Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
1. The Fourteen Books of Wisdom: Naming, Dividing, and 'All Men by Nature Desire to Know'
Class of 2004-12-16
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/001-the-fourteen-books-of-wisdom-naming-dividing-and-all-men/

[0:01] Okay, the second. Look, Aristotle's book on wisdom. It's called in English the Metaphysics. I don't particularly like that title. I like to call it, first of all, the

[0:40] fourteen books of wisdom. And in this proemium this paving the way for the fourteen books of wisdom, you will call this knowledge that he's talking about here.

[1:02] You'll call it wisdom, right? Sophia in Greek. In English, or in Latin rather, the word would be sapientia. Thomas explains the word sapientia, sapida scientia, savory knowledge, tasty knowledge. Okay. Now, a lot of times Aristotle refers to these fourteen books of wisdom as first philosophy. Okay. So you could call it the fourteen books of first philosophy.

[1:51] Now he calls it first philosophy because it's first in dignity, right? In worth, it has most the character of wisdom of any part or kind of philosophy.

[2:07] Um. Now, the editor of Aristotle's works there, Andronicus of Rhodes, saw that in the order of learning, we think these fourteen books of wisdom come after the books in natural philosophy. Okay. So we could call it the fourteen books

[2:33] after the books in natural philosophy. That's not probably as good a way to name it as to call it the fourteen books of wisdom. Or even the fourteen books of first philosophy,

[3:04] because they're naming it more from what it is or what it's about and it's from its place in the order of learning. Yeah. Now, in Greek,

[3:18] meta means or can be after, and ta is just the article, and more briefly in English, physika from the Greek word physis, nature. The books in natural philosophy could be called ta physika. Okay. So after the books in natural philosophy. Okay. And what we've done is to run together three words in Greek and made a word out of it, metaphysics. But doesn't mean anything to us. Of course, people use the word metaphysics to mean almost anything they want it to mean, right?

[4:06] Okay, so it's not a very good way we're naming it. Um, but that's what we're accustomed to call it in English nowadays. Something metaphysics, huh? But as Shakespeare says, custom is a tyrant, right? So I have to call it the fourteen books of wisdom. Now, the stuff I'm posting on the, you know, on the Society of Studies, I'm using the term the fourteen books of wisdom, right?

[4:31] And I get a lot of Christians for doing this, but I think it sounds much more impressive, doesn't it? The fourteen books of wisdom doesn't sound really. It's interesting, you know. And each of these books has got awful lot in it, you know. That's my favorite way of referring to it. Who said custom is a tyrant? Shakespeare. Oh, Shakespeare!

[4:56] And we obey these things, right? Even though they're unreasonable, right? Sure. Yeah. I told you about a little complaint about grace before a meal. You know? We always call it grace, huh? Bless us, O Lord, these thy gifts that you're about to receive and I bow you, through Christ our Lord, Amen. But that's actually the blessing. And in the tradition of the church, there's another prayer called the Thanksgiving after you have your meal, right?

[5:27] And grace, really, means what? Yeah, yeah. So that should really shouldn't really be called grace. It should be called what? Blessing. The blessing, yeah, yeah. We're so accustomed to call it that, and no one seems to be able to break out of that, right? Okay. My other complaint is about the birthday song. You know, you hear everybody's birthday, a happy birthday. It's not a very good piece of music.

[5:55] Yeah. Why should they have this? You know. Over and over again, right? It's not like you know playing the Messiah at Christmas. Messiah's a great piece of of music, right? And but the birthday song—it's just something that's been, you know. So my birthday comes up. I say, now I don't want that song. I'll put a Mozart or something, you know. I see the tyranny, you know. I got to obey that, you know.

[6:23] I'll sing that stupid little song. So I mentioned before. I think how you go into Borders bookstores, some of these bookstores, and there will be a section, titled, no, occult, you know, metaphysics. Yeah, that kind of be one category there—the occult and the metaphysical the the um uh physicists, you know, scientists in the outside experimental science, they'll call metaphysics. You know, you know, and if you look at the some of the works, especially when they're young, some of the scientists, you know, they have this sneering reference to metaphysics at all.

[7:09] I mean, just it's in the outside of science. So, I'd rather call it therefore the the fourteen books after the books of natural philosophy than to call the fourteen books of metaphysics. What does that mean, right? And it's kind of funny. We don't have an explicit title, you know, from down the tribute to Aristotle, right? But in this premium to the fourteen books, you will use the term Sophia, called wisdom, right?

