Ethics
7. Good, Better, and the End of Man: Review and the Two Kinds of Human Virtue
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/5-ethics/007-good-better-and-the-end-of-man-review-and-the-two-kinds-of/

[0:00] on Matthew or John or commentary on the Psalms or commentary on Job, right? You wouldn't see the completeness of Thomas there, you know. Both kinds, huh? Thanks.

[0:17] Okay, so I'll be hearing it. In the. Name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more quickly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand all that you've written. The Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Went to that place dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel.

[0:49] Do you know that place? It's not too far from where the Padre Pio was. Yeah, Guardami. Yeah, yeah, that peninsula, massif they call it. Kind of sticks out the Adriatic. There's

[1:06] a lot of famous people there, you know, who visited the place. So Padre Pio obviously visited it, but you know Francis de Gouray did a plaque for him, and other

[1:17] saints. Okay, let's recall just a bit where we had been before. The most fundamental thing was the definition, the first definition. Let's put it that way, of good, huh? And what is that first definition of good? Something that all desire. Yeah, the good is what all want, huh? A little bit of alliteration there, so I like to use that. But the good is what all desire, right? Bonum est quod omnia appetunt.

[1:53] And that's a definition by cause or by effect. By effect. Yeah. But that's connected with it being the first definition because we know effects before causes, and that's why we're always asking the question why, right? So the question why is a sign that we know the effect before we know the cause, usually for the most part. So it's not strange that the first definition of good should be by its what effect that it arouses desire or wanting for it.

[2:33] And you should recall somehow how we we showed that, huh? And so the philosopher Aristotle will say in the sixth book of wisdom that the good is in things chiefly.

[2:48] While something was called good simply because we happened to want it, it'd be more in us than in the thing. And then we took up better, huh? And again, because better means gooder, more good, we can right away exclude the possibility that something is better because you want it more. That something is better for you because you want it more, and this is better for me because I want it more.

[3:22] But you can't say that because something is not good because you want it, and therefore it's not more good because you want it more.

[3:33] Just as sugar is not what sweet because it's white, and so something is not sweeter because it's whiter. You see how those things are tied together, and we actually had a syllogism, right, connecting the two. Remember that? Okay. You could state the syllogism either way, right? You could say if something is not good because you want it, it's not better because you want it more. But we see that it's not good because you want it, therefore it's not better because you want it more.

[4:07] Or vice versa, if you want to refute someone, you know, I say me that something like the typical American that something is better for you if you want it more, right? But if that's so, then something is good because you want it, but that isn't so. Therefore, right?

[4:28] So using the two forms of the hypothetical or conditional or if-then syllogism, huh? Now, then we want to say, well, what is better, huh? And we're talking about this in general, right? What is better? And perhaps the two most general statements would be to say that the whole is better than the part, and the end or purpose is better than that which is for the sake of it.

[5:06] And perhaps the second statement is even more basic, huh? Because in a way, you could bring the first statement under it, because the part is for the sake of the whole. So in a way, the whole is the end or purpose of the part.

[5:28] Then we went into discussion of the best, right? And that would have to be the last end, the end of man that is not desired for the sake of another end or goal. And we saw why there had to be such an end,

[5:51] because you couldn't desire something for the sake of something else. You couldn't desire some means as for the sake of an end unless you first desired that end, right? So if everything was desired for the sake of something else, then what? You'd be desiring an infinite number of things. Yeah, you'd have to desire an infinity of other things before you could desire anything. But how could you even begin to desire something?

[6:21] Because to desire anything would presuppose that you desired something already, so you couldn't begin to desire. So there is some end which is desired for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else, but everything else for the sake of it, and that's what practical philosophy is chiefly about. But what is that end? Knowing it will have a great weight. Aristotle says upon life, knowing what the goal is,

[6:53] and you know how it's hard to hit the target, huh? Even if you are aiming at it, right? But if I am not aiming at the target, you can, for all practical purposes, say that you are going to miss the target, huh? So most men don't even aim at the target. This is not to say that if you aim at the target, you'll hit it. But if you are not aiming at the target, don't know what the target is, you might as well, for all practical purposes, say you are going to miss the goal of life.

[7:31] Going to miss what it's all about. Now, how did we investigate that end or purpose of man? Well, we had to go back to the famous definition of a thing's own act, which is given by Plato, I believe, in the first book of the Republic, one of his most famous works. And the definition of a thing's own act is what? What's the definition of a thing's own act?

