De Anima (On the Soul)
54. De Anima III.10: Desire, Practical Reason, and Looking Before and After
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/4-de-anima/054-de-anima-iii-10-desire-practical-reason-and-looking-before/

[0:00] they have something for the imagination, they tend to elevate it. But but he doesn't exactly try to appeal to imagination in the way that the poet does. Let's do a little prayer first. Name of the Father and the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightened guardian angel, strengthen the lights of our minds, order to open our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, Pray for us.

[0:34] and help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. So we're up to chapter ten here, right, on page forty-seven, and the previous part, as you recall, had been dialectical. Now he's going to determine the truth here, right? And first, in general, in this

[0:59] Thomas's fifteenth reading there, and then some particular differences starting down in three eighty and going into chapter eleven. So he begins by saying, "It appears, however, that these two are movers, appetite and what mind, huh? "

[1:24] And the Greek word there for mind is nous, right? If someone should put down imagination, huh, as a certain what understanding or thinking, huh? That's interesting the way Aristotle's speaking here, right? He's using mind here to include both the reason or understanding and the imagination, right? Okay.

[1:50] Now I think I was mentioning how Thomas brought in, in fact, in Henry the Fifth there, right? Shakespeare is putting on a play that is hard to confine on a little stage, right? And so each act almost has a chorus that comes out and asking you to use your imagination, you know, and use your thinking, you know, to fill out the stage. But the way he alternates back and forth between what imagining and thinking, okay?

[2:21] And so he's saying that the two movers are what desire and either what understanding or imagination. For many things, he says, follow imagination contrary to what

[2:49] knowledge, right? To science, huh? Meaning what? There are many men, right, who act on images rather than on what understanding or thought, right? And in the other animals who don't have mind or reason, it has to be the imagination on which they what act, right? Huh?

[3:18] Therefore, both of these, mind, including now imagination, and desire, are motive according to place. He's talking about what is the first what origin you might say of motion from one place to another, right? And he says there's two sources of this, right? One is mind or imagination, and the other is some kind of what desire, right? Okay.

[3:51] Now, in the next part here, he's going to reduce to some extent these two causes to something before them, something one, right? That unites the two, and that's going to turn out to be what the good desired, right? Because that good, and ultimately that good is an end. That end is both desired or wanted, but it's also what known, right? And reason reasons out how that end can be achieved, right?

[4:34] And so that end or good desired is the starting point for the practical reasons discourse as to how this end can be what achieved, right?

[4:55] But of course, as he goes on to point out, this is going to be the practical mind, the practical reason. Okay. I mean, however, that mind which reasons for the sake of something and is what practical, right?

[5:17] It differs from the speculative mind by its what end. Okay. So, in the Greek word, you're speaking of the the praktikos, the practical, right? Nous or understanding, as opposed to the what theoretical, right? Or looking. Now, this is a distinction that

[5:48] is made now not in the sense that man has two different. I'll figure that. Okay. Not in the sense that man has two different minds or reasons, right? But you're talking about one and the same mind or reason with two different what ends, huh? Okay. So. What they call theoretical,

[6:14] or if you want to speak English, looking reason, right? There, the end or purpose is simply to know what the truth, then, about something, okay? But the practical,

[6:41] or if you want to use the word doing, right? The practical or doing reason, there the end is not truth, but the doing or making of something, huh?

[7:06] I notice you have anticipation of that in the eye, right? And sometimes we speak of reason as the eye of the soul. The word eye originally refers, of course, to the bodily eye, right? But say Gregory the Great, huh? In his Moralia, we refer to reason sometimes as the eye of the soul. And so as a concrete way of speaking, he says, anger disturbs the eye of the soul.

[7:45] So the eye of the soul, meaning reason, doesn't see so clearly when you're angry, right? When you calm down, you see more clearly, right? So,

[7:57] but notice, huh? In the eye of the body, the eye, original sense of the word, we sometimes use our eye just to see something.

[8:13] So somebody might go out, you know, to look at the fall foliage, right? Just because it's what beautiful, right? And so he's looking at the foliage not for the sake of making or doing anything, but there's no end beyond the seeing itself. The seeing is something beautiful. But when I drive my car up here, I'm looking at the road and the other cars not because they're beautiful, but so I can drive my car and with a reasonable chance of getting it, right?

