Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
20. Metaphysics II, Reading 5: Custom, Certitude, and Matching the Way of Proceeding to the Subject
Class of 2005-03-17
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/020-metaphysics-ii-reading-5-custom-certitude-and-matching-the/

[0:01] Nine angels here, four, four, eight, nine, nine choirs of angels. Waiting for somebody or what? One of them that have come. Okay, let's say our little prayer then. Name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angel, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand all that you've written.

[0:35] Name of the Father and the Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. Take a look at this fifth reading here now in the second book, and as kind of as a preface there, it asks the question: Which is stronger in our thinking, for the most part, custom or argument?

[1:01] Yeah, yeah. And even when I ask this over in the college, as you get the answer, custom. Nobody says argument, huh? And perhaps you could give a little bit of the reason why custom is so strong. In three points about custom, that kind of go in a certain order, you'll see. One reason why custom tends to be stronger than argument is it gets a head start, right?

[1:34] The custom acts upon your mind from the time you're born, and some say when you're still in the womb. And by argument, doesn't begin to influence your reason until quite a few years on, right?

[1:54] Secondly, custom produces a habit or disposition, and habit, as you know, is sometimes called a second nature. So what you're accustomed to think seems naturally what true, although it's not naturally true. And how you think, right, seems a natural way of what thinking, huh?

[2:25] And finally, when one does begin to use his reason, he takes as a starting point something customary. And therefore, you make the customary kind of a principle of your thinking, and that is the third way that custom becomes so what strong, huh? Okay.

[2:52] Can you explain that one more? The third thing. Yeah. Yeah. When people are asked a question, you know, yes, people question in class something like that. Very often, you'll see they'll begin something they've customarily heard, right? Oh, okay. See something they're customarily said about these things. Okay, like we've seen Aristotle. Yeah, yeah. So that having already accepted something because of custom and because it seems natural now, then they proceed from that that you proceed from what you naturally know.

[3:28] And that strengthens the force of custom, using it to judge other things. Huh? You're seeing it now as a principle, and not just as true, right? But as a starting point for other things.

[3:43] So there's a great danger, right, for the mind in custom, right? If you're accustomed to think something that is false, or you're accustomed to thinking in a certain way, it is not appropriate to think about this subject or matter.

[4:09] Then it's going to be very harmful to the good of the mind. Okay. Now we mentioned how Thomas Aquinas refers to the great force of custom in what you think there in the Summa Contra Gentiles. and how custom can make something false seem true, but also something true that needs proof to seem obvious and not need any kind of proof. But now in this fifth reading, Aristotle is talking about the influence of custom, not upon what we think or assent to so much as to how we think, right?

[4:51] Yeah. And how we want to proceed, and how we expect the professor or the author of reading to proceed in these matters, huh? So let's look at the text again of Aristotle. He says, "Listening happens in agreement with custom. We expect things to be said in the way we are accustomed to, and whatever is outside of this does not seem similar, but harder to know and strange because of its unfamiliarity.

[5:26] For the familiar is well known or seems to be well known. And he says the great strength of familiarity is shown by the laws in which mythical and childish things prevail against our what knowledge of them, right? And so when you travel around the world, you find very strange things sometimes in the laws, and the citizens say, "Why don't you do it that way? " And you're kind of surprised by that, huh?

[5:55] Or just take an example from from church law. I remember the time when we went from Latin into the vernacular, and I remember reading. I worked at my aunt's house; happened to be at our aunt's house, and she had some, you know, Saint Anthony Messenger, some little kind of popular religious publication, and somebody's writing in right, saying that all these years she had been defending, you know, the use of Latin in the Mass is essential to the Mass against her Protestant neighbors, and how the whole ground had been cut out from under her, right?

[6:30] Well, you are so accustomed to the Mass being in Latin that it seems that it has to be what in Latin, huh? And all of a sudden, it's not Latin anymore, right? Of course, as a matter of fact, the Mass might have been said in in Greek or in Aramaic, huh? Before it was said in Latin, right? But you are accustomed to hearing it only in Latin.