[8:06] That which it alone does, or it does the best. It does better than other things can do it. Yeah. So if you go through your house, right, your monastery, you'll find ballpoint pins and knives and forks and screwdrivers and hammers and God knows what other tools, and each tool has its own what? Act, right? Okay.

[8:35] Which either that tool alone can do, or can do at least better than other things, right? So the corkscrew would take the cork out better than the carving knife or something. Even though a desperate man might use a carving knife at some some point, huh? You see.

[8:57] And so, having in mind then the definition of what a thing's own act is, and having in mind also the definition of what an end or purpose is, what is the definition of an end or purpose? Something.

[9:20] Yeah, or is for that matter, right? Okay. So the chair has an end or purpose which is sitting, right? But the chair doesn't. Act for that, right? So you can say an end is that for the sake of which, whether it's something that for the sake of which something is, or that for the sake of which something is done, right? So the chair is for the sake of sitting, so sitting is the end of the chair.

[9:52] Taking medicine is for the sake of health, so health is the end or purpose of taking medicine. Studying is for the sake of what? Knowing, as Shakespeare tells us,

[10:09] and that for that end, that knowing rather is the end of studying. Now notice something logical we're doing here, right? Because when Thomas Aquinas introduces us to the logical works of Aristotle, who's given in the history books the title "The Father of Logic," but he divides the whole of logic according to three acts of reason. And some of you may have seen that text. He does this in his *Proemium to the *Posterior Analytics*, Aristotle's most central and greatest work, might say, in logic, and also his *Proemium to the *Peri Hermeneias*.

[10:55] And what are those three acts of reason? Which is he'll go on to say have a certain order among them. Simple apprehension. Yeah, simple grasping, right? Understanding what something is, right? And then the second act is what?

[11:18] Judgment. Well, let's just say understanding the true or the false. Okay. And that presupposes the first act, doesn't it? Unless I grasp. in some way what a man is and what an animal is, I couldn't understand that man is an animal, could I? Or unless I understood in some way what a man is and what a dog is, I couldn't understand that man is not a dog, right?

[11:48] But sometimes the affirmative or the negative statements are not obvious to our reason, huh? Sometimes from understanding what something is, or from understanding what two things are, you can see right away that no odd number is even, let's say, right? Okay. Or no dog is a tree, or something of that sort, right? But sometimes the connection is not obvious, right? So even if you know what a triangle is, right, and you know what a right angle is, and so on, huh?

[12:21] It's not obvious that the interior angles of a triangle will be equal to two right angles, is it? So you need another act, right? Two is not enough. And what's the third act that you need? Syllogism. Well, yeah, or more in general, reasoning, right? Okay. And you reason by some kind of argument, which may be syllogism or induction or something like these two.

[12:51] Um. And three is all you need, huh? But you do need that third act, right? So notice, what we're doing in a sense here, right? We're trying to understand what a thing's own act is, right? The act which that thing alone can do, or at least which it does better than other things do, right? So it's the act that characterizes that thing. And then the definition of what an end or purpose is—that for the sake of which, right?

[13:26] And now we want to see a connection between those two simple things we've grasped, right? And grasped somewhat fully by a definition of both, right?

[13:38] But that connection is not altogether clear to us, right? So we tried to bring out the connection between a thing's own act and its end or purpose by reasoning, right? And we reasoned mainly by syllogism or by induction in this case. Induction. By induction, right? What does that mean, induction? What kind of an argument is induction? From a list of general examples to a specific definition. Well, you don't have to put a definition there.

[14:15] It's an argument from many particulars, right, to one general, right? Okay. Perhaps we could say more precisely, you know, reasoning from many particular statements to one general statement, right? So this monk has two ears, one mouth, and this student has two ears and one mouth, right? And this student has two ears and one mouth, and I'm taking steps, as Albert gave would say, towards a general statement that every student has what?

[14:47] Two ears and one mouth, huh? I mentioned before how Plutarch says that because you're supposed to listen more than talk. That's kind of a playful way he has of bringing the importance of hearing as the sense of learning, huh, from another. So

[15:13] we wanted to proceed by induction, right? Reasoning from many particulars to the general, and we took it actually a two-layered induction, right? Because we reasoned from looking at the knife and the ballpoint pen and so on, we saw that each of the tools of man, right, in his house and his room and so on, each tool has its own act, right?

