Ethics
4. The End of Man: Own Act, Virtue, and the Act with Reason Done Well
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/5-ethics/004-the-end-of-man-own-act-virtue-and-the-act-with-reason-done/

[0:00] Now, sometimes I approach this question, which of these goods are better, in two steps. Sometimes I lump these first two together, and I call them the inside goods, huh? Because you and I are composed of body and soul, so we call these the inside goods,

[0:33] and we ask the question, which are better, the inside goods or the outside goods? And then, after that, we can ask which are better among the inside goods, the goods of the soul, the goods of the body, right?

[0:52] Let's ask the first question: Which are better, the outside goods or the inside goods? While we know objectively about what's better, is what we don't know yet. What do we know about what's better? What's better?

[1:13] The whole end. The whole, and we reduce the whole in a sense to the end, right? What we know basically is that the end is always better than what's for the sake of the end, right? Okay. Now, if you could show by induction

[1:35] that one of these is for the sake of the other, then you could syllogize, right? From that premise and the premise that the end is always better, okay. Now, is one of these for the sake of the other? The outside goods are for the sake of the inside. goods. Yeah, yeah. Now again, the most proportioned way to show that would be by induction, right? Are my feet for the sake of my shoes, or are my shoes for the sake of my feet?

[2:16] If you stub your toe, you know which is for the sake of which, right? Okay. Are my eyes for the sake of my glasses, or my glasses for the sake of my eyes?

[2:33] Is my body for the sake of my clothing or is my clothing for the sake of my body? If my body is for the sake of my clothing, I'd go on these mannequins down in the department store So the clothing is for the sake of my body, right? Are you for the sake of holding down that chair? Is the chair for the sake of holding you up?

[2:56] You for the sake of keeping the mattress firm, or the mattress hold you up and you go to night's sleep, huh? So inductively, you can see that the outside is for the sake of the inside, huh? Am I for the sake of getting my automobile to campus? I tell the students.

[3:22] Or is the automobile there for the sake of getting me to campus, right? If I could be in campus without the automobile, wouldn't even bother with the automobile, would I? You could stay home in the garage. Wouldn't even need it, right? Yes, sir.

[3:39] So inductively, by induction, you can see this conclusion that the outside goods are for the sake of the inside goods. But the end is always better than what is for the sake of it. Therefore, the inside goods are better than the outside goods, huh? And some of my objections say, "What about the art of carpentry, huh? " Because the art of carpentry is in the soul and the reason, right?

[4:09] It isn't the art of carpentry for the sake of these chairs and this table and other wooden things around here, right? Well, that's true. But those things are in turn for the sake of something inside, right? Okay. So the chair is for the sake of holding up your body and so on, right? Okay. In the same way, the art of making books, right? Well, that's for the sake of the book, an exterior thing, yeah.

[4:38] But the book is for the sake of my what? Mind, huh? Is your notebook for the sake of you take? Is your mind for the sake of taking notes? Are these notes to remind you of something? Say, but the book is for the sake of my mind, right? So the outside is for the sake of the inside, ultimately, huh? You see that? I got a stereo, right?

[5:02] The stereo so I can play the Mozart CDs. So my ear and what? Hear, right, huh? So the outside is for the sake of the inside, right? Here I have a painting over there, right? That's for the sake of what?

[5:17] My seeing, right? I couldn't see if I was blind. I would have a painting, right? Okay. You see the idea? So by induction, we established that outside goods. Are for the sake of inside goods, either immediately or ultimately, right? And then we add what we learned about the better. The end is always better than what is for the sake of the end. Therefore, the inside goods are better than the outside goods.

[5:47] So we award for the outside goods then, to use Olympic term here, the bronze medal, the third place medal, right? Okay. Now, what about the goods of the soul and the goods of the body? Which of those two are better, right? Now, if you know enough about the soul and so on the body, you might be able to argue the same way, right? That the body is for the sake of the what?

[6:23] Soul, and therefore, since the end is always better, then the soul is better than the body, right? But that's a little very difficult, you know, to know that much about the soul and matter and form and so on. So there are some other ways you might reason, right? Okay.