[7:40] And when he refers to these books in in the uh physics, the book books of natural theory, you'll usually say, well, that would be taken up in first philosophy, right? You know, so as far as the authority of the author, you want to say it there, right? These would be better called the fourteen books of wisdom, the fourteen books of first philosophy, but because Andronicus of Rhodes was the editor, right?

[8:07] And he placed these books afterwards, right? I got this particular title, right? Like you know, America got named after a guy who didn't discover America, right? It had something to do with making a map or something at one time, and he got the you know. He made a map. he put his name. on it. Yeah, I'll put his name on it now, you know. But I mean, it's kind of a a fluke of of history, you know.

[8:33] But we're stuck with that anyway. When when we call the fourteen books of first philosophy, yeah, is that simply because it's first in dignity, or or because one thing I always thought was because it's dealing with the first thing? Yeah, you could take it that way too. Yeah, yeah, you could say it's first philosophy.

[9:00] First means what? Before all the rest, right? Yeah. But you could take before there's referring to better, right? Yeah. As Aristotle would say at the end of the *Premium*, every other knowledge is more necessary, but none is better. This is the best knowledge, huh? So that's one way of taking the word first philosophy, right? Okay. Now another is to take the very word philosophy itself, right? Now some people misunderstand.

[9:30] I think the word philosophy, the word philosophy, is not used, to my knowledge, really by Plato or Aristotle to mean the love of wisdom. Although etymologically it comes from the love of wisdom, but it seems to me the love of wisdom is more tied up with the meaning of the word philosopher. That the meaning of the word philosopher is a lover of wisdom, okay? And philosophy names the knowledge that a lover of wisdom would what? Pursue, okay.

[10:04] Now, you know, as Mark Groucho Marx would say in the famous question to make some money when you've missed the big money, right? Who's buried in Grant's tomb? And the obvious answer is Grant, right? That's a great mistake, being made

[10:20] the in the old days of the little program, you know. What you and I, or rather, well, if he has missed out on the big money, you know, you have a little consolation money for you, and if you can ask this question, and then you can answer that question, something like that. Yeah, I say, well, something like his question there. What knowledge would a lover of wisdom pursue?

[10:40] Well it's kind of obvious, right? Yeah, yeah. What knowledge would a lover of geometry pursue? Well, geometry, right? What would a lover of Mozart listen to? Well, a Mozart, obviously. So the knowledge that has most of all the character of wisdom would be the first meaning of the word philosophy, right? Okay, if philosophy means the knowledge that a lover of wisdom would pursue, okay, that's a little it's connected with that first meaning, but still a little different reason for calling it first, right?

[11:18] Okay. Um. While ethics and political philosophy are kind of a wisdom in a qualified sense about human things, right? Or natural philosophy is a kind of wisdom about natural things, right? But they're not wisdom fully or simply, right? Like this knowledge is. But then a third meaning you could give, right? You could say just as natural philosophy is about natural things, right? And political philosophy is about political things, right?

[11:54] So first philosophy is about first things, right? Most of all, the first what causes, right? Okay. But there are other senses of first things that's about. They also defend the axioms, which are the first statements and so on, right? And so we talked about the first road in our knowledge here, right, in the per se, right? But most of all, the first causes. So that'd be a third reason for calling it first philosophy, right?

[12:24] Okay. I think I mentioned before how with Aristotle's book that they call the physics today, the eight books called the physics. If you go back to the Greek title of the book, it's the eight books of natural hearing. And perhaps there's more than one reason to call this natural hearing.

[12:51] One reason would be that you're hearing about natural things. Another reason is that this is very close to what we naturally know. Other reasons, I think you're you're you're listening to nature like a what teacher, right? Okay. So there's a number of reasons why you might say these could be called the eight books of natural hearing. When they translate physics, they take the root there of the word natural, which is nature, right?

[13:26] And take the Greek word nature and transliterate, not translate it into English, right? It would be a better translation. They said nature. They say more. It's about right.

[13:43] Okay. You see, we're we're accustomed to name these books in English, some way or other, and we're kind of stuck with it and custom is a tyrant Now with Aristotle's three books about the soul they customarily call the De Anima. Now, why use the Latin title for that? You know, and the Greek one for these. You know, I don't see any reason for that, but but it's it's customary now, and you know, we end up obeying custom, right?