[15:46] And that act is also the end or purpose of that tool. So the ballpoint pen has its own act, which is to write, as you can see, and to write is the end or purpose of a ballpoint pen. That's what we have them around, right? So we made an induction from many particular tools and looking at the act of each one of them, huh, and its end or purpose that they're really the same thing, right?

[16:20] And then we did the same thing with the tools that make up our body, huh? Which we are accustomed in English to call organs, right? But as I mentioned before. organ comes from the Greek word organon, meaning tool. Just a common word for tool, right? So the the body of a man, or a body of a dog, for that matter, cat, and even a tree to some extent, the body is put together from tools.

[16:52] The eye is a tool for seeing. The heart is a tool for pumping blood, and so on. So each organ you might say of the body has its own what? Act, yeah. So the teeth in front here, their own act is to bite, huh? But the teeth in back, their own act is to chew. So when you eat an apple, you bite off a piece of it, and then you chew it in the back teeth, right?

[17:23] I suppose if you were missing your back teeth, you could kind of reduce the apple somewhat with your front teeth, but not as well as you can with those back teeth, which are got a different shape that just really fits them for chewing and not for what biting, right? It'd be hard to bite off these apples with the back teeth, apart from eating the apple in your mouth.

[17:46] But if the teeth in front were shaped as the ones in back, you wouldn't be able to bite off an apple as well, would you? So each organ of the body, you might say, has its own act, huh? And that act is also the end or purpose of that. And then we went to the occupations of man, right?

[18:13] And each occupation, in each occupation, you're trained to do something, right? Each occupation has its own act. So the cook's own act is not to play the piano, but to cook, right? And he's trained to do that, right? If you go to the CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, you won't learn how to play the piano, right? Okay. If you go to the conservatory of music, they won't teach you how to cook.

[18:42] So each occupation has its own act, and that is the end or purpose of that occupation. While we have cooks or pianists in our thing, right? So you could say each tool has its own act, and that act is its end or purpose. Each organ has its own act, and that act is its end or purpose. Each occupation has its own act, and that act is its end or purpose, huh?

[19:12] And so you could make a second induction, right, from those three general statements to an even more general statement, right? That everything having its own act is for the sake of that act, huh? Okay. Now we didn't emphasize giving a syllogism or a general reason for this, but perhaps you could once you realize that ability is for the sake of act, right? So if a thing has its own act, it's got an ability for a particular act, and ability is for the sake of act.

[19:52] And then we applied that to what? To man, right? And Aristotle will ask the question: Is man without any act? Is he naturally idle and has no act that characterizes him? And of course, it would be strange

[20:14] if the parts of man, like his organs, had an end or purpose, and the occupations of men had an end or purpose, but man had no end or purpose. Because after all, the organs are parts of the man, and they're for the sake of the man, right? So they would be for the sake of something that has no end or purpose. Would make them kind of purposeless, huh?

[20:41] Well, if you know that a little bit about, if you understand a bit what man is, you can kind of figure out what his own act is, huh? So if man is the animal that has what reason, right?

[21:00] Then the act which is going to characterize man will be an act that has reason involved in it, huh? First of all, those acts are the acts of reason itself, like understanding and reasoning. But also those acts that can be measured and directed and ordered by reason. So even love or even anger, right? Um, in a more proximate sense, and even walking, right, or by drinking this water, right?

[21:35] It's maybe reasonable for me to drink some water here. Keep my voice lubricated, huh? So that the the word of the voice might signify the word of the heart, as Thomas says, huh? Okay, verbum vocis, verbum cordis.

[22:03] So this is the act which either man alone has, if you define reason in a strict sense, or if you're a little bit fuzzy as to exactly what reason is, that man has more than anything else, right?

[22:16] I notice how this understanding that the end is always better, right, than what is for the sake of the end, which shows that the good is fundamentally the same thing as the end or purpose, right? And now you see how the end is tied up with thing's own act, right? And a thing's own act, like we just saw in the case of man, is tied with what a man is.

[22:49] And you can see how true is what the philosopher says in the sixth book of wisdom that the good is in things, huh? Chiefly, right?

[23:03] And my heart is good or bad because it wills the good or it wills the bad, right, huh? But the good and the bad are primarily in things; they're tied to what a thing is.