[8:45] Okay. So sometimes I use my eye to what? Just to see, and sometimes to do or make something, huh? And the same with my ear, right? I might listen to Mozart with my ear just to hear him, right? When somebody yells, "Watch out!" I better be hearing that not because that is a beautiful sound. But because I can act upon that, right? Or when I stop at the gasoline station and ask directions or something, right?

[9:19] It's not because he's Pavarotti and he's got a beautiful voice, but I want to hear something in order to do something, right? So this is an important distinction. Now, it's not that we have two different powers there, right? It's not like you know, with one eye I see for its own sake, and another eye I see to do or make. No, it's the same eyes that have both ends, right?

[9:45] But sometimes the end is just to know; other times the end is to make or to do something. Incidentally, with that use of Aristotle's there of the mind there to kind of include the imagination,

[10:04] I know Shakespeare uses the phrase sometimes for the imagination. He calls it the mind's eye, like in Hamlet there, right? In Hamlet. Horatio and his what, Rosencrantz and so on, they have seen with their eye, right, the ghost of Hamlet's father, right, and they've come to tell Hamlet about this. Something's rotten in this state of Denmark. And before they have a chance to tell Hamlet about what they've seen at the night watch, Hamlet says, "I can see my father now," and they're looking around for the ghost, right?

[10:48] And Hamlet is saying, "In my mind's eye," meaning he can picture his father and what his father looked like. So it's interesting that he uses the mind's eye there for the what imagination for it pictures things. Why Gregory the Great uses what the word eye there, the eye of the soul, to what to name the reason itself? So there's some similarity there, right, between the imagination and reason, which is that they can both know something in the absence of it.

[11:25] The senses can know something only in its what presence, right? But the reason or the imagination can know things even in their what physical absence.

[11:37] So this is an important distinction between looking reason and practical reason. I think I mentioned before how in the prima Secundae, when Thomas divides the five virtues of reason,

[11:54] he puts three of them in looking reason and two of them in practical or doing reason. So natural understanding and reasoned out understanding like geometry and so on and wisdom itself are all looking reason, but the various arts and the various forms of foresight are in what practical reason. So foresight or prudence is called right reason about doing, and art is defined as right reason about making.

[12:33] But these other virtues are just concerned with knowing the truth. So nous, as he calls it, there uses that word for natural understanding, those truths that are naturally understood without having to be reasoned out, really, and episteme or reasoned out understanding for those truths that are have to be demonstrated, right, and proven, like the conclusions of geometry, right? And then wisdom, which in a way heads both of them, and is a knowledge of the first cause ultimately, of God, huh?

[13:16] Okay. So, in talking then about mind as being a source of motion from one place to another, he says, "Well, it's practical mind, right? Not the theoretical mind, huh?"

[13:36] Now, he's going to show how these two different things, desire and practical mind, are united in the what? Good, which is desired, huh? For of what the desire is, namely of the good and the end, huh? This is the principle of the what? Practical mind, huh?

[14:01] Okay. Now, what does he mean by saying it's the principle of the practical mind? Well, the practical mind knows the good or end desired, right? And then the practical mind tries to figure out the way of what? Fulfilling that. Yeah, getting that end, huh? Okay. And it says, "Well, if I want to achieve this end, I got to do this. But before I can do this, I got to do this, and finally gets down to something which is the extreme, as he says, which is the actual action it can begin to do, right?

[14:35] Say. So suppose I desire to get rid of my headache, right? Okay. Well, getting rid of my headache is a good desired by me, huh? Okay. And reason is aware of that end, huh? Okay. And reason says, "Now, how can you get rid of a headache? Maybe reason figures out that you can take aspirin, right? Okay. But I don't have any aspirin, right? And reason says, "Well, you could go to the drugstore and get aspirin.

[15:05] They have aspirin in the drugstore. Okay. And then reason says, "Well, okay, where's the drugstore? Well, go left and down there, right? And now you finally get down something I can actually do, right? I can take a little walk to the drugstore, and that's the what he calls the extreme there, right? Say. Say, I start with the idea to get rid of headache, end up with the idea that now I'm going to walk down here, and I get the aspirin, and then I'll take the aspirin, and eventually I get rid of my headache or something like that, huh?

[15:37] So, notice what he's doing there, right? In the first paragraph at the beginning of 372, there he spoke of two movers, right? But these two movers, if they're causing one motion like my walking down to the drugstore, right? How are the two united, right? Say. Well, what is desired, the end that is desired, is as known the beginning of the deliberation of practical reason as to how this can best be what?