[6:47] Which is better, a man or a beast? Yeah, man is better than the beast. Now, someone says, "I don't know that." We teach it like an animal, right? You'll be straight and running between the dog, right? Okay, because he knows that man is more than a beast, right? Okay. Well, the goods of the body are the goods we have in common with the what? Beast, and the goods of the soul.

[7:18] are called by another name. The goods of what? Reason. Reason, meaning not only the goods of reason itself, but what partakes of reason, like the moral virtues and so on.

[7:33] So, if man is. Better than the beast, is he better than the beast by the goods he has in common with the beast? No. So he must be better than the beast by the goods that he has that the beast doesn't have, right? And these are the what goods of the soul, right? So one way you might reason that the goods of the soul are better than goods of the body is that the goods of the soul are the goods whereby man excels the beast, right?

[8:05] And the goods of the body he shares with the beast. And you might have a beast that's stronger or more healthy than a man, right? Sometimes.

[8:20] Or you might take the proposition that what God is better than what man, right? Okay. Now, which goods are more godlike? The goods of the body or the goods of the soul? Which is more godlike, the body or the soul? Well, no one thinks the body is more godlike than the soul, do they? No. And we saw Shakespeare in exhortation to use reason. He calls reason, but godlike, right?

[8:49] Okay. Or he calls friendship godlike. So if the goods of the soul are more like the divine goods, and God is better than man, there'd be another reason to say the goods of the soul are better than the goods of the what body, right?

[9:20] But perhaps there's another way of showing this besides comparing man to the beast, right, or comparing man to God, and the fact that he shares these goods with what is lesser than himself, the beast, right? And he shares these goods with what is better than him, right? And that is to reason out what is the end or purpose of man, right? What is the end or purpose of what human life?

[9:56] And if you reason out what is the end or purpose of human life, then you might be able to use that as a starting point to say which of these is closer to the end or purpose of human life. Okay.

[10:13] Now the question is, how do you reason out the end or purpose of human life? Let's take a little break at this point, huh?

[10:29] Now, Plato in the Symposium, then Aristotle in the first book, Nicomachean Ethics. They talk about how we desire one thing for the sake of something else, right?

[10:45] But does this go on forever? I desire A for the sake of B, and B for the sake of C, and C for the sake of D, and so on forever. Or is there some end that is desired for its own sake, and not for the sake of anything else, but everything else for the sake of it?

[11:13] Now, what would lead you to think that there must be such an end, that not everything is desired for the sake of something further?

[11:26] Oh, the same one of those things where it can't be an infinite series because there'd be no beginning. I mean, numbers go on forever. Why can't ends go on forever?

[11:41] Must be a first mover. Well, that's again you're going to go back to the same idea. There's got to be a first cause, but why? Why? Because some people, you know, you talk to them in daily conversation, huh? They will insist that everything is desired for the sake of something else, right? And that I tell this one story in my father's company. My brothers and I used to work in the summer there in the factory, and sometimes in the office.

[12:09] And the only really educated guy there, besides us, was my father's engineer, right? University of Minnesota. And so he talked to us sometimes, you know, while we're studying and so on The philosophy. Oh, what are you studying that for. And he's saying, well, for its own sake. but he just couldn't buy that something had to be for its own sake, right? It had to be for the sake of something else.

[12:32] So after a few weeks, he come back and. confer. us again, why are we studying this for its own sake? Nothing further, right? So, finally, since he couldn't digest our answer, right, it couldn't to make any sense to him. He yet he answered his own question, right? So one day he says to us, "I know why you're studying it." He said, "Why? What's brain food?" He says. See, you study this food and get your brain out and you go out and you do something you know worthwhile with your brain or something you know.

[13:04] But there's nothing that is for its own sake. Everything is good for the sake of something other than itself. Nothing is pursued as an end. Now, you could say one thing about this that that's so. Then you're always like they say about the Americans. You know, happiness is always one purchase away.

[13:29] If A is for the sake of B, and B is for the sake of C, and so on, if you don't get C, then neither B nor A are really desirable. So everything you're doing is for the sake of something. It's going to make everything you've done up to this point desirable this point desirable, but you never get to that thing, right? Um.

[13:47] But go back to to the idea of one thing being desired for the sake of something else, and is there a way you could reason that there must be something which is desired for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else, but everything else for the sake of it? That everything is being desired for the sake of something further. Is there a way you could kind of reason out that there must be such a thing, which therefore would be really the end or purpose of man, right, or the end or purpose of human life?