[23:16] So there's nothing arbitrary or relative in the modern sense about the good. Okay. But notice that people get kind of confused about that, right? Because as we saw, the very first definition of the good is by desire, right? And since people don't always desire the same things, or some people desire some things more than other things, and vice versa for other people, right? And they don't stop and think about the good, and that you're defining it by desire, but you're defining it by its effect, right?

[24:03] They get mixed up, right? And they think that well, we just call something good or better because you want it or you want it more than something else, right?

[24:14] So if I say Mozart's music is is better than Beethoven's music or somebody else's, or better than rock and roll, and they'll say, well, you just say that, Mister Berquist, because you like that music more. And I say, no, no, you got it all backwards. I like it more because it is better. It's not better. because. I like it more.

[24:36] But you see, but you know, you have to stop and think about what good is first, and then better, and then eventually come to talk about the end of man, right?

[24:47] So we can take the result of our induction, and then looking at what man is and seeing what man's own act is, right? And put the two together. When you put two and two together here, the conclusion you get is that man's that the act with reason is man's what? End or purpose?

[25:13] Now, if you want to be a little more precise, you can go back over this whole thing again, right? And see that the purpose of the ballpoint pen is not only to write, but to write well, right? And not to skip letters like some of these do, right? And the purpose of the knife is not just to cut, but to cut well. And the purpose of the eye is not just to see, but to what see well, right?

[25:41] So if my eyes, if their end or purpose was merely to see, would they give me these funny looking things? Huh? Are you? Would they? No.

[25:55] And my doctor always says to me, and I go to see him. How's your hearing? So I says to five as far as I know.

[26:03] But if I wasn't hearing right or hearing well, then they'd give me something analogous to this, right? Okay. And so we say more precisely that man's end or purpose is the act with reason done well, right? Just as the purpose of the knife is not just to write, but to write. The knife got to cut or to cut well, right? Or the knife. To not just to write, but to write well, right?

[26:34] The purpose of the cook is not just to cook, but to cook well, right? Pianists to play well, right? Okay. Looking at newspaper, they're just coming back, and they had a picture of Condoleezza Rice there playing the piano with Yo-Yo Ma playing the cello. Oh wow! She's actually, you know, you know, one of her possibilities to be a concert pianist. Wow! So she's, you know, quite talented that way.

[26:59] Hmm. But not talents. But the purpose of the pianist is to play the piano well, right? And I've known people who played instruments, even in high school orchestra or band, you know, but eventually gave it up because they just don't have the the ability to play well, and they recognize that they're not playing what they would consider to be playing well, huh? So it's not the occupation for them in life.

[27:33] Okay, but anyway, in seeing how the good is most of all the end, that's the connection that Aristotle saw. You see that clearly when you study Aristotle's distinction of four kinds of causes, right? When it comes to talk about the end, you'll see that connection in the end and the good. But you also see the connection between the end and the kind of thing it is, right?

[27:57] See, it's not arbitrary. If we had a a carving knife here, and the ballpoint pen, and the screwdriver, and the corkscrew, right? You can see that their purpose is tied to what they are, to the way they're their very structure, right? And so, if the good is primarily the same thing as the end, and the end is tied to what the thing is, and vice versa, the thing is the way it is because of its end.

[28:24] Then you see the good is in things. It's not this arbitrary how I feel today, and you know that kind of thing. Okay. Now, you could add perhaps a third thing, as Aristotle does. To the first drawing a line around, as he says, the perigraphe, the end of man. That one swallow doesn't make a summer, he says, and therefore it's the act with reason done well throughout life.

[29:10] Just as my eyes to really achieve fully their purpose for me is for me to see well not only today but tomorrow and throughout my life.

[29:24] Now. How does Aristotle make a transition from that perigraphe that drawing the line around the inner purpose of man, to this long, long consideration of human virtue?

[29:47] What's the connection between a thing's own act done well and something called virtue? Are they the same thing? Well, unfortunately, we tend, especially in the modern world, to have a very narrow view of virtue and even of morals, right?