[16:09] Achieved, huh? You see that? What is this Greek word for appetite and desire? Okay, b orexis, I think, is the word he's using here. Orexis, okay. Yeah, But you've got to be careful because sometimes he's using the more particular word of epithumia, right, for the sense desire, but here he's using the broader word orexis, huh? Yeah, so it is. broader. Okay. Okay. Yeah, Which they translate in Latin by pittitus, right, Which the translator has taken over your...

[16:40] Appetite. Okay. Okay. But appetite is broader in meaning than it tends to be in English. We tend to use appetite for yeah, for desire for food, right? Yeah. Okay.

[16:57] Whence these things, huh? Desire and practical mind reasonably appear to be the movers, right? Yeah. For and I'm not saying that the very first mover is the desirable, right? It's not desire or practical mind, but the desirable, the end, right? And that moves us, right, to desire it, and it's also the beginning of our practical thinking, huh? And that's the way these two movers are united in one thing.

[17:34] Okay. For the desirable moves, and through this thought moves, because its principle, right, beginning of its reasoning is the appetible, huh? Okay. So you might say you want a what? A apple pie, right, huh? Okay. Well, the apple pie now is what is desired, right? That's the starting point, really, huh? And reason knows what an apple pie is, right? Mm-hmm. And then reason, practical reason, now says, well, how do you make a what apple pie, right?

[18:14] Mm-hmm. And then we got to have apples, and you got to have flour, and so on, right? And then we're going to get some apples, right? Well, in the store, in the orchard, or if you have an apple tree in your yard, right? See? And finally, go out and start picking the apples or something of that sort, right? Or go buy the apples in the store, right?

[18:37] So what is desired is also the beginning of my reason, huh? And likewise, whenever the imagination moves one, right, it does not move without the appetite, huh? So I imagine what an apple or something like that, right? And I have a desire for an apple, right? And so I go to a place where I can get an apple, right?

[19:12] So he ends up then by saying something one then is reducing in a way these two to something one right that unifies them. Something one then is the mover, which is the appetible or the desirable. You could say in English, the good or the end. For if if you got these two things right, they got to be not unified in some way to cause one one action, right?

[19:38] But how are mind or imagination, either one, and desire unified in causing one thing like my my going to the store to get apples, right? My going to the orchard to pick some apples and so on, right? Well, they they're moving according to some kind of common form, right?

[20:02] Because it's the same thing which is what desired and is known by the reason or the imagination. But now he says. the mind does not appear to be a mover, without what appetite, huh?

[20:27] Now Thomas, there in the commentary, he makes a reference there to what Aristotle points out there in the ninth book of wisdom, ninth book of metaphysics, that

[20:42] there's the same knowledge of what opposites, huh? And that through knowledge you can do opposite things. So the doctor, by his knowledge, right, is capable of of making you healthy, but he's also capable of making you sick through the same knowledge, right, of logic. I can reason well or reason badly, right? And I know from logic both how to teach somebody and how to deceive them. So

[21:25] through my knowledge of grammar, right, I know how to speak correctly and to say that I am a man, right, and how to speak incorrectly and say I is a man, right? And so the knowledge gives you an ability for opposites, huh? So something other than knowledge is required before there's going to be emotion, and that is the desire to speak correctly, right, or the desire to make someone healthy, right?

[21:55] Okay, but one or the other, huh? In the fifth book of the Politics, Aristotle shows you both how to preserve a government and how to what overthrow it. And as I mentioned, you know the student kind of wagged there when I was teaching St. Mary's, saying, you know, you shouldn't be teaching ethics because when you learn ethics, you learn not only how to become good, but also how to become bad.

[22:25] He says because most people are inclined to be bad, he says, this knowledge is making them worse. He had a point there, right? He was touching upon an important point, huh? Okay, but like Aristotle says in the Rhetoric there, some people object to rhetoric because rhetoric can be used for good or for bad. So apparently people like like Hitler or even Fidel Castro were, you know, could move the crowd and they spoke persuasively, huh?

[22:56] And but Aristotle says that this is an objection you could make to just about any art, huh? That enables you to do good or bad, huh? If I know how to cook the steak, I know how to ruin it too and burn it. See,

[23:13] we've got a a high tech toaster there in the kitchen now. We've got done steaks, and there's all these, you know, kind of a wide thing. You can put wide things in there and long things and so on. And but when you push it down, there's a you have to push a button, right? And it's like one, I don't know, nine, ten, is like that. See, and you have to know which button is, right?