[6:51] That seems to be the only what way, right? Yeah. If you had lived, you know, in one place where only one language was spoken, that would have seemed the natural way of what speaking, huh? And I told you that joke of my my children there when they studied Latin, right? They come home and say, "Daddy, you know, who was the greatest accomplishment of the Romans?" And I am scratching my head, exactly what is the greatest accomplishment of the Romans?

[7:17] They spoke Latin. So it just kind of seems unnatural way of speaking, you know, Latin. How could anybody, you know, that's not natural way to speak. That's artificial, right? But

[7:36] I remember my my French teacher, you know, when he explained a French idiom, and he'd say, "Now, don't fight it," he says, "just accept it." That's the way they say it, but doesn't make any sense. That's the way of speaking, huh? I see, but there you see it: the force of custom,

[7:57] huh? Ah. So Aristotle now begins to exemplify this, huh, in the third paragraph, and as Thomas explains in his commentary, this can come both from custom, as Aristotle's emphasizing here, but also sometimes from individual what inclination, huh?

[8:24] Thus, some men will not accept what is said if one does not speak mathematically. Now, if you know the history of Greek thought, you recognize how influential Pythagoras was, huh? And Plato himself was greatly influenced by the Pythagoreans, as you can see in the dialogue called the Timaeus, huh? And you know, when you are reading Aristotle's account of the Greek philosophers in the first book of that of of wisdom, and he says, you know.

[8:55] This is the way the translation will go. For the moderns, everything seems to be mathematical. Of course, when we first read that in English, you know, we'd say moderns. You think of the moderns, and that's obviously a relative term, right? There's still some of the modern philosophers. They all want to speak mathematically, but this has come to dominate the Greek thinking at that time. And

[9:19] if you go back to the beginning of modern philosophy, I mean, it really gets going in the 17th century. People like Descartes, who's called in history books the father of modern philosophy. So, although there's anticipations in the 14th and 15th and 16th centuries, it really gets going in the 17th century. But the philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries, before Kant, right, are usually divided in history books into the rationalists, like Descartes and Spinoza and Leibniz, huh? And then the what empiricists like the English empiricists Bacon and Locke and Berkeley and Hume and so on.

[10:09] And the rationalists are rationalists in sense of what mathematical way. Like Leibniz is one of the fathers of calculus, and and Descartes made important contributions to math, and Spinoza's major work, you know, was called Ethica More Geometrico Demonstrata, and set out like a geometrical treatise, right? And

[10:35] my brother Mark used to, you know, satirize, you know, liberalism more geometrico demonstrata, and we had a whole bunch of theorems, you know. A liberal's mind and reality extended to infinity would never meet. Right, that one was, you know, the first theorem in Euclid is to construct an equilateral triangle, you know, And so he had a theorem was on a flattened federal republic to construct a pyramid of total power.

[11:06] But you see those jokes, huh? So Descartes makes it very explicit, right? I wrote my doctoral thesis, in fact, in a comparison of Descartes and Aristotle, you know, and method and so on. But Descartes wanted to proceed everywhere like you do in what geometry, and Spinoza even what more so, huh? And you see that influencing even the natural scientists, huh? They want everything to be mathematical. I remember my brother Richard's high school physics book.

[11:39] You know, had a quote from the British physicist Lord Kelvin: "No matter what the matter is, if it isn't mathematical, it is not scientific." Period. See, so Aristotle's example is what significantly chosen, huh? Thus, some men like Descartes or Spinoza or Leibniz, right, or the mathematical physicists and so on, they will not accept what is said if one does not speak mathematically. But in ancient times, he'd have in mind the Pythagoreans and, to some extent, the Platonists, huh?