[30:26] You know, talking about morals as one of the factors in the election, right? And and war and economy and something else, right? And social security, taking care of the poor, something else. But all these things involve morals, huh? You know, we you know we talk about being so broad-minded, you know, and they're extremely narrow-minded, right? And

[30:52] as a great teacher, the teacher of Plato, and they're the teacher, the teacher, the teacher, the teacher of Aristotle, and the teacher of Thomas. Heraclitus said, "Right, those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common to all, as much as a city is strong in its law." He said, and even more so, because all the laws of the city, he said, are fed by one divine law, which is more than sufficient for all of them.

[31:24] So you can see that, right? There's a divine law though, shalt not take innocent life, right? And how many laws does that? Feed in the city. I was coming up here and I had the radio on, and they're talking about, you know, enforcing this law about fastening your seatbelt, right? Coming up to the holiday, you know, they're going to start. But how many laws are there to protect human life, right?

[31:49] And every time they invent something like a car, they have laws about the use of the car and licenses to drive cars and so on. And no matter what they invent, they will what? Have laws that are fed by the law to not take innocent human life, huh?

[32:12] So, if you want to understand human virtue, you should understand before human virtue what? Human virtue. Virtue in general, right? Okay. How can you understand human virtue in particular? I should understand virtue in general. And human virtue is going to be to the act with reason done well, right? What virtue in general is to a thing's own act done well, right? Okay. Now, what's the connection between virtue in general and a thing's own act done well?

[32:55] Or, for that matter, what is the connection between a thing's own vice and its own act done badly? Virtue is what enables a thing to do its act well. Yeah. Yeah. Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics would give the definition of virtue in general, right? What makes a thing good and its own act good, right? Perhaps you could say that it's the quality or disposition or the condition of the thing, right?

[33:33] Which enables it to do its own act well, right? And therefore, it makes it a good thing of that kind. So this is a good knife because it what? Cuts well, right? Huh? Well, what is the virtue of the knife? What is the knife's own virtue? Well, you have to figure that out by knowing what the knife's own act is, and then figuring out what condition of the knife, what condition, let's say, of the blade, enables the blade to cut well.

[34:16] And even I can kind of figure that out. That that's sharpness, right? Okay. But as you know, some knives don't cut very well, huh? Some of these steak knives companies, you know, you can actually send the steak knives in, and they'll give them their virtue, right? Restore them to virtue, convert them from being bad knives to being good knives, right? So the dullness is the knife's own what vice, okay?

[34:50] So notice a thing's own act and a thing's own virtue, or a thing's own vice, are not the same thing, are they? But they are connected, right? Because the thing's own virtue enables it to do its own act well, while things own vice will result in the thing doing its own act badly. Yeah. Did you know that pianos get out of tune? And so even the master pianist sitting down, right?

[35:26] He's going to complain, right? Expect me, the the great pianist, to play on this piano. It's not a good tune. That lacks the virtue, right? Lacks the virtue of a piano. An out of tune piano is a vicious

[35:46] yeah, a vicious piano, right? A bad one, right? Now, you can see also that there is a third question, um, and that is, um, how do you give a thing its own virtue, right? Okay. And the way you would give a carving knife in the kitchen its own virtue, right, is not the way you would give a piano its own virtue, right?

[36:25] I know someone who knows how to tune pianos, right? So he knows how to give a piano. Now, its own virtue. Someone else knows how to sharpen a knife, right? So he knows how to give a knife its own what? Virtue.

[36:44] Well, then the same questions come up, right? About anything that has its own act, right? But in ethics, we're concerned with now, what is human virtue, right? What is man's own virtue? And since there's the same knowledge of opposites, what is man's own vice, right?

[37:11] And so you could restate the definition, even of man's end or purpose, once you understand this connection between the virtue of a thing and its own act. You could say it's man's own act, or it's the act with reason, according to human virtue, right, throughout life, right? And then you see very clearly the need of studying what human virtue. Now, at the end of the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, after Aristotle has drawn this line around the end or purpose of man, and seeing the connection between that now and the question of what is human virtue, at the very end of the first book, he divides human virtue into two kinds.

[38:08] And one kind might be called moral virtue, and the other kind could be called intellectual virtue, or the virtues of reason itself. And so, in books two through five, he'll take up moral virtue, and in book six, he'll take up human—I mean, the virtues of reason. Okay. And there you might think he's what done, right? Okay.

[38:46] But in the seventh book, he takes up subhuman vice, right, and suprahuman virtue. Okay. A vice that is what not even human, so bestial. He gives example of the faces of Scythians, right? Okay. Cannibals and so on, right? Okay. Terrible things. Then he talks about heroic virtue, right? And that name is interesting because a hero in Greek mythology. Was a man who was what? Divine and yeah, he had two parents, but one a human and the other divine.