[14:21] Oh, I think some things are more desirable than others. There could be something that was completely desirable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Notice simple thing here, right? In terms of desire.

[14:50] Suppose I desire A for the sake of B, right? And B for the sake of C, right? C for the sake of D, and according to this hypothesis, this goes on forever, right?

[15:10] But now, if I desire A for the sake of B, then B is the cause of my desiring A. Right. If I desire, for example, medicine for the sake of health, I have to desire health before I could desire medicine, right? So before I could desire A, I have to desire B. But if I desire B for the sake of C, then before I can desire B, I have to desire C.

[15:43] I have to desire C before I can desire B or A. But if I desire C for the sake of D, I've got to desire D before I can desire C or B or A, right?

[15:56] Now, if this goes on forever, how can I begin to desire anything? Because my first desire would be for something that I couldn't desire until I desired something else. So, no place in the series could I begin to desire, because anything I was to desire in that series, since it goes on forever, would presuppose by desiring something else first. So I couldn't even begin to desire, it.

[16:35] Do you see that? So there must be something that I desire first, and therefore not for the sake of something else, right? But everything else for the sake of it. Now, sometimes they call that happiness, right? That word is, you know, kind of degenerated in meaning, yeah.

[17:01] But whatever you want to call that thing that is desired for its own sake, right? Plato there and Aristotle called eudaimonia Whatever you want to call it, there must be such a thing, right? Now the question is, what is that, right? And Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics says that

[17:23] it would seem that to know what this is would have a great influence upon life, right? Have a great weight, huh? Because everything else is being done for the sake of that, right? In a way, this is what the ethics is chiefly about: the end of man, right? The end of human life, the end that is desired for its own sake and not for the sake of anything further, but everything else for the sake of it, right?

[17:50] Okay. Now, what is that? Let's. How would you reason it out? Let's say Aristotle in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, you reason this out, kind of drawing a line around it, right? And after he's drawn the line around it, he'll see the need to investigate some other things before he can say more fully what it is, right? Okay. But we want to see how he first draws a line.

[18:43] as He says in the Greek, "perigraphein draw it, draw a line around what this end is." Of course, he's helped by his teacher twenty years, who was named what? Plato, right? Okay.

[19:01] Now, Plato in the first book of the Republic had defined something that's very important in investigating the end of man, okay? And that is the definition that Plato gives in the first book of the Republic: a definition of what is meant by a thing's own act. Okay.

[19:31] What is a thing's own act? Okay. We have to know what a thing's own act is because the argument for the end or purpose of man consists in seeing a connection between man's own act and end or purpose. Okay. Now you can also ask the question: What is an end?

[20:13] And the definition of end, which is the one that Aristotle gives us in the second book of Natural Hearing, the basic meaning of end is that for the sake of which. Okay.

[20:28] It's the basic notion of what is an end: that for the sake of which. So if I say health is the end of my taking medicine, I mean I take medicine for the sake of what health. If I say that knowing is the end of my study, I'm saying that that, for the sake of which I study, is to know something, right? Okay.

[20:56] If you wanted to, you could say that, for the sake of which something is or is done, right? So examples I was giving were examples of things that I do, right? I take medicine for the sake of my health. I study for the sake of knowing, right? Okay. I make money for the sake of spending, it. and so on, right? So the end is that, for the sake of which I'm doing these things, right?

[21:31] But you'd also say that the end of the chair, that, for the sake of which the chair is, is you're sitting, right? Okay. So something is or is done for the sake of something, but the basic notion of end is that, for the sake of which, right? Okay.

[21:51] Now, Plato in the first book of the Republic there works out a definition of what is a thing's own act. And Aristotle I think kind of presupposes this in the first book.

[22:11] Well, this is Plato's definition. It's what that thing alone can do, or at least does better than other things, right? Okay. It's what that thing alone can do,

[22:33] or At least does better than other things. So, what is the eye's own act? To see, right? Because the eye is the only part of the body through which we can see, right? And the ear's own act is to hear, right? Okay. Now, to walk, is that the whose own act is that?