[14:23] Just like in the clothes we wear, right? You know, we might not dress the way the Greeks, the Romans did, but you know, customary ways of dressing we we follow out.

[14:37] I don't think we're following custom here. We're following eight customs. Oh, eight customs. Yeah. So, they say that the nuns' outfits are derived from the widow's outfits, the Middle Ages. Is that true, or nuns sometimes too? I Mother Seton specifically that she wore widow's weeds. That's what they call it. But other nuns, some orders, I think, they came from peasant, yeah, outfit peasant costumes. Some depending. Aristotle's

[15:11] second book of wisdom. At the end of it, we'll talk about the influence of custom upon how men think, right? But also, you can talk about the influence of custom upon what men think. Thomas talks about that in the beginning of the Summa Contra Gentiles.

[15:30] So, custom has a tremendous influence, huh? And I think so. I think in in the modern times, men are more slaves of custom than they were in Greek times or in medieval times. But

[15:47] let's call it the 14 books of wisdom, you know. Okay. Now, when you say the 14 books of wisdom. For giving, as I mentioned before, the editorial and reference division, right? Okay. You've heard those tiles before, right?

[16:24] Editorial and reference. I use those two words. Editorial purposes and to be able to refer, you know, to any passage you don't have a book you might want to, right?

[16:47] Um, I think I mentioned how the division of Matthew's Gospel, let's say, into twenty-eight chapters, that goes back to University of Paris, I guess, in the twelfth century. Everybody had their own reference division, right? And it was kind of annoying because, you know, we couldn't refer the same text too clearly, and so kind of officially divided it into. But that's kind of what. Yeah, but it's editorial purposes, right?

[17:20] Now you'll, when they published a gospel, say Matthew, you have twenty-eight chapters here, right? Um. Homer's works were were edited in Athens. There, right? That's when they divided them into the what is it, twenty-four books? Each of the Iliad and Odyssey, and of course you can subdivide. Maybe you know the books of Aristotle are in some places subdivided into chapters, right? And I follow the one that you have with Thomas's commentaries, which are divided into lections or readings, and sometimes even divided down into verse and that sort of thing, huh?

[18:00] Now, this is necessary division of a work, right? Okay. The book won't get published without that, probably, without that division, right? And yeah, but now there's a second division, right? Which you find, for example, in Thomas's commentaries on a work of this sort, of course, commentaries on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, and so on. And I call that other division the logical and understandable

[18:43] division, okay. I call it logical in part because it follows the rule that I teach in logic, which I call the rule of two. Or three, which is a rule, um, for the most part, at least, right?

[19:14] And the kind of division that really helps you to what understand the work, right? Um, it makes the the work understandable, huh? That improves the mind, right? Huh? Okay. To know that the you know that there are 14 books of the metaphysics doesn't really teach the mind anything, right? Okay. Or even knowing there are 28 chapters, the Gospel Saint Matthew does that really help you to understand the Gospel Saint Matthew?

[19:47] No, it's useful to refer to. You know, you know, in chapter 19, he talks about the you know your property away and so on, right? And all. poverty. In a sense, right? Okay. So it's useful to refer to a particular place, right? Okay. This parable is in this chapter, or this miracle, or this, you know, Sermon on the Mount is in chapters about five, six, and seven. Okay, it's useful.

[20:20] But now, when Thomas begins his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, he, of course, has already separated the four Gospels, right? But Matthew emphasizes the humanity of Christ, and that's represented by the man. A lot of the

[20:41] symbols there, the Gospel, and Thomas says, "Well, as man, he came into this world. He proceeded through this world, and then he went out of this world. So the Gospel of St. Matthew is divided into three parts.

[21:05] In the first part, which is chapters one and two, in the editorial division, right? In the first part, chapters one and two is about his coming into the world, right? Chapters three through twenty are his progressing through the world, right? And then chapters twenty-one through twenty-eight is going out of this world through his what? Passion and death and resurrection and so on, right? It's a much more.

[21:36] And then he'll subdivide each one of those parts, right? Usually into two or three, and you'll see a reason for it, huh? Okay. So, like the middle part, there, says Thomas, says, "Well, he progresses through the world like a teacher, like a preacher, like a Dominican. " And so three and four are his preparation for the life of his preaching, right? And then the teaching is in chapters what Five through twenty, eh?