[23:41] So I mean, if you have, you know, a piece of dark old bread, you might want to put it on eight or, you know, and but if you have

[23:53] cinnamon bread or something with raisins in it and that kind of a thing, you maybe only four or five. See, so you got to know what to do, right? See, but you learn what you know temperature to put it at, right? Or what what button to push. But I know also how to ruin a piece, then, to cook it, to do it too much. So

[24:16] that's what he's hinting upon there. But now the mind does not appear to be a mover without appetite. So the contrast Aristotle makes in the ninth book of Wisdom there, in the text that Thomas is referring to, is a difference between a natural thing like fire, where fire is is determined to heat things and not to cool them, right? And a rational power like the medical art, right?

[24:45] See, whereby you are capable of opposites, right? And that's why you need very much desire, right, to determine which of the two you're going to do.

[24:57] And he points out that the will is also a what appetite. It's a form of an ability to desire. However, when one is moved according to reason, one is also moved according to the what will, right? Huh? So the Greek word there for will there is boulesis huh? Okay. But now when he says

[25:31] desire can also move against reason, right? And then when he says desires a certain appetite, well, it's a good thing the Greek word there is more precise, and the Greek word is what epithumia, right? Which is the word that is translated in Latin by concupiscentia, right? Okay. Which has a sense of what sense desire, right? A desire for what is pleasant and agreeable to the what senses, right?

[25:59] And he's saying that there's not only this desire that follows upon reason, namely the will, right? But there's also in us this other desire that can what. Follow what is agreeable to the senses, even against what reason, like an adultery right or something like that, right? Which which word is the subject there? Is that epithumia desire? You see, it says here. When he says appetite ever moves even against reason, there he's still using the broad word orexis, right?

[26:30] Okay. And then he says, for desires is an appetite. He's thinking of desire. There is epithumia epithumia, right? Okay. For desire, epithumia is a orexis It's a certain kind of desire, right? Okay. I usually translate in English appetumia for one of a better thing by a phrase there sense desire, right? Yeah. Okay. You can almost maybe say sensual desire, but maybe that's too particular meaning. But it has something in that sense.

[27:02] Sure. Okay. Just like the Latin word concupiscentia right? Is kind of the idea of desire for what is agreeable to the senses, huh? Okay. So he's going to come back to this again later on in this reading. The fact that there's these there can be contrary desires in man, right? So his will and his emotions can be what

[27:33] opposed sometimes, huh? And you can have a body desire for what is you know agreeable to the senses, or a body desire to avoid what is disagreeable to the senses, right? And the will can be opposed to this, right? So the will, you want to get up, right? But then there's a certain leg there. These these clocks that are pressing for the five minutes another ten minutes right five minutes, another ten minutes, right?

[27:58] I know people you don't have. I have a you know alarm clock way across the room, so they can't really turn it off without getting up, and then.

[28:08] So. Okay. Now, this is a very important thing he says in three seventy four here. But you have to see exactly what he's saying.

[28:30] He says every understanding is right. Now, what does he mean there, right? In the Greek, he says nous, pas anthropos orthos esti. What he's thinking of here is something in practical reason that is like natural understanding.

[28:55] So everybody, if you take natural understanding, everybody knows that a whole is more than one of its parts, right? And the mind is not really going to be mistaken about that. And there's something like that in the practical reason, huh? Everybody knows you should do good and avoid what is bad, huh? So these very general things that we might say belong sometimes to the natural law. These are naturally known.

[29:28] Okay that You shouldn't harm other people, and so on, right? You should be just, and so on. So when you follow that natural light of reason in human action, you're going to be correct, right? But if you depart from that, right? Either because of what, of desire which may be disordered, right? And or because of the what, imagination, huh? Okay.

[30:01] So and it's very clear. You get these madmen. You know, you read about in the papers every day, just about, huh? Yeah. But a man is fouling what? His imagination, right? And not his what his nous, not his mind or reason.

[30:22] Or men sometimes follow their what sense desire, right? Against their reason. So sense desire and in general desire can be both right and not right, huh? And imagination can be both right and not right, huh?

[30:46] But the nous, huh? The kind of natural understanding that we have of right and wrong, huh? That's always right, huh? Okay. Um. So when we follow that natural understanding of right and wrong, um, we are going to be correct in our actions, right? But when we follow desire or imagination without that, we might or might not be right. Whence he says, the appetible, or, the desirable, is what always moves, huh?