[23:16] Goes to the legs and the feet, right? Okay. Maybe you've seen somebody on TV or somebody who can walk. Walk on his hands, right? But can they walk as well as you walk on your feet? No, no, it's not really the hand's own act, is it? We still call the foot's own act, even though the hand might be able to do it to some extent, right? Looked at the desk at school, there you see people carve things with a knife or something, right?

[23:43] Um, did you take notes with the knife? Well, sometimes you know, in the house, you know, when you can't find a screwdriver, people have taken out a table knife, yeah. But they kind of wreck the knife and so on, and it doesn't work as well, right? So that's not the knife's own act, right?

[24:04] Although you might be able to use it, right? As a what substitute, right? I was trying to make some chicken the other day, I was supposed to hammer the chicken down to make forget this white line to it. I couldn't find this hammer, my wife has. for doing that, so? I got the regular hammer out.

[24:23] It did the job, you know. not as good. but he does it? So, this is the definition of a thing's own act. It's what that thing alone can do, or at least does better than other things, right? Okay. Now,

[24:43] is there a connection between the end or purpose that for the sake of which something is, and its own act? Well, we're going to approach this by a kind of argument called induction, right? Okay. Okay. Now, I like to make this kind of a long induction, right? Now, an actual induction in in a couple of stages, huh? Okay. So I make an induction to begin with from the tools of man.

[25:27] Okay. And then induction from the organs of man. Now the word organ, by the way, comes from the Greek word organon, which means tool in Greek.

[25:47] So that the human body or the body of an animal is a body put together from tools. And then make induction from the occupations of man. Okay.

[26:06] Now what we're going to look at is at each of these things own acts, and then at the end or purpose of each of these things, right?

[26:21] And if we see in particular each one of them a connection between the thing's own act and its end or purpose, and we'll be able to induce, right, that a tool's own act is its end, and an organ's own act is its end or purpose, and occupation's own act is its end or purpose, right? And then induce from those even more general statement: the thing's own act is its end or purpose.

[26:54] Okay. Now we start with the tools of man, and we could say a knife own act is to cut. To cut, yeah. That's what the knife does alone, or does at least better than other tools do, right? A knife's own act is to cut. And what's the purpose of a knife? Why do we have knives in our house? To cut, Yeah yeah.

[27:38] I take a knife out every morning and I cut an orange, right? I cut the meat or something. So a nice own act is to cut, and to cut is the end of the knife. Okay. You go. Give myself a little more room here. because I'm running out of space over there. Used to these big boards or something. When I was a freshman in college, huh? I was in this class that had blackboards all around and all four walls, and I was taking this, you know, mathematics course.

[28:12] and he started writing equations on the board, and he'd go all around the room. So in the class, the all around the room, we're following around.

[28:21] That guy had been a cigar and smoked a cigar in class. He said he'd been a paratrooper during the war or something, He'd always have a tough guy. He'd always have a nice own act,

[28:42] And you know what you mean by own act, right? What it alone does is what it does better than other. And to cut is the end of the knife. That's for the sake of which we have knives in our house, right? Let me

[29:03] take that pen. You say, what's the pen's own act? To write, to write, huh? And what's the end or purpose of a pen? Why did you buy a pen, huh? To write, huh? And to write is the end of the pen, huh?

[29:34] Now, if you go through a house or any monastery or that kind, I suppose you're going to find all kinds of tools, right? And each tool has what? An end purpose. Its own act, right? And you'd find in each case the reason why you have that tool there

[29:56] is for that act, right? A hammer's own act is to what? Hammer, right? And to hammer is the purpose of the knife, right? The saw's own act, right, is to saw, right? And to saw is the purpose of having a saw around, right? Saw the tree down, right? George Washington, huh? So I'm just giving a little indication here, but you can see, huh? You know, we've got a corkscrew.

[30:26] It's a very important tool. You see, and the corkscrew does something that, you know, some people get dissed because they try to open up a. A cork with a regular knife or something, you know, and I suppose you can do it if you have to, you know, but it won't be as nice and smooth. You buy a part of the part of the cork. I don't know why and so on.

[30:47] You see, so the corkscrew's own act is to remove a cork, right? That's why we have a corkscrew in the house. You see the idea? Okay, you get the idea, right? See? Okay. So you can make an induction and say that a tool's own act is its what? End or purpose? huh? Make sense. Mm-hmm.