[12:12] Of course, the Pythagoreans, you know, they wanted to make everything mathematical. Even had numbers of different virtues, huh? They see likeness between certain numbers and certain virtues. And I've got your number. That's probably Pythagorean. That's the Enneagram right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now Thomas mentions that one might be inclined this way not only by custom, by being accustomed to mathematical studies, but if one has a mathematical what imagination, right, huh?

[12:44] So by individual inclination, you might be, right? Now the other people are a little more weak-minded, huh? And others will not if one does not proceed by what examples, huh? More like historical mind would proceed, huh? Okay. In the what? Rhetorician would proceed, right? Um.

[13:15] Now this third example probably is to be taken in the sense of what? Those who think of the poets as the what? Authority. Yeah, yeah, and therefore you want to proceed by authority, right? Although you could also say there are other ones like the romantic philosophers who want to proceed poetically, right? The more poetic it is, the more true it is, said Novalis, right? But here it probably has a sense where the poet is, probably, in a say what?

[13:50] Authority, huh? Now sometimes I compare to that what you had in the Middle Ages, huh? Where Thomas said, you know, that in philosophy the argument from authority is the weakest, but in theology, says, it's the strongest, right? So in the Middle Ages they were accustomed to what theology, and therefore to the argument from authority, and therefore when they got into other parts of human knowledge, they looked for something kind of analogous to the Bible.

[14:24] In logic, it might be Aristotle's works, right? In medicine, it might be Galen or somebody was taken as the authority, huh? And I think I mentioned before of how in Albert the Great's logical works, huh? When he's discussing, you know, some part of logic, and is this a part of logic? And one of the objections is, well, Aristotle hasn't got any book on this. And Albert dismisses the argument, saying, well, well, maybe didn't get around to it, or maybe he just failed to like, you know, being human being, he could have done everything, right?

[14:58] But but you can't think of such an objection coming up in our time, could you? So much, right? See. But if you kind of are accustomed to looking upon Aristotle as to logic, right? What the Bible is to what? Theology. Yeah, you know, even even even today, you know, we have a problem with the with the Orthodox, right? Church, where they want to accept the filioque, you know, the addition of it's got to be exactly there, you know, in the words already, huh?

[15:32] And exaggerated, you know, authority of a council. You can't even change the words or add to the words, you know. Um. So, um, in the dialogues of Plato, you know, you'll have sometimes somebody who wants to have the poet brought in, and Socrates says, "Well, you know, let's look at ourselves," you know. because we're not sure what the poet wants to say anyway. Okay. So perhaps those.

[16:02] Examples are well, but chosen, right? The mathematician, the mathematical way of proceeding, is something we find in the Pythagoreans and the rationalists in modern times.

[16:16] Other people are kind of a weaker mind; they want to go back to the senses. They want a sensible example, and some just want an authority that they can hold on to. See? Well, I mean, what might be appropriate one place is not appropriate another place, right?

[16:36] Now, the fourth paragraph is looking at this a little bit differently, and the Greek word there that is translated here, precision, by putting parentheses or certitude, it can be translated either way, right? Okay. As you go from mathematics towards the other sciences, you get less what, certitude, less precision. So Aristotle in the

[17:08] Nicomachean Ethics say, "It's equally ridiculous or laughable to allow the geometer to persuade you like a rhetorician, and then to demand the rhetorician that he demonstrates something with the certitude that a geometry has when he demonstrates it there." Aristotle's taking two extremes there, right? So sometimes people will demand more certitude or more precision than the matter admits, right?

[17:39] At other times, they will accept less precision, less certitude than the matter admits, right? So Aristotle say, you have to look for the certitude or precision that's appropriate to the matter, and you can't, you know, in talking about revolution and governments, have the same precision as you can when you talk about about triangles or squares, right? With the same certitude, huh?

[18:09] And some want all things considered with precision or certitude, and of course that tends to be the mathematical people especially, huh? So Descartes wants that kind of precision or that kind of certitude everywhere. While others are pained by precision or certitude, either through inability to follow the reasoning, that's because the weakness of the mind, right? Or through its what stinginess, huh? See, for precision or certitude has something of the sort, so it seems illiberal to some in reasoning, just as in business transactions, huh?