[22:10] and okay, now three and four before you you're can go out and preach, you have to be what endowed with grace by the sacraments, so you have the baptism of Christ, right? Then you have to be what tested, right? Through the temptation of Christ, right? Now he's ready to go. See, so this is really helps you to understand the work, right? And I can go on talking about the Gospel Saint Matthew, but really, marvelous the way he does that.

[22:40] So usually you divide into two or three, and subdivide into two or three. You can kind of see the reason for this, huh? So

[22:55] now, when Thomas divides the fourteen books of wisdom. Or he divides the eight books of natural hearing, right? Actually, he divides most of Aristotle's works. He divides them always into two. And what are the two parts? The proemium yeah. And then what they call, signs in Latin, the tractatus, which means what the drawing out, the main work, right? Okay. And the proemium, we just got through, not this class, but the classes before, talking about the proemium to Nicomachean Ethics, huh?

[23:39] Okay. And the proemium Nicomachean Ethics, occupies the first readings or the first lectures, first maybe three readings or that of the book one of the Nicomachean Ethics, right? So that proemium that occupies the first part of book one is going to be divided against the rest of book one in books two through ten. That's the tractatus, the drawing out of what you've been told you're aiming at, right?

[24:08] Okay. And the same way here in the metaphysics, huh? In the fourteen books of wisdom, in the beginning of book one, you have a proemium, right?

[24:25] And like the proemium to Nicomachean Ethics, it has an epilogue, right, where he tells you what he did in the proemium at the end. It's only two, I recall, at the end where he has an epilogue at the end of the proemium itself. This is kind of the main proemium to looking philosophy. Just like the proemium to Nicomachean Ethics is the main proemium to what? Practical philosophy.

[24:48] And we don't have a good proemium by Aristotle to the whole of logic, right? Like you have to the practical and looking philosophy. But Thomas Aquinas, at the beginning of his commentary on the Posterior Analytics, gives us the best proemium we have to logic as a whole, which means a magnificent thing. Now you've heard me compare it a little bit to the division of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, huh?

[25:22] If you were to give the logical division of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, it'd be into two: the prologue and the what play, right? And in a way, the proemium is a little bit analogous to the prologue, right? The prologue, in a way, prepares you for the kind of play that Romeo and Juliet is, prepares you for a tragedy, right? Expect to feel pity and fear, right? In fact, they're mentioned in the prologue, right?

[25:53] Whose misadventure, piteous overthrow, the fearful passage of their death-marked love, right? You're being prepared for a tragedy, huh? And. They compare it sometimes to a overture or something like that in music, right? Where you kind of set the tone, prepare the audience of what's going to come up.

[26:22] So that's the first division, the first logical and understandable division of the fourteen books of wisdom, right? The fourteen books of wisdom. That's the first editorial and reference division, right? But the first logical and understandable division is the proemium against the rest of Book One, two through fourteen. That's the stretching out, the belaboring the thing, huh?

[26:53] Okay? Yeah. I think I mentioned, how, how I admire the proemium to Dei Verbum in Vatican II, right? So if you can divide Dei Verbum, that's what eight chapters, and you can do something like that. You see, but you divide actually the the proemium against the the eight chapters or whatever it is, the main work, then. And the proemium really marvelous proemium there. The way it prepares the way, right?

[27:31] You look at the way it starts. It starts with with talking about eternal life, right, which is the ultimate goal of the word of God, right, eternal life. But then it comes down to faith hope, and charity, And they are like some of the what? the means to eternal life, huh? And especially faith and hope, which disappear, right? You get eternal life, charity remains perfected, but faith and hope disappear, huh?

[27:59] But it's beautiful the way it's ordered, huh? Beautiful quote from Augustine there at the end. You know that by believing we will come to hope, and by hope we come to love, right? Showing the order of those three.

[28:16] But you see that at the end of you know Saint John's great gospel, right? These things are written that you may believe, he says, and that believing you may have life, right? Well, eventually, you know, life of grace and eventually the eternal life, right? So that's the end of why he's writing it. That's he's aiming at, and that's the most important thing in a proemium in philosophy.

[28:40] Is what in Greek they call the scopos, huh? The target, right? The goal, what you're aiming at, okay? In Latin, sometimes express it as the intentio, libri, right? The intention of what, but that's more abstract. The Greek is very concrete, you know, with that the target you're aiming at, huh? The scopos.