[31:41] And this is either the good or, in some cases, the what apparent good, right? So we what? Um, the man who has strong sense desire to him, adultery or fornication or something of this sort, uh, will appear to be good, right? Because of his desire, right? Or if I'm very angry at somebody, right? To really strike them and or even kill them might appear to be good, right?

[32:13] Because it fits my what? Anger, right, huh? Okay. Um. Or as I say in these madmen, especially, you can see that they're what they're imagining things to be the way they're not, right? And they imagine, you know, that they've got a duty to kill somebody, right, huh? Sure.

[32:44] So some of these terrorists, I think, are following their desire. Yeah. You know, they they really have envy of Americans and anger with us, right? And so and they also follow false imagination, right, huh? This is the way to go to the celestial paradise, right? To blow yourself up, huh? Then you'll be with the houris or whatever it is that.

[33:13] Okay, so sometimes one is moved by the true good, and sometimes, but the by the apparent good, right? But the apparent good moves us only in so far as it what appears to be good, right? Huh? Either through desire or imagination, huh?

[33:38] But now he says the good, though that's moving us to action, is the practical good, right? The good here and now, in terms of

[33:51] the good, in fact, is contingent, right? Huh? Okay. It's apparent, therefore, that this sort of power of the soul that called appetite moves, huh? Okay. Now 375 is kind of just a footnote to this. He comes back again to his critique of those who divide the parts of the soul, right, and don't enumerate all the parts of the soul, huh? And it's kind of reference in a way to what Plato does in the Republic, right, where he divides the powers of the soul into three, or the soul into three parts, right?

[34:28] Reason and then thumos, which is where anger and confidence and boldness are, and then epithumia, right? Huh? Okay. But there are many other powers of the soul that we've seen before: the feeding power and the sensing power, and so on and so on. Okay.

[34:50] Um. Okay. And again, at the end of that 375, for these differ from each power more than the desiring of what gives spirit. Well, again, the Greek there is epithumia for desiring there, right? And then thumikon, and it's in the adjective. So you get the word from epithumia and thumos which is in the adjective form. So it's epithumetikon and thumikon. Okay. Now I mentioned this, huh? When you read Thomas, huh?

[35:37] When Thomas talks about those two powers in Latin, he'll call them the concupiscent appetite, huh? And the irascible appetite, right? Okay. And the concupiscent appetite, which is a translation of what Aristotle calls epithumia or Plato calls epithumia, right? Um, this is the part which concerns what is pleasant or disagreeable to the emotions, right? And you like what is agreeable to I mean, to the senses. You like what is agreeable to the senses, what is pleasing to them, and you dislike or hate what is Disagreeable to the senses, huh?

[36:18] And then this gives rise to what? Wanting or avoiding, or to what? Joy or pleasure when you get what you want, or pain or sadness when what you want to avoid you can't avoid. Okay.

[36:43] So to see, so Plato divided, you know, the soul into those three parts, right? And Aristotle saying, well, that might make some sense in terms of what you're concerned with, especially in ethics, right? But as far as the division of the soul as a whole, it's quite what inadequate, and okay.

[37:09] And so he's saying epithumia and thumas, huh? The concupiscent, irascible, emotional powers don't differ as much as what the feeding power and the sensing power and these other powers that we've talked about, huh?

[37:27] Okay. Now in 376, huh? He's talking about the contrariety again, going more into the contrariety of desires that in us, huh? And he gives a very fundamental distinction here.

[37:52] Since desires, huh? Appetites there is just a broad word to wit again. Sense desires come to be contrary to one another, and this happens when what? Reason, huh? And now desires are contraries. Well, the translator is using desires for those what? Sense desires, right? And so in the Greek there it would be

[38:19] when logos, meaning reason, and the epithumiai, huh? Okay, the sense desires, huh? And he says this contrariety you don't have it in the other animals, huh? But you have it in man, huh? And we're interested in the way he refers to man here. This comes to be in things having a sense of what? Time. That's very subtle what he says there, huh? He's saying that um,

[38:51] ah, yeah, that's the exact way the Greek is. In those, um, this comes about in those having a sense of time, huh? Now remember the the the definition there of reason that we learned there from. Shakespeare, right? That reason is the ability for a large discourse, looking before and after, right? And what completes the definition there, reason, is this looking before and after. And then we learned in the text of Aristotle there, from the categories, that the first meaning of before and after is in time.