[31:22] So, a screwdriver's own act is to turn the what? Screw, let's say, right? And that's the purpose of it, right? That's why we have it in there, right? So we can turn the screws and so on, kind of things. Okay, now you can go to the organs of our body, and that's very similar to this. As I mentioned already, the word "organ" comes from the Greek word "organon," meaning a tool.

[31:48] It's the common word "tool." If you ever see a basic works of Aristotle, say, you know, they'll sometimes put the logical works in the beginning together, right? And call that as the Greeks did, the organon, meaning it's the tool of what? Philosophy, right? Okay, logic is not for its own sake, but it's for the sake of acquiring the other parts of philosophy. It's a tool, right? Okay.

[32:16] So we say the eyes' own act is to what? See. And to see is the end or purpose of the eyes, right? The eyes are for the sake. And the ear's own act is to what? Hear. That's the act that the ear alone can do.

[32:54] And to hear is the end of the ear, right? And the heart's own act, not getting too profound, here, is to pump blood. Let's say, huh? Okay, maybe other things too. And to pump blood is the end of the purpose of the what? Heart, right? Okay.

[33:15] So you can go through the various parts of the body, and each organ—the liver and the pancreas, and so on—gets a little more complicated. But each one has its own what act, huh? And that's the end or purpose of that organ That's why we have that organ, right? Okay. So again, eventually you can induce the general proposition that an organ's own act is its end. Did you see that?

[33:52] Then we can go to the occupations of man, right? So, a cook's own act is what? To cook. Yeah. Why do we hire a cook? To cook Let's say cooking, right? Yeah. And to cook is the end of the cook. When I say the end of the cook, I mean to cook.

[34:28] But by the end we mean that for the sake of it, right? Okay. I say sometimes you know, happiness is the end of life, death is the end of life, therefore death is happiness. That's confusing different meanings of end, right? Okay. And um.

[34:51] A pianist's own act is to what? What's pianist's own act? Piano. What does he do alone, or does he need another? Yeah, play piano, right?

[35:08] Now, why do we hire pianists there in my my restaurant? Piano, right? I mean, pianists as pianists, right? That's purpose. And to play the piano is the end of the pianist.

[35:28] What's a teacher's own act? To teach, right? And what do we hire the teacher for? To teach, right? That's a very thing to do. To teach, right? Okay. So you could go through the various occupations of man, right? Huh? The cook and the pianist and the teacher and so on, right? What's the policeman's own act, right? To police. the place. Okay. Soldier's own act, right? But each each occupation has its own act, right?

[36:00] Which either the man in that act in that occupation alone can do, or he's trained to do it better than other people, right? Okay. And that's his his purpose, right?

[36:13] So we could then induce an even more general statement, huh? Each occupation has its own act, and that act is its end, right? And we can make these inductions longer, but if you see the way they're going, right? Well, now we could make a second induction now from these

[36:54] more general statements than we started with, but something we could induce even more general from them. What is that? Yeah. A thing's own act is its end or purpose. You see that? Okay. So now we've arrived by a two-layer induction there, right? The very general statement,

[37:25] which is that a thing's own Act is its end, meaning by end now purpose, huh? That the sake of which end. You see that? Okay. So we arrived at this proposition by induction.

[37:52] You should have some idea now of the induction that arises at that, right? But we could spend, you know, how many tools I can in ordinary household in America? How many tools are there, right? You know, between the garage and the kitchen, and you know, quite a few, right?

[38:16] I have a machine whose own act is to play Mozart CDs, right? I can't use my wife's gear there in the kitchen to play Mozart CDs. That's not its own act. I use that to whip up the cream or something. or she can use it that way. The vacuum cleaner, right? Can't play CDs in the vacuum cleaner, but it's got its own act too. Okay, which the CD thing will pick up the dirt and the dust on the floor, right?

[38:43] Okay. So each tool we have in the house has its own act, which alone can do, or at least it's better than the other tools can do it, right? And that's the purpose. That's that's the sake of which we have the vacuum cleaner or the CD player or the whipper thing in the kitchen. Okay. You see that? Okay. Now, if you know

[39:12] a little bit of wisdom, maybe we could give a reason why this is so, right? Okay. What general truth do you think kind of underlies this, here, huh?

