you may see, you know, a treatise of Thomas on the potentias of the soul, translated, you know, on the powers of the soul, right?

[1:01:48] Okay. But the word power in English seems to be tied or stuck, like the word suffering, to the first meaning, right? Okay. So if I get in the ring with Cassius Clay, to take my typical example, he's hell out of me. He seems to be powerful, and I don't seem to be what powerful at all. I'm weak, you see, and I'm being, you know, smashed around by him, right?

[1:02:22] Yeah. So, but sometimes I would translate the word potens or potency by the word what ability, right? Okay. Now the word ability maybe is not as as exactly the first meaning of the word in Greek or Latin, although I think even the word ability we think of the active first, right? Okay. So when the pianist sits down and plays the piano marvelously, we think of the pianist as having ability, not the piano.

[1:03:00] But you could say the piano was able to be played, right? The keys don't stick, you know. You see. And Berquist, you could also say is what you say Cassius Clay has all the ability at first because you're thinking the ability to what hit the other guy, hit him real hard, and so on, right? And Berquist apparently has no ability, but we could say Berquist is able to be hit, though.

[1:03:26] He's able to be beaten. He's able to be smashed. And we use the word able in that sense for something that is what able to be acted upon as in reverse, huh? So we say breakable, beatable, malleable,

[1:03:46] and so on, right? Okay. It's the same point I'm trying to make here, right? See when they translate by power, like it's a little bit like translating the Greek word here by suffering, right? You're translating into an English word that corresponds to the first meaning of the word in Greek, but seems to be what not carried over to the later meanings of the word in Greek. But the word ability is more carried over, right?

[1:04:13] Um. And the word undergoing, I think, is more carried over than the word suffering. Because that's a problem you have a a little bit with translations, you know? Okay. Um. Sometimes there's no word at all, right? You know.

[1:04:42] So he says, "Indeed, suffering," and of course, this makes sense more than the Greek. But I would say, "Indeed, undergoing," according to something common was distinguished earlier, right? We see that the mind is somehow in potency to the understandables, right? But before it understands, it is nothing in act. Well, he's merely referring back to what he said when he talked about the senses, right? That the senses undergo in a way that is not what contrary to their nature, or need not be contrary to their nature, right?

[1:05:15] Where undergoing simply means to what Receive something, right? And in this case, to receive something that is actually what perfecting you, huh? You see that? Okay.

[1:05:34] But before it receives any of these things, it's none of them in act, huh? Just as the clay before it receives the shape of a sphere or a cube, right, There's none of these in act, right? But when the clay receives the shape of a sphere or cube, it loses the shape it has. The senses are not doing that, right? And even more so, the reason is not losing the shape it had, if it did have a shape, right?

[1:06:08] It's none of these things in act before it receives them. And so he compares it to a writing tablet, to a piece of paper, to a slate or something, to a blackboard before something has been written upon it, right?

[1:06:24] Okay. So I often make a joke about that. I come to class, and I race the boards. That's the way the human mind is in the beginning, you know. It's like a blank tablet, but it still gets written, and gradually it gets written upon it. This is just what happens in the case of the what mind, huh? Okay. And a way that solves the objection, right? Because you're saying it doesn't receive in the way that another body receives the actions of a body, right?

[1:06:57] But there's still a little problem in there. Why or how is it that a material thing can act upon an immaterial thing? Because the material thing is not actually understandable. And so what makes something that is not actually understandable to be actually understandable? Well, that's another ability of man, which is going to call the act of understanding in the next part, right? Okay, so there's going to be, you know, more illumination upon this, right?

[1:07:34] But the first part is to realize that it's undergoing is a different sense of undergoing, even from that of senses, but especially from that of what matter, right?

[1:07:56] But it can't undergo without having something able to act upon it in a way that matter cannot act upon something, and that's not yet been clarified, right? Okay.

[1:08:13] Do declare, huh Do you want to say.