[39:41] And it could be like Achilles, his father is a man, but his mother is a goddess, or it could be like Hercules, maybe whose father is Zeus, but whose mother is a mortal woman, right? Okay, so there's something what partaking of the divine, you might say, in heroic virtue, and therefore it's above ordinary what human virtue, huh? Okay. It's interesting when Thomas Aquinas takes up the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.

[40:15] He recalls what Aristotle says there, right? Because these are going to operate in a way that's above even human virtue. Okay, so it's you know it's the completeness of Aristotle, right? That he adds this seventh book, huh? Where he takes up virtues or vices that are not really human, because they're either below the human, bestial vices, right, or the kind of divine and above the human mode, huh?

[40:48] Um. And then in the eighth and ninth books, he takes up what friendship, right? But as we saw a bit in our study of friendship, the fullest kind of friendship is tied to what virtue, right? And the simplest way of seeing that that even you know if you ask you know general class of students in college, you know, is a friend someone you can trust, and they'll spontaneously agree your friend is someone you can trust, right?

[41:24] Now can you trust a coward on the battlefield? Huh? No. Can you trust? Trust Don Giovanni with your wife or daughter, or sister. No, you see. Can you trust a, avaricious thief with your money? You know, see. So in a way, you begin to see that the person you can trust is a person who is, courageous and moderate and so on, right?

[41:55] If you are a glutton, I can't trust you with the cake, right? If you are a drunkard, I can't trust you with my bottle there, right? I drink the whole thing. Eat the whole thing, you pig! We say. But

[42:13] it's often been observed, you know, the great interest that the ancients had for friendship, right? But you find missing in the what, moderns, huh?

[42:26] And of course, in the Middle Ages, charity was seen as a kind of friendship, and you have the treatises by, the Aelred of Rievaulx on spiritual friendship spiritual friendship, huh?

[42:39] I was kind of struck by one thing there when we went to place where Padre Pio was, huh? Because the the monk who spoke to us, I get a little, he showed you a little film about him, you know, as a monk who was there, But he had known Padre Pio, right, He, was still alive, and

[42:57] but it kind of struck me because I just, you know, I've been looking at the a little bit the Gospel of Saint Matthew before I went away, and Thomas or one of the church fathers, Thomas calling, was observing, you know, how the first apostles he calls are brothers, right? But he calls two pairs of brothers, James and John, and Andrew and and Peter, and this is like in the Old Testament where he called Moses and what Aaron, right?

[43:28] But there he has one pair of brothers. Here he has two pairs of brothers, because the the New Testament is even higher than the what, the old, huh? But there is a similarity between the two, right? That you are going to build spiritual friendship, spiritual brotherhood, on what? Natural, you know, which shows beautiful way of seeing the harmony between nature, and grace, right? That they're not really opposed, huh?

[43:59] Just like you know, like in the sacrament of, matrimony, right, huh? That presupposes kind of natural friendship between the husband and the wife, right? But it's raising it to a higher level, huh? A kind of spiritual friendship that is actually a sign of the union of Christ and the Church and so on, huh? And if I if I remember rightly now, when this monk was talking about the last words of Padre Pio, it's an interesting.

[44:25] But almost his last words was, "I see two mothers," he says. Meaning, I think, is what his natural mother, and now his the mother of God, right? Yeah, I think it's kind of beautiful. It reminds me the likeness between his last words there, almost, and the observation that in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, the fundamental people there, you might say, right, are taken as brothers, right, and then on top of the the natural bond, you have the spiritual bond.

[44:57] It's kind of beautiful, huh? Kind of struck by that, just because that's kind of head of my mind, you know, from reading that. Anyways, and he mentioned that, right? Kind of striking.

[45:11] We still don't know what he said to President Pope, right? Did he know he's going to be pope or not. There is still no word on that.

[45:22] We couldn't find that out. I mean, somebody asked a question about that, you know me. But anyway, a lot of things will come out. I think eventually, but even on this life,

[45:35] um. But no, it's the importance there of friendship, right? And of course, Aristotle, you know, one kind of friendship would be between blood relatives, right? Brother and brother, right? But anyway, the importance he attached to that, I guess, two whole books devoted to friendship. Book five is devoted is is the only book devoted to one virtue, if you can call one virtue justice, right? Maybe different kinds of justice, but you know, justice gets some prominence there.