[39:32] Kind of the opposite of induction, you know, but some very action in the end? Act and ability, yeah. It's the type of act and ability which we take up in wisdom, right, in the book of wisdom. But the ability is always an ability with some act, right? So ability is for the sake of act, isn't it? So the ability to see is for the sake of seeing.

[39:58] The ability to hear is for the sake of hearing, right? So everything that has its own act is characterized by its own what? Ability, right? And ability is for the sake of act. So things own what act is going to be its end, right? Because ability is for the sake of act, right? Okay. But it's easier to see this by induction, so you can see how much proportion that induction is more proportioned to us.

[40:29] Now we can ask then. as Aristotle asked in the first book, is man without any act? Is he by nature without any activity? Is there any act, in other words, which either man alone has, or that he has at least better than other things, huh? To reason, yeah. And then you could make a little bit broader than that. You could say man is not just reason, right?

[41:07] No. But he's an animal with reason, an animal that has reason, right? So man's own act would seem to be an act with reason, right? Okay.

[41:22] So you'd say man's own act is the act with reason. Okay. Now, if you go back to the definition of reason given by Shakespeare in the imitation to use reason, if you understand what reason is fully, man alone has reason, right? Okay. But even if you're a dimwit, modern, you think that the ape and maybe even the dog has a mind in some sense, right? This is still the act which man has most of all, right?

[42:14] Okay. Or more so than other things, right? Okay. So even if you're dimwit understanding, you can see that man's own act is the act with reason, right? Okay. Now, I usually say it that way: the act with reason. I don't say. Let me put this around the other way around. that. I want to syllogize here. First figure, you can say the act with reason

[42:52] is man's own act. So the thing's own act as it's in, therefore, Yeah, okay. Now, let me come back upon this phrase: "act with reason."

[43:30] Is "act with reason" mean the same thing as "act of reason"? Does it mean the same thing? How are those two phrases related? Act with reason and act of reason. Yeah, yeah. Act of reason is only part of the act. You can say every act of reason, like understanding, right, reasoning, and so on, defining, and so on, inducing, right? Every act of reason is obviously an act with reason, right?

[44:16] But what about an act of the will? Take the fundamental act of the will, which is love, right? Can that be with reason too? Can there be a reasonable love? Okay, and what about even emotion? Can there be a reasonable anger? There can certainly be an unreasonable anger, but when our Lord chases the money changers out of the temple, right? He is angry there, right? We see sometimes our Lord's anger with the Pharisees, right?

[44:55] And their kind of duplicity and so on, right? Um. So, but that's a reasonable anger that our Lord has, right? Okay. Um. So there can be a reasonable love, right? So that's an act with reason, but it's not an act of reason, right? Okay.

[45:20] So it can be an act of will or an emotion that is measured. And ordered by reason, right? Okay. So if the house is on fire,

[45:59] should I try to get my books out before I get the baby out? No, that would be a disordered love, right? Huh? I should get the baby out first, right? And then, if there's time, get the books out or something else, right? Yeah. Okay. If you bump me in the hall, should I get angry?

[46:22] Well, I have to consider the circumstances, right? Was it an accident, right? That's one thing to consider, right? Was it intentional? If it's an accident, was it due to your carelessness or not even your carelessness, right? Or if it's intentional, if you go down the hall like the guy in high school, you know, goes down the hall, right? You're going in purpose, right? Maybe you get a little bit, you know, a little bit of anger there, right?

[46:54] See. But not like if you're using my kids for target practice or something, right? And it causes a little more anger, right? You see. So,

[47:08] but even then, a what action of my body, right? See. I'd say walking, right? Huh? Or eating, right? Connect an act with reason, not an act of reason. Walking is an act of my legs. But maybe I need some exercise, right? The reason tells me I should get some exercise. I should walk every day or something like that. So. This is an act with reason, right? Okay. So this phrase "act with reason" is broader than an act of reason, right?

[47:49] Okay. Includes first of all an act of the will or an emotion that is moderated, measured, that is to say, or ordered or both by reason, right? And even to some extent, what the acts of my body, right? So if I eat when I should and the amount I should for the circumstance and so on, right, that can be an act with reason, right? Yeah. Now that's why I say "act with reason" rather than "act of reason," huh?