[18:50] Well, when I was first young professor there, bachelor there at Assumption College, sometimes we professors would go out, you know, some bachelor professors had dinner in the restaurant, huh? Now. Y'all order something, y'all get your meal and so on, and then the bill comes, right? And most professors just you know toss their money in, you know. We had one old professor, right? He wanted to pay just what he his meal had cost, right?

[19:19] I wonder if still that's where. Yeah, that's a kind of what you know stinginess, right? I don't care whether you know your meal costs maybe a dollar, two dollars more than my meal. So what? I don't care. Just you know, kind of or kind of, I mean, just even things, huh? So some people think it's like that, right? To demand this kind of certitude or precision, and in one of his sonnets, there Shakespeare speaks of of of niggard truth, huh?

[19:51] Now it doesn't. It means niggardly, right? Stingy truth, right? And it is interesting, right? Because when we go to somebody's house, let's say, and we have dinner there, we praise the dinner, don't we? We all do that, I think. And we don't say what we really thought the dinner was like, huh? We don't say, you know, I've had better, you know, you know, or you don't use the right herb, or you, you know, you cook that a little bit too much, or you know, you make yourself a persona non grata.

[20:28] See, but that would be the truth, right? See, so being you know accurate or precise is sometimes seems to be what stingy, you know. When I was a little snot there in college, freshman in college, in fact, the English professor had his own book, you know, and the first sentence in the book almost was, "Words spoken are written in our thoughts." What did you say about that?

[20:59] Words spoken are written in our thoughts. Yeah, so, I said to him, strictly speaking, that's false. I don't think you like that? See? but see, like you know, you know, you're you're being more precise, and you know, well, there's a connection between words and thoughts, and we have to be so precise, breathless, you know. See, I'm being kind of stingy, you know, and and going to speak exactly right, and going to be in trouble with me, you know.

[21:32] Like an accounting class I took once, and the professor actually miscalculated my score, and he owed me like two points on the test. So I showed him after class, and he just said, "Oh, that's like it's no big deal." And I just said, "Well, do you do your accounting that way? Got a couple points off there."

[22:02] You still love the class. It's a wash. Did you pass? That semester. No. What Aristotle's been doing here up to this point in these last two paragraphs is showing how, in fact, men often do—very often, maybe most often—do proceed right. They do want to proceed in the way to which they are accustomed, or as Thomas says, that to which they are naturally, as individuals, inclined, right?

[22:41] But he's also kind of hinting at that this is not the way to decide, is it? Because you and I would be proceeding in quite different ways in the same matter.

[22:54] So now he's going to say, "Hey," in the next to last paragraph. Hence, one ought to be educated, right? As to how each should be received, how each subject right should be approached, right, or how each what lecture should be received,

[23:21] he's going to in the last paragraph talk about how that's done. But he says, since it is absurd to seek at the same time episteme, or I translate that as reasoned out knowledge, or reasoned out understanding, and the way of reasoned out knowledge, okay,

[23:40] it's not the same thing, right? And it is not easy to get either, he says. Okay, so you shouldn't be at the same time trying to learn geometry, right, and learn how one should learn geometry, but you should learn maybe how we should learn geometry, and then what learn geometry in that way, huh?

[24:08] Now, Averroes in his commentary and Thomas Aquinas following here at this point says, and for this reason also, logic ought to be learned before the other parts of philosophy, because that teaches the common way of going forward in reasoned out knowledge. But then, in addition to that, is what he's talking about here. Each reasoned out knowledge has its own way of going forward, and you have to learn that in the beginning, right?

[24:39] So, if you look at the first question, say of the Summa Theologiae, Thomas will talk about how we're not to proceed in theology, whether theology is argumentative, in what way it's argumentative, and whether it uses metaphor, scripture, and so on, right? But he's talking there about how we're not to what proceed, right?