[29:05] Okay, so start to look here a little bit the proemium wisdom. Now you'll notice that in the editorial division here, right? There's three what readings, right?

[29:25] But the logical and understandable division of the premium is into two parts, and these two parts, Aristotle in the epilogue will recall. But the first part, which occupies the first and the second reading in the editorial reference division, is going to show what is wisdom aiming at, right? That's the main thing he wants to show. That wisdom is aiming at knowing causes, right? But At last, knowing the very first cause or causes of things, okay.

[30:08] And then, in the second part of the premium, which occupies the third reading, what kind of knowledge is this? Wisdom, okay. And when he recalls at the end of the premium those two things, he recalls first the thing he just did, which is the second thing, right? And then he recalls the first thing he did, right? Okay. So if you look at the bottom of page five there, the epilogue that Aristotle has,

[30:46] what is the nature of the knowledge sought? Then has been said. That's actually the second part of the premium, right? We just finished doing there in the third reading. And what is the goal, right? That the investigation and the whole knowledge over our road must reach, right? That's the first thing he does, and that occupies the first two readings, right? Okay. Now, in the case of the Nicomachean Ethics, the premium had three parts, right?

[31:17] But in the epilogue, he recalls the third thing they just finished doing, and then the second thing, and then the first, right? Just like if you and I, you know, what did you do yesterday? Well, okay, I recorded it yesterday, and then what I did the day before that, I recall next, right? And then finally, I did three days ago or something. Kind of a natural way of doing it, right?

[31:37] Okay. But it's kind of a confirmation of Thomas's division of the premium. Of course, in most cases, you don't have an epilogue in a premium, but maybe these two premiums are the premium to looking philosophy and the premium to practical philosophy, so they have a special importance, huh? I think I mentioned too how Aristotle learned the idea of the premium from Plato there in the work called the Timaeus, where Timaeus has a premium before the main work.

[32:09] And of course, Socrates sits there like a diligent student and applauds the excellence of the premium, you know, that has prepared the way, you know. So.

[32:31] So let's look here now at the first reading here in beginning the premium. Aristotle begins with a statement that is often quoted. It's usually translated "All men by nature desire to know." Well, the Greek word there for "to know" is the word eidenai, which comes from the "I" originally. So it might be more accurate to translate "All men by nature desire to understand."

[33:01] But you could translate it as to know too. But okay, that's the first statement. Now, got to stop now and savor what he said here, right? And the three questions you might ask about this opening statement: The first question is, what does it mean? The Second question is, is it true?

[33:36] And then, why does he begin with this statement? Okay. Now, what does it mean? Well, you got to look at the parts of it to figure that out, right? When he says "all men," does he mean men as opposed to women?

[34:01] Does he mean men as opposed to boys? No, it's being used more in the generic sense. Huh? Now you somewhat know what it means to desire, right? Huh? When he says that they desire by nature, does that mean by nature?

[34:26] born, yeah. In fact, you know, maybe the very good way to translate English the words "by nature" would be "inborn," right? Yeah. The word "nature" or the Greek word corresponding to that "physis," they both seem to come from the word for birth. Huh? Okay. So

[34:48] Shakespeare never forgets that, right? He's always using the word "nature" has some reference back to the meaning of birth. Okay. A natural bond of brothers or a natural bond of sisters, right? But it's a bond that is produced by what common birth, right, or birth from the same parents, huh? Okay. In the there's some medieval authors, maybe Saint Thomas too, in Latin, they'll say, "Man is man natus est to know.

[35:22] He is born to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. He wouldn't say all men by nature wear pants, huh? Okay. I wouldn't go that far. Okay. There might be some things that men do by custom, right? Huh? Or some things they do by what by choice, right? Okay. Aristotle says in the fourth book of wisdom, you know, the philosopher differs from the sophist by his choice of life, right?

[35:58] You give a man a choice, huh? You can be wise, but not appear wise to the world, or you can appear wise to the world and not be wise. What do you choose? Well, the sophist chooses to appear wise to the world. That's a choice, right? And not be wise. Philosopher, you choose to be wise and not appear wise. If that's the other alternative, huh? But here he's saying it's not by choice or by custom or by fashion or whatever it might be, right?