[48:29] Because man's own act, if man is an animal with reason, man's own act will have to be the act with reason. Reason's own act is the act of reason, right? Say. Okay. So notice at this point I'm not saying that the act of reason itself is better than the act of the will, right? Okay. I'm not even saying that the act of reason is better than what, right?

[49:05] You know, that's something more precise, right? I may have to talk about later on, right? Okay. At this point, I'm merely saying the act with what reason, right? Okay. And that involves not only the acts of reason but acts that are directed and measured by reason, huh? Okay.

[49:31] You see that? Now I tried to be simple with this so that the basic way the argument will go, right? Usually we begin with an induction to show that a tool's own act is its end, right? An organ's own act is its end, occupations own act is its end or purpose, right? And then the inducing the more general statement that things own act is its end, right?

[50:05] And then we turn to man and say, well, is man something that has its own act, right? And if you know that man is an animal that has reason, an animal with reason, then you know that the act with reason is man's own act, and then you can, by this kind of argument here, which is called a syllogism, right?

[50:26] Conclude that the act with reason is man's end, right? And your middle term is a thing's own act or man's own act, right? Okay.

[50:37] And now we can we can be a little more full, right? We can go back now to the inductions that we made, and we said, is the end or purpose of a knife just to cut in the old way, or is the end or purpose of a knife to cut well? You get a steak knife that's so dull you can't cut a steak. you say, give me another knife, right?

[51:02] Okay. Because that knife that doesn't cut well is not reaching fully with it. its end or purpose is it? And if you're, as you're taking your notes, and every other letter there is blank, if it doesn't write well, it's not really achieving the end or purpose, right? I have these dumb things on my face here, right? I can see without them, right? You know, you might be a little bit blurred over there, but so what, you know?

[51:32] The page might be blurred. You know, watching the game, I might be, you know, can't see. Whether he's battered with his football or baseball, you know.

[51:43] So the end of the eye is not just to see, but what? To see well, right? And the end of the what? Ear is not just to hear. Only hear your hearing aid. Yeah. Who knows before?

[51:59] But if I couldn't hear you too well, I might have to get what? A hearing aid, right? So the end of the eye is not just to see, but to see well. The end of the ear is not just to hear, but to hear well, right? Um, the

[52:20] end of the pen is not just to write, but to write well. The end of the knife is not just to cut, but to cut well, right? The end of the cook is not just to cook. He burns the meat every night. But to cook well, right? Huh? Okay. And the pianist is always missing a note, and customers are Uh No,

[52:42] the end of the pianist is not just to play the piano, but to play it but well, right? And the end of the teacher is not just to teach, but to teach well, right? Okay. So I could go back over those whole inductions and do the induction again, right? And say that the end of a tool is its own act done well, right? The end of an organ is its own act done well.

[53:13] The end of each occupation is to do its own act well, right? Do you see that? And therefore, a thing's own act, if I say, done well, is its what end?

[53:32] And therefore, the act with reason done well is man's end, right? Okay. Now, sometimes at this point, it would seem almost obvious to the Greek, Aristotle. Another way to say what we just said here, done well, is to say that the act with reason, according to what human virtue, is the end, right? Now,

[54:23] that kind of throws people at first because they have a very narrow understanding what you mean by virtue, okay? And that's because they try to start off with a very particular understanding what virtue is.

[54:45] But there is a general meaning of virtue that is much broader in meaning than human virtue, right? There is a meaning of virtue that's as general as a thing's own act, okay?

[55:05] That virtue is what enables the thing to do its own act well, and vice is the quality of the thing whereby its own act will be done badly, right? Okay. So that one could speak of virtue in the broad sense, or vice, for that matter.

[55:36] In anything that has its own act. So, one of the simplest examples I would give is: what is a knife's own virtue? See, what quality is it that enables a knife to do its own act well? What quality is it of the knife that enables the knife to cut well? Sharpness. Yeah, yeah. So sharpness is a good example of what we mean by virtue in general. And notice sharpness is not what a knife is.