[39:42] Yeah. So he's coming back to it, right? Huh? And there's a way in which you can say man lives in time much more than any of the other animals. He's always looking before and after in time, in his life or in his day or in his week or whatever it is, right? We're always going back and forth, right? I got to get exams next week, you know.

[40:05] I got to prepare the exams, you know, and and so and so. um. He's seen the contrariety right at that point, in the very beginning there,

[40:24] that the senses—if you just follow the senses—you're kind of limited to the here and now, and you don't look before and after, right? Like Lady Macbeth says, the ignorant present. Oh.

[40:47] So you're pursuing something pleasant without thinking of the consequences of it, right? Or you're avoiding something painful, right? Without thinking of the what consequence of it, right?

[41:04] So there are some pleasures that one might refuse if he's looking before and after, right? And some pains that he might undergo, like going to the dentist or something, right? If he's looking before and after. Okay. But or let's take a simple example with someone who is is trying to lose weight, right? Okay. So they're refusing dessert or something, or refusing the candy bar or something, right?

[41:42] Huh? Well, if we just remain the ignorant present, right? The candy bar or the dessert is something tasty and sweet and agreeable, right? Huh? You see. But if you realize that you're going to be fat and you're not going to be attractive to the opposite sex and all this other stuff people worry about, right? You see. But then you're looking at what the effect of what many desserts turned down, right?

[42:14] Or many candy bars bypassed, right? And now you're going to see yourself three months from now looking slim and trim and attractive and handsome and so on.

[42:28] Okay. Um. But sometimes when I talk about this, you know, you take kind of a stock example in college there, where they say I never made a survey, but I think it's true that freshmen, right, um,

[42:49] get sick to their stomach drinking more often than seniors do, right? Mm-hmm. And you know, in a sense, you're pursuing the pleasure of drinking here and now, right? Without seeing how you're going to be a couple hours from now, maybe throughout the night. You see.

[43:15] And if you know you you look before and after, you say, well, if I drink moderately tonight, I'll get a good night's sleep, and I'll be able to get up tomorrow and have some more. See, but in this other case, right?

[43:36] I can't, right? Okay. True. Um. Or sometimes you know a smoker, right? Huh. See, he wants to smoke now, right? Huh. See, but maybe somebody he knows, some relative or somebody, you know, has got emphysema or something, you know, from smoking, right? You see, and so he kind of realizes what the cumulative effect is of all the smoking he's doing, you know, and

[44:11] so that he desists here and now from the pleasure of smoking because he what foresees down the road, right, the result of this smoking. I was reading about Eisenhower, I guess, around the time of the the Normandy landing, right, and and afterwards, you know, when they were not sure what the Germans were going to do, and so on. Eisenhower was smoking four packs of cigarettes a day, and he's starting to get you know lung problems and so on, right?

[44:48] Well, I've heard of two pack men, you know, but he's a four pack man. He must have been smoking all the time, and kind of like a you know, because they're so nervous as to this Normandy landing who's going to succeed or not, and what the Germans are going to do, and there's some you know some question marks at different times, you know, and then afterwards you know the Battle of the Bulge and so on, what the Germans are doing and so on.

[45:10] So um. So notice a man might um. Uh. Well, take take a very crude example, but I'll give you a very significant example, you know. Um. Some men might abstain from you know illicit sex or something of the sort, right? Because of the possibility of getting some disease, right? Huh. Okay. So for a momentary pleasure, right? Huh. They what?

[45:49] Don't take into account, you know, the health problems and maybe even death that are going to come from AIDS or whatever it is, right? You see, you know, it's just terrible in Africa. You know how you know how prevalent AIDS is, right? Huh. You know, but it comes mainly from you know unlawful sexual contact of one sort or another, right? Okay. And notice, huh? If someone avoids this thing to avoid AIDS, that's not the the the full reason for avoiding these things, right?

[46:19] You know, but you can see that that the man who takes these risks, you know, in Africa like they do all the time, they're just thinking of the momentary pleasure, right? They're not thinking of what the long term consequences of this will be for them, even in a even in a bodily sense, right? Do you see?

[46:57] But likewise, in people, you know, overindulge in food or drink and something like that, right? And they get sick or very uncomfortable, right? You know, people often do this at Thanksgiving. You know, they got to get up, you know, oh, I can't eat desserts. You know, they got to walk around, they got to go out for a walk. But I mean, they've eaten so much that they are positively uncomfortable, right?