[46:09] But there is two books devoted to what friendship, right? And you notice how Aristotle too spoke of friendship being, in a sense, better than justice, right? If you have friends, you are going to be what just with somebody, right? But go beyond that, right? And justice is not enough, huh? You need friendship, huh? So that the. Perfection. He sees of friendship, huh? So, speaking as a philosopher, I sometimes say the two best things in life are wisdom and friendship, right?

[46:43] So, what could be better, you know, than friendship in the pursuit of wisdom? They say, well, nothing could be. better I say, well, but wisdom shared with friends, huh? But also, that kind of anticipates what we have in the church, and what you have most fully in heaven, right, huh? Where you have

[47:02] wisdom. I mean, primarily the wisdom of God, right? Wisdom shared with what friends? Yeah. Importance of those things. So, and then the tenth book of wisdom, after he's gone through all the virtues, right? Aristotle comes back and tries to be more precise, right? Because in the definition of friendship, which he calls a drawing a line around a perigraphia in Greek, in the first book, he says it's man's own act or the act with reason, according to human virtue throughout life, right?

[47:46] But after he's gone through all the virtues, does it consist more in some virtues than others, right? And that's a question he doesn't try to answer until the tenth book, and he's gone through all the virtues, huh? Okay.

[48:03] So he begins and ends with the consideration of the end or purpose of man. Now, we also tried to tie it together before I left you.

[48:27] What is practical philosophy about, right? Okay. And as you'll see when you look at the proemium of Aristotle, it's chiefly about the end or purpose of man. Okay.

[48:44] But as we see in Plato's apology, and as we see in the seventh book, say, of the Politics of Aristotle, the practical philosopher, the moral and political philosopher, will talk at least in general about all the goods of man, right? The distinction of all the goods of man in general, and at least as far as the goods of the soul, the goods of the body, exterior goods, and also the order among these goods, right?

[49:26] And that's because he's talking about the end or purpose of man, and all of these things. Some more, some less, right? Some more proximately, and some more remotely. But all of them, in some way, are necessary and contribute to the end or purpose of man.

[49:47] And therefore, his consideration has to extend to all of them, right? Okay. And this will help you to understand by kind of proportion what's going to be true about wisdom, right? Wisdom is going to be not about the end or purpose of man and of human life, but it's going to be about the end or purpose of the whole universe.

[50:13] And because it's about that, it's going to be about all things in general, right? Just as ethics and political philosophy, being about the end or purpose of man's life as a whole, in some ways, going to be about all the goods of man, but in what general, right? Okay.

[50:35] Plato's other major work besides the Republic on the city is called the Laws, right? His last work. But notice the lawgiver in some way is concerned with all the goods of man. He's concerned with justice and things like that that pertain to the goods of the soul. He's concerned with health, which involves the good of the body, and he's concerned with economic issues, the exterior goods. So, in some sense, he's going to make laws about all the goods of man.

[51:06] But he's not going to enter into, you know, the details of medical science there, right? Or the details of how to make a chair or table. He's going to call upon the carpenter or somebody to fill him in on that, right? Um.

[51:25] But among these three kinds of goods, you could say the moral and the political philosopher talks in particular. About the goods of the soul, about the what virtues, right? Because they are the most closely connected with the inner purpose of man.

[51:44] So we define that end, even in the first book, as man's own act, according to human virtue throughout life, right? And so Shakespeare says, and as I've mentioned before, in the Taming of the Shrew, that part of philosophy that treats of what happiness, especially by virtue, to be achieved, right? Okay.

[52:09] So we can say then that practical philosophy is chiefly about the inner purpose of man, about all the goods of man in general, their distinction and order, and about the goods of the soul, the human virtues in particular. That sums it up, right? Okay.

[52:31] But before those three things we talked about, we talked about good and what better, right? Okay. So you should have some grasp of those five things: good, better, the end of man, the division and order of all the goods of man in general, and now I'm going to say some something more particular about the goods of the soul, meaning the human virtues. Okay, starting from what Aristotle does in the end of the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, He's going to divide human virtue

[53:14] into two kinds. Now, as we said here many times, to figure out what the virtue of a thing is requires you to know what its own act is, right? And man's own act is the act with reason. But as we saw, there's a distinction there, right?