[56:21] Sharpness is not the same as the cutting that the knife does, right? Sharpness is not the knife's cutting well, but sharpness is the quality or the disposition of the knife that enables it to cut well. Enables it to do its own act well, right?

[56:53] Now, what would be the vice of the knife? What would be the quality or disposition or condition of the knife that would make the knife cut poorly? Dullness. Dullness, yeah. See.

[57:12] So, if you're interested in cutting well, interested in having your knife cut well, right? Which is after all the purpose of the knife—not just to cut, but to cut well. Then you should have some interest in the virtue of the knife and what that virtue is. And then the third question that arises is how do you sharpen a knife? How do you give a knife its own virtue, right?

[57:45] Now we're going to do that eventually for man, right? If man's end or purpose is the act with reason done well, right? What is the quality or disposition of the man whereby he does his own act well? We can call that virtue, or the virtue of a man. We can call it human virtue. We have to investigate what that is, right? It's more difficult to figure out what that virtue is.

[58:15] There's actually more than one of them, than to figure out what the virtue of the knife is. But you can speak of the virtue of anything that has its own act. Friend of mine has a plaque in his kitchen wall that you may have seen in somebody else's kitchen. It says, "I put it on the board here."

[58:48] Says, "Much virtue in herbs, little in men." Have you seen that in there? Yeah. Yeah. Now there you see the what? General meaning of virtue, right?

[59:12] And of course, our Lord makes a comparison, right? He compares the you are the salt to the earth, right? If the salt should lose its virtue, right, we cast it out, out under, right? Now, what is the herbs own act? To season the food, right? So if you have fresh herbs, right, herbs that have the virtue of an herb, they're going to season the food well, right?

[59:38] Okay. And I know this guy is kind of an you know expert cook and so on, at least he claims to be. He come out to my house, you know, and he'll do something. He, I was smoking, pull that out there. He's around too much of the herb, you know. You know, it's got to be fresh, you know. So he's looking for a virtuous herb, right? Okay.

[59:58] Compared to men, herbs more often have the virtue of the herb, at least when they're first produced, right? You get out of the garden or something, right? Most men don't have the virtue that they should have, right? Okay.

[1:00:17] Aristotle, in the rhetoric, now, makes the statement might seem strange to us in translation, but he says wealth is the virtue of money Poverty to be the vice of money, right? And notice, he doesn't say wealth is the virtue of man, right? He says wealth is a virtue of money. Why does he say that?

[1:00:44] Well, before you can know what the virtue of thing is, you have to know what its own act is, right? And then, secondly, what enables its own act to be done well, right? Now, what is money's own act? What do you do with money? You buy something, right? So, if you're wealthy, then you can buy well. If you're poor, you got to buy the cheap cut of meat, the second-hand clothing, and the cheap furniture, and so on, right?

[1:01:13] Okay. But if you're wealthy, then you can buy well, right? Buy that hundred-dollar bottle of wine or something, right? And the caviar or something, right? Okay. I knew this one guy in California used to give newly married couples, you know, this book on, you know, hundred ways to fix hamburgers because that's all they can afford, right? You

[1:01:38] see the point, though. Okay. So up to this point, we can say the end of man is the act with reason done well, right? Or we can say the act with reason according to human virtue, right? Okay. Then you see the need to investigate what human virtue is. Just like we have to investigate what the virtue of the knife is, right? And then, likewise, how do you acquire human virtue?

[1:02:12] Just like we might ask how do you sharpen a knife, right? You see that? Okay. You're kind of blurred with my right eye. My left eye here, I see more clearly. Which is my virtuous, our virtuous eye?

[1:02:30] Yeah, yeah. And uh doesn't mean I I I. Look at the girls with that one. It's not moral virtue at all, is it? Right? You see. But I see better with this eye, at least at a distance. Reading is easier. Kind of thing. But as far as you know, distance, right? I can see better with the left eye than with the right eye, right? It might take a a ophthalmologist or somebody, right, to say why is this?

[1:02:58] What is the virtue of the eye, right? What is the shape of my, you know, cornea and so on, right? It Enables this eye to see better, right? Than this one here, right? You see. So it may take some time to figure out what is the virtue exactly of the eye, right? Okay. And that's where Aristotle is going to spend a lot of time on investigating, you know, the virtues of what, of man, right?

[1:03:26] And