[36:34] But it's by nature, right? Now, if you take to know the translation of the Greek word eidenai there, where knowing would be taken in the broad sense, where even the senses are kind of knowing, right? Then when he takes the sign from the love of the senses, he's taking a very well-known kind of knowing to illustrate that, right, and to bring out the truth of it, right.

[37:10] If you take it in a more narrow sense, that all men by nature desire to understand, then it's kind of an analogy, right? Because to understand, we call to to see sometimes, and just as we love to use our eyes to see, so in actual use our reason to understand, okay. But doesn't in the explanation of it differ too much, right?

[37:41] The English word to understand has an excellence, I think, that puts it above the Greek word knowing or even eidenai That's good. in other ways, eidenai because it comes from the word to see, right? In English, we do say to use the word to see to mean to understand, right? My mother used to say to me when I was little, "I see," said the blind man, but he couldn't see at all.

[38:07] So punning upon that meaning, huh? But the English word to understand is kind of interesting, huh? Because etymologically, right, the word to understand suggests that to understand something is to know but is said to stand under something, and we do speak of the cause as standing under the what effect, yeah.

[38:35] And we also speak of words, you know, putting a name upon something as if the thing that it names is underneath the name, right? So to understand the name is to know what stands under the name, and of course the English word for cause is ground, and ground stands under other things, huh? But don't get too much into the word. Understand there, but the English word has got the excellence to it.

[39:07] So that's kind of what the word, the statement means, right? Okay. What you mean by men there? What you mean by nature, desire, and to know? Now, second question: Is this statement true?

[39:26] Aristotle gives a sign: the fact that men love to use their senses, and especially their eyes, and they use their senses not merely to do something or to make something, but sometimes merely to see something, or merely to hear something, right? Okay. Or sometimes you're curious about a food. You want to see what it tastes like, right? Yeah. See somebody, you know, you're out in the restaurant with somebody, and you know, we're gonna taste it.

[39:55] You know, just kind of curious about it, you know. So is anybody who doesn't at some time. use his eyes just to see something. Oh, look at the beautiful sunset tonight, or look at the beautiful rainbow, or look at the mountains, or look at the ocean, or something, right? Everybody sometimes uses his eyes or other senses just to see something, right? Okay. For they smell a flower just you know for the smell, right?

[40:24] They're not going to eat the flower, right? Probably not, anyway. You see, but they, yeah they're going to make her do something with that smell. notice that Aristotle does. He doesn't say a sign of this is that everybody philosophizes doesn't mean everybody philosophizes today. Or a sign of this is that men do scientific experiments. Everybody does that, right? A sign of this is that men do historical research.

[41:01] No. A sign of this is what that they use the senses sometimes merely to sense, merely to know, and not just to what make or do. And especially the eyes, right? Okay. Especially among the others, that through the eyes, for we choose to see before all the others, not only in order that we might do something, but also in not aiming to do anything. And the cause is that this one among the senses especially makes us know something and shows many differences.

[41:39] So we know nothing about the sun, the moon, the stars without the eyes, right? Now, perhaps another example of this that's shared by all men. All men, to some extent, take in delight in stories, right? And so, when your mother or father is reading you a little Red Riding Hood, right? Don't you want to know what happens when Little Red Riding Hood gets to her grandmother's house?

[42:08] Are you going to make or do something with this, huh? And so people sometimes get reading a novel or they get watching a movie on TV or something, and they stay up beyond bedtime, right? Are they learning something to help them in the job tomorrow? Are they going to be more alert and accomplish more on the job tomorrow because they can't get enough sleep? No, it's because they're what wondrous what's going to happen, right?

[42:40] Okay. Told the story there of my cousin Donald being married to a very practical woman. He had some big thick Russian spy novel or some kind of thing like that. Oh no. And he had finished it, and she happened to pick it up by chance, and got so engrossed she couldn't put it down. And she was neglecting her gardening and her cleaning and everything else that a woman does, and she was angry with her husband that he left the novel around.

[43:05] Oh no! But even this very practical woman, right, has some inborn desire to know. Not for the sake of making her doing something, even where it's interfering with what she's doing. I used to drive up to Quebec every Thanksgiving and Easter, even after I had my PhD, to go see my sister in Indiana. Of course, you drive up through, usually New Hampshire and so on, and you get up in the country there.