[47:21] And if you consider then the time they spend at the table, right, just time wise, enjoying themselves, and the time that they are in distress, right afterwards, you can say that they're not maximizing their pleasures, right? You see,

[47:44] in the same way, you know, if I avoid going to the dentist, then I have more problems. I didn't go and and and have it tended to right away when a tooth is broken down or something. You know, I am going to have more problems, right? So I am not minimizing my pains by avoiding the dentist, right? I am going to over the course of time maybe have more problems and maybe lose a tooth and all kinds of things, right?

[48:11] And okay, do you see that? Okay, and just something like that too, you know, as far as the student is concerned, because you know, if the student has the alternative between going to the party or going to the pizza parlors like that and and studying, right? You know, if you just think, how much do you actually learn in in a half hour and hour? Maybe not too much, right?

[48:41] But if you see that over the course of many days, right, in the way understanding one thing helps you understand something else, and the way you build up, right, you see, and

[48:57] you say, well, what do you got to show for all these parties? You see, but if you put in, you know, over the course of time, studying, now you have knowledge built up, and you know, you go through life with that knowledge, right, and you can build more knowledge upon it, right.

[49:19] So there, there are some things that that here and now don't seem that attractive, but over the course of time, right? You see that, huh?

[49:34] So the student who maybe you know not studying until the last moment, you know, the exam is tomorrow, you know, and they're trying to cram this stuff into their head, but

[49:49] all these times during the semester when they should have been studying, right? They were distracted by music or the party or the pizza or the beer or whatever it was, right? And

[50:03] now they're flunking out or something, right? Now you see, so that they don't seem to have a sense of time, right? They seem to be like an animal, just tied up with the what here and. And now,

[50:24] now it's kind of a genius there in Shakespeare. If you ever read Henry the Fourth, Part One, do you know that play? Well, among other reasons why that play is famous is that in Henry the Fourth, Part One, Shakespeare introduces for the first time a character called Falstaff, right? Oh yeah. Okay, and Falstaff is supposed to be his perhaps his greatest comic creation, right? Huh? Okay. And if you read the introduction when when when Falstaff first appears, and he happens to ask Prince Hal, you know, what time it is, and he says, "What does that got to do with you?

[51:09] You know, to know what time it is, right? " People. And you know, he's alluding to the fact that that Falstaff is just pursuing what is what. For the moment. Yeah, yeah, sense pleasure, right? Food, drink, sex, and so on, right? Huh? What's the time got to do with him, right? Okay. You know, you know, he's forgotten what's relevant to him, right? You know, I'm not saying it right.

[51:34] You have to be on Shakespeare's side. It's very funny the way he's introduced, right? But introduced as as one who, in a sense, what time has no relevance to him, right? You see, he's not acting as if he had any sense of time, right? You see, he's just you know, blowing up with his diseases and eating and so on, right?

[51:58] So it's very interesting the way Aristotle speaks here, right? He speaks of man as the one who has a sense of time, huh? But that's the first sense of before and after, huh? Yeah. For the mind, he says, because of what is to come, right? Commands restraint, right? While

[52:18] desire, because of what is immediate, huh? Again, the word "desire" there. I'm sure is the word what? Epithymia. Yeah, yeah. See. So he says, "hoi gar nous, nous the mind, huh An account of the future, right? Looking thing, it commands one to what restrain or something, right? But epithymia, right, the sense desire due to the a day, right? Huh? Okay. Now Shakespeare's a very good understanding of that, right?

[53:00] You know, he speaks, you know, of of one of the famous poems, is the Rape of Lucrece, right? Huh? Oh. You know. Give an example of temptation, right? Representation of temptation, and how man, you know, pursues something, right? He's going to regret ever having done, right? You know, but pursue the momentary pleasure, right? The momentary act.

[53:42] That that phrase, the ignorant present, I notice that Dickens, you know, in his greatest novel there, borrows that phrase, huh? Yeah. When when David Copperfield and Dora get engaged, right? You know, you know, that they'd remain the ignorant present, huh?

[54:07] I said, well, what a good phrase, and then I realized it comes from Shakespeare, right? You know, you'll find that in the novelists, you know, the English novelists, that they will use a phrase, directly from Shakespeare, sometimes a paraphrase of it. Shakespeare said it so well, yeah. Yeah.