[25:00] And you can see Boethius doing this very carefully in the beginning of the De Trinitate, that the different sciences don't proceed in the same way. He will

[25:13] elaborate somewhat on those differences when we get to the sixth book when he finally determines it more for wisdom. Now, notice you could say that in all of our knowledge, you can distinguish between what we know and how we know it, right?

[25:40] And Aristotle uses that distinction in the beginning of the first book of the De Anima when he says that one knowledge is better than another because either what you know or how you know it, right? And elsewhere explains that the criterion of what you know is more important, but still both of them, right, are important. But here he's saying, you know. You ought to know how you're going to know something, right?

[26:11] Before you try to know it, and you can't do both at the same time. Now, what I've translated here as the way of reasoned out knowledge. Let me just take the difference there. Once in a while, you have

[26:35] seeing the Greek word and then the Latin word they used to translate it, and then the English word, right? You'll see if you read these things in Greek and Latin as well as in English That the synonym that you try to find in the language suddenly has a different etymology and a little bit of nuance there, right? I think I pointed out when we read the ethics how the Greek word we translate by happiness into eudaimonia.

[27:09] Okay. When I first read Nicomachean Ethics in English, right, they had that translated by happiness. Okay. Happiness was the name given in English text to the end of man, his goal, happiness. But the Greek word is eudaimonia. In the Latin text of Thomas, the word is felicitas. Okay.

[27:43] So these are supposed to be referring to the same thing, right? The end or purpose of man. But notice that the etymology of these three words is different. Because happiness comes from "hap," which means luck. Oh, yeah.

[28:04] And in Latin, what would correspond with happiness would be "bona fortuna." Okay, I mean fortunate in life, right? In Greek, you have "eu" and the word for luck, "eutuchia," right? Okay.

[28:26] It's kind of fun in English now. And if I say you're lucky, that means good luck, right? So happiness means good luck. Okay. Felicitas

[28:38] comes from the Latin word for fruitful. So it's like fruitfulness, right? Okay. So it comes from the word for fruit. Well, that suggests that happiness is not a result of luck or good luck, right? But it's the natural fruit of virtuous behavior, right? Okay, which in some sense fits more with Aristotle's talking about, right?

[29:11] Aristotle in the Poetics, Poetics, and, he's talking about Greek tragedy and so forth, luck, horrible things happening and so on. Then he uses the word eutuchia meaning well or good, and tuchia meaning luck, right? You see, but here eudaimonia means you got a good angel, a good daimon and daimon doesn't mean anything bad yeah. Now it's kind of fruitful to look at those three words, right? Because the etymology suggests that luck has something to do with getting to our goal in life, right?

[29:56] But this suggests it's results of what we choose to do or not to, right? Here it depends, maybe a little bit upon a higher being, right? Well, maybe there's a bit of truth in all of them, right? Huh? Okay. So, in the etymology of the word, a little connotation there. Um, in some sense, the emphasis of Nicomachean Ethics is really upon what you can choose to do or not to do, and one thing will make you happy, and the other thing will make you miserable, right?

[30:27] Luck is outside of our control, and a higher power is not in our control either, right? Or the weekend, praise God. Um, now the Greek word here is tropos.

[30:44] Okay. The Latin word that you find in Thomas's commentary is the word modus. Okay. And we usually translate it way. Okay. So Thomas, in his translation here, he's making an point about logic. We talk about the modus procedendi, you know, science, right? Mm-hmm. And then logic is being about the common modus procedendi, right? And we translate that in English sometimes as the way of proceeding, right? If you want to make it entirely, you should say the way of going forward, right?

[31:32] This is what proceeding means. Okay. So the way of going forward in geometry and the way of going forward in theology is not the same, and the way of going forward in natural philosophy is not the same as geometry or theology, right? Okay. Um.