[43:33] And if it's, you know, the skiers are coming down the thing, it's really kind of beautiful. It's them coming down, and you're driving, you can't help but look up there, you know. Am I looking up there to help me drive and arrive safely at Quebec? No, see, and people sometimes are distracted by the beautiful sights, whatever they might be, huh? So that's a sign of the truth of what he's saying.

[43:59] But it's a the second more developed sign is that everybody, to some extent, wants to hear how a story turns out, right? Okay. Of course, when he's telling a joke, you want to get to the the punchline, right? You know, the the jokes about people who always forget the punchline. They got frustrated, huh?

[44:20] Perhaps a third example of this is in sporting events, huh? And of course, if the game is lopsided, you know, people will sometimes, but turn it off or even leave, right, huh? Okay. So if you're going into the ninth inning and the score is ten to one or something, you'll see people leaving to get in their cars to get out of the parking lot before the jam takes place, right?

[44:47] But if it's tied up going into the ninth, you won't see those same people leaving, will you? But the practical thing would be to go out there and get your car out of the parking lot before everybody's out there, huh? What are you doing? What are you staying there for? Because your interest in the game has been aroused, right? But you're not going to do anything with the score, right?

[45:11] But you wonder who's going to win. Yeah. You haven't necessarily felt. Let's put it that way. So these are signs that show that all men, and not just the philosophers or the scientists or the historians, right, have this desire to know, right?

[45:32] So now we see a little bit the meaning of what Aristotle's opening statement is, and secondly, that statement seems to be what true, right? Okay.

[45:46] But why would he begin with the statement? Why? Well I don't I don't? If we if we see, it'll show it'll end us bringing us to a knowledge of what wisdom is. Because if we desire to know, finally, and for that reason, etc. So we'll see what so we'll see why he opens with wisdom and I think. Okay. And notice, is it showing that knowing is something good?

[46:19] Yeah. Now you may recall from our study of the good, the good is what all want, right? But you got to be kind of careful with that, right? Because sometimes people want something that is really good, right? And sometimes they want something that appears to be good but is not good, right? So if someone says to you, "Is the fact that something is wanted a sign that it is good?"

[46:50] I'd say yes. But is it a necessary sign that it's good? Oh. No, no. Um, but if something is naturally desired, like we naturally desire food, and water, and sleep, and things of this sort, right? If something is naturally desired, then that's a very strong sign that it's something really good, huh? That something naturally good and not just an appearance, huh? So the fact that all men by nature desire to know, right, is a much stronger sign that to know is good.

[47:34] If you just said that men desire to know. Okay. Um, but perhaps is another thing too about that, and that is that nature doesn't go to excess, huh? So if nature has given us a natural desire to know, it must also be not only good, but in some way possible for us.

[48:10] If nature has given us a natural desire to eat, not only must it be good to eat for man, and for that matter, for the other animals, right? But it must be possible, right? To find food, right? That doesn't mean you always will find food, right? But it's not, in fact, impossible to get food, huh? People die of thirst sometimes, you know, no water in the in the desert, there or something like that, right?

[48:43] But if man has a natural desire to drink, it must be possible, right? Must only be good for man. But it must also be possible to find something.

[48:58] Aristotle's opening statement here is, in a general way, orientating us to the goodness of knowing, and knowing now, not for the sake of making or doing, which is good too, right? But he's going to. This is a proemium to knowing, where the knowing itself is the end or the goal, right? And not the making or doing of something,

[49:24] like in the gospel there, you know, where Christ says, you know, Mary hath chosen the better part, and it shall not be taken away from her, because Martha is pursuing the practical knowledge, right? And that's good in this life, but it's not going to last, and there won't be that that need for that kind of knowledge in the next world. But but Mary is pursuing the better knowledge, the knowledge that is itself an end or a goal, and will not be taken away from her.

[49:59] It'll continue. In fact. it'll. be perfected in the next what world? So you see how he's kind of laying the ground, right, for our pursuit of the knowledge that, for its own sake, is most desirable, namely wisdom, right?

[50:23] And that it's a knowledge that is not for the sake of any making or doing, right? And is possible in some way, right? Okay. And of course, he is talking about

[50:40] something I'll say more explicitly later on in the third reading. that that natural desire, in a way, is the beginning of philosophy. Sometimes they call it wonder, right? and beginning is what's first, right? First philosophy. Okay, it's about the the beginning, huh? In more than one sense, huh? Okay.

[51:09] Now, what does he start to do in the second