[53:42] Act with reason includes not only the acts of reason, which you want to do well, right? But also acts that partake of reason without being acts of reason.

[54:00] Now, what's closest to reason, but is not the same thing as reason, is the will and the what emotions, huh? And the will and the emotions can partake of reason. They can be measured by reason, huh? How angry should be with you, right? Yes, sir.

[54:28] Um, how much did I laugh? Some things they shouldn't laugh at, you see. But laughter doesn't know where it should laugh at. Okay. The acts of the will and and the emotions, they can be directed by reason. Okay. And you see this very clearly in choice.

[55:01] And of course, our exterior acts are influenced by reason because they are proceeding from our will and our emotions, right? Okay. So Aristotle divides human virtue into two kinds: the virtues of reason itself, and the virtues of what partake of reason. Okay. Now some people like to call these intellectual virtues. I don't like that word. I'm not an intellectual myself. That's a pejorative word now. Let's call them the virtues of reason.

[55:44] Let's get ourselves more room here. We're not enough. I have a little foresight, right? See, you see these things, you know. Look ahead, you know, and then you know, big letters, and little things at the end. Kind of a side against the the point, you know. Okay. Virtues of reason.

[56:09] And the virtues of what partakes of reason. Aristotle will go deeper into this, saying that reason is one part of our soul, right, or one power of our soul. But there are other parts of our soul that will listen to reason. That can be what tamed to some extent by reason, huh?

[56:47] And they partake, therefore, of reason, right? And therefore, they're the human virtue, huh? Okay. Now, sometimes, as I say, you'll find these called the moral virtues,

[57:06] and down here they're called these the intellectual virtues. Now, in the second, as I said, through the fifth books, Aristotle takes up the moral virtues. In book six, he takes up the virtues of reason. Now it's interesting what Aristotle does—the way he divides these virtues of reason in the fifth book or sixth book. He divides them into five eventually, huh? Five different virtues, But as you know, the human mind cannot understand the division into five, huh?

[58:06] Okay. So he divides them into two groups: one of three and one of two. Now, the most illustrious student of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, in the prima secundae there, the Summa Theologiae—you know, the whole second part there—is really what you might call moral theology, so. He divides the virtues of reason into five, right? And again, he follows the rule of two or three, right? So he divides them into three and two, right?

[58:46] But not the same three and two as Aristotle does, huh? Okay. And is one man correct and another man incorrect, or is there something brought out by both divisions? Um.

[59:13] I was looking this morning again at the Gospel of Saint Matthew there. In the sixth chapter, the Gospel of Saint Matthew, he had the most complete statement of the Our Father. I think the Our Father is found only in the what Matthew and Luke, but Luke, I think, have only what five petitions. But in Matthew, you have seven petitions, which is the form that we use, right?

[59:36] So that's kind of the the text you might say for the Our Father. And when Augustine or Thomas and others divide those seven petitions, they usually divide them into what two groups, right?

[59:56] In one way of dividing the the seven, is into four petitions about the good, the first four, and then three about the what bad, okay? And that's probably the easiest way to understand it, right? But sometimes Augustine would divide the first three against the last four, because the first three are fulfilled completely only in the next life. And so at the end of the third petition, you say, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

[1:00:32] Like all these things, "Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done" will be fully achieved only in the what in heaven, right? So that ending of the of the third one kind of pertains to all the first three, and then the other four are particularly addressing needs we have in this life, right? And you know, some they they take the sixth, the fourth. Excuse me, the fourth commandment is applying even to the Eucharist, right?

[1:01:05] Give us this daily bread. Well, there won't be the Eucharist in heaven, huh? And there won't be obviously these sins and temptations in heaven and so on. So,

[1:01:18] but notice those two divisions, right? The fourth petition is found in the first part, and you divide it according to the good and the bad, and then. It's found in the second group, and you divide them according to the heavenly and the earthly petitions, huh? But in either case that shows in the fourth one exactly where it should belong, right?

[1:01:49] Right in the middle, because sometimes it's put with the first three, in one way of looking at it. Sometimes with the last three, and but you see something about that fourth one, right? Like the first three, it's about the good, but like the last four, it's more addressed to the needs of this life, right?

[1:02:13] Yes, sir.