[31:58] Now sometimes you'll find Thomas just the word modus all by itself, the modus of a sign, so. Now the Greek word is tropos, huh? Okay. Now it's a little bit of difference in the etymology of these words, huh? Well, if you look at the word tropos in Greek, it can have the sense of way, you know, but it turns, it really goes back to the Greek word to turn.

[32:23] Okay. It's interesting. It's taken from turn. Now my favorite writer, Washington Irving, right? Huh? Um, in one of his works there, Mountjoy right? Very interesting work Mountjoy's a guy with a poetic turn of mind, he says, huh? And he wants everything to be poetic, right? Okay. Um, like Novalis there in Germany in the nineteenth century, the more poetic it is, the more true it is. Yeah. Um.

[33:04] But you can say, you know, the turn of mind of a historian and a geometer is not the same, right? The turn of mind of a theologian, right? So you go to a different science, you got to kind of turn your mind a little different direction, huh? That's kind of interesting that word "turn," right?

[33:23] Modus, as Thomas is always talking about in reference to from Saint Augustine, modus is determined by what measure, right? So modus is particularly the word for measure. The English word "way" is almost like the word what path or road, okay? Though sometimes "way" in English is a little more abstract, the way of doing something, right? You've probably seen that expression. It was very popular for a while.

[34:00] Your M O. Your what? Modus operandi. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then "way" tends much the sense of road, but a way of doing something, right? But it's it's a little difference in the what etymology, right? Aristotle uses the word "tropos," there. so we have "modus," and I use the word "way," okay?

[34:22] The way of going forward. Aristotle sometimes speaks of the tropos of going forward too, huh? Proogena okay. So Aristotle's saying the next to the last paragraph that the way of going forward, right? The way of proceeding, the way of turning your head.

[34:52] It's not the same thing, right? As the reasoned out knowledge itself, right? And you can't learn two things at the same time. And it's not easy, says, to get either one of these, huh? Okay.

[35:10] And you have to stop and figure out what the way of proceeding in this science should be, right? Okay. Aristotle is very brief in the last paragraph when he says how this is to be determined, huh?

[35:28] He says mathematical precision or certitude—you can take it either way—should not be demanded everywhere, but in those things not having what matter. Hence, this is not the way of natural science, for probably all nature has matter. Thus, one should first consider what is nature, and in this way it will become clear what natural science is about and whether it belongs to one science and more than one to consider the causes and beginnings.

[35:59] Now, Thomas, in commenting on that part, says that's exactly what he does in the second book of Natural Hearing In the second book of the so called physics, right, he determines what nature is, and therefore what natural things are, and then he finds the way of proceeding that fits this what matter, right? Okay.

[36:21] So the principle Aristotle is enunciating is that the tropos or the modus or the way of proceeding in any given reasoned out knowledge should fit that what matter, the matter being considered there, right? Okay. Now let's take that principle and we're going to try to exemplify and unfold what that means.

[36:51] You say the way of proceeding. You want to speak English? The way of going forward, right? In any reasoned out knowledge, any reasoned out understanding should not be determined by custom, right, or by individual inclination, but it should be what determined by the matter. Yeah, it should fit the matter, right? Or the subject, you know. We're making it more concrete. Should fit the matter of that

[37:40] reasoned out knowledge. So you must know what the matter is, right? Of a reasoned out knowledge, you must know what it's about, right? Before you can figure out what way of proceeding fits that matter, does it?

[38:05] Now, in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle states the same principle, right? But he makes an interesting comparison because of the word matter, right? He compares it to the what mechanical arts, the practical arts, right? To make something out of wood or something out of what cloth, right? Or make something out of metal or something, right? And he says that the way of working in any of these arts, right, must fit the what matter.

[38:45] Yeah, yeah. So my brother-in-law sometimes practices carpentry, right? He uses a hammer and a saw, and more precise instruments than that. He does use a hammer and a saw, right? My wife makes dresses sometimes, huh? And she uses maybe a scissors and a needle and thread and so on, right? But my brother-in-law never uses a needle and thread when he makes something out of wood. My wife never gets a hammer and a saw when she makes a dress.

[39:18] Are you sure? So I think these two people are what using the tools right in the way of working with those tools that fits wood in the one hand and then cloth in their hand, right? Okay.

[39:41] Now, if you were a glassblower, right, you'd have another set of tools, right, to blow the glass, right? And a hammer would not be too useful in making something out of glass.

[39:53] That's a very concrete comparison. Aristotle makes right. It's very well known to us that the different mechanical arts, as they were called in the Middle Ages, the servile arts, as they're sometimes called, right—the ones that take some exterior matter, whether it be cloth or wood or steel or glass, right—and make something out of it, right? They all seem to have different tools, and a different way of using those tools, and the tools that they have and the way they work their matter both have to fit the matter, right?

[40:29] Do you see that? That's a very interesting comparison he makes, huh? Do you see that? My father's factory there. Sometimes I work in the wood shop, and sometimes I work in a forge shop, right? In a forge shop, they might heat a piece of metal and then what? Bend it, right? But in the wood shop, they didn't heat the piece of wood and bend it.

[41:01] That's not suitable to the matter, right? You see what I mean? So that's one beautiful likeness that Aristotle uses, right, to show, right? There's even likeness in even looking now, knowledge, which is for the sake, simply of understanding what and why, right? But where your way of going forward in that reasoned out knowledge or reasoned out understanding, right, has to fit the subject or matter of that knowledge, right?

[41:31] In the same way that the tools and the ways of working with the material at hand in all the servile arts must fit the what? The matter, right? Okay.

[41:45] I suppose to some extent that's true in the fine arts too, right? So the painter would have different tools than, say, the musician, right? And the sculptor would have different tools than the what? Painter. So Michael Angel was making the Pietà or something. He might have a different tool than when he was painting the what? The ceiling, right? Okay. Well, Aristotle said too that we're not not to demand the same precision and certitude everywhere.

[42:25] If you're making the heads of the presidents there out in South Dakota, there, you know, you're blasting away. You can't have the same precision as you can have on a piece of paper, right? And even, you know, with wood, you know, you kind of notice when you saw wood, you know, you take some some of the log with you, you know, and exactly where you draw the line, you know, you can't have quite the same precision as you get on a piece of paper or you're cutting with a with the scissors, right?

[42:46] You can be much more precise there, you know. But when you saw, you take part of the board with you, you know. So the matter doesn't admit of the same what? Precision, right? Yeah, yeah. So that's one beautiful comparison, right? Okay. Now, we can

[43:07] list some these likenesses. Likeness I've just created to the matter of the kind of arts, or civil arts. Now let's take another very simple example here.

[43:39] Suppose I've got the ear of Mozart, right? You know, man who could play the trumpet, he'd faint. You know, it's so sensitive that ear, right? Okay. Now it makes sense for Mozart when he goes to the Uffizi Gallery to see the paintings there and so on to bring his ear up to the paintings. Make any sense. Not much. Or it would be good for Botticelli or some other painter, you know, when he goes to Mozart's music, right?

[44:17] Put his ear plugs in and stare. See? And those likenesses here. Now, here we're talking about two ways of knowing, right? The eyes and ears, right? And regardless of whether you're accustomed to use your eyes more or your ears more, right?

[44:38] That's not the way to decide, right? Or if I have good eyes and bad ears, or vice versa, I should use the eyes rather than no. That whether you use your eyes or your ears or your sense of taste or smell, right? The way of knowing has to fit what you're trying to know. So if I'm trying to know the music of Mozart, the tool that fits the music of Mozart is my ears, mainly, right?

[45:06] If I'm trying to know the painting of Botticelli, then it's my eyes that fit that, right? If I'm trying to know wine, right? Color is not the most important thing, although it has something to do with it. The sound of it is important, you know. The bubbles of the champagne, you know, come they sound, but but but primarily smell and what? Taste, right? Okay. So one should not

[45:43] use the means of knowing to which one is accustomed. In these three, right? I mean, if I, you know, if I'm a great wine taster, like what's his name, Parker, you know, Parker, he's very famous. Everybody doesn't fear him, you know. But his decisions will be about the new wines and so on. He tastes wine all day long, right? He has to spit it out because he'd be completely drunk every day.

[46:07] But he's very famous, you know. Okay. But so he's accustomed to taste using his sense of taste and smell all day long, right? But if he goes out to hear a concert in the evening, I don't know if he does. He can't use the senses he's accustomed to using all day, right? Or these people, you know, who are with a tea taster, you know, they're always tasting tea, you know, for them to buy this or that kind of tea, right?

[46:31] But he might be accustomed all day long to use his sense of what smell or taste. But then when he goes to the museum or to the thing, he has to use not the sense which he's accustomed, right?

[46:46] But likewise, you could say, like with Thomas, you know, if you're if you're particularly good at one sense, right? My brother Mark was was in Detroit one time and visiting a friend there, and his friend had some artist friends, right? And these guys are very sensitive to different shades of color, you know. My brother Mark would describe these guys. You know, they come into room like this.

[47:09] Your eyes are, you will, you know. I've never seen a shade of blue just like that. You know, they're completely absorbed in their eyes. You see. And but even if you've got very good eyes and you you're very sensitive to different shades, this is not going to make you more sensitive to Mozart's music, right? No. So you see, you see how the same principle is involved here.

[47:39] This is a very easy example to see, right? Much easier than than what Aristotle's talking about here, right? But you say the eyes and the ears and taste and smell put them together here in in wine. Two different ways of knowing, right? But which way of knowing you use should not be determined by the one you're accustomed to use the most. Or by the one that you naturally are inclined to, right?

[48:06] I remember one time I was teaching that first book of the metaphysics there, the the premium there, and Aristotle's talking about the eyes, you know, and and I was saying, you know, people would rather be deaf than blind, right? Well, this one girl was a lover of music, you know, she'd rather be blind than deaf. So so many people are inclined to one sense than another, right?

[48:28] But even if you're especially, you know, inclined to the to use your sense of hearing, right? That's where you get your greatest thrills in life. I can't use that when you're trying knowing the paintings of Botticelli or somebody. You see, okay, we're trying to know the wine, right? So you have to go by the what? The one that fits the matter, right? Huh? Okay, so that's another comparison there, right?

[48:57] A little different, here see? Likeness. The use of the senses, huh? Remember that famous movie that Disney made, that *Fantasia*, right? Oh yeah, oh yeah. And in a way, some people criticize *Fantasia* because it was trying to be visual about what music, right? And people who are not accustomed to using their ears to listen carefully, right, to classical music, to playing it, right,

[49:37] or their eyes taking in things right away, right? But it's kind of the wrong way to be introduced to classical music. Yeah, yeah, you have to get through your ears, right? And it's kind of a distraction in a sense. All these things jumping around. Some piece of music, perhaps, moved by you because of the images you have. You know, that's that's kind of you know making that mistake, right? Okay.

[50:01] Okay. Now, let's take a little different comparison here. But you know Aristotle's gone pretty far in that first comparison, right? Okay. But take another comparison here.

[50:28] In the book on the poetic art, Aristotle says that the plot of a tragedy you shouldn't expect to be an happening for the characters. Okay. And if you demand this, you're demanding the pleasure proper to what? Comedy, Comedy, right? In tragedy, right? Okay. So it's kind of a principle, right? In the fine arts and things that are pleasing, right? To seek the pleasure that is what appropriate to each, okay?

[51:10] So seek pleasure that is appropriate to each. Now, let's take the example first of all with with food and things of this sort, right? If you have any experience with drinking wine, coming to appreciate wine, most Americans had a what? Soda pop, a sense of taste, right? And so the wines they were selling most had a kind of what? Sweet. Yeah, and a kind of soda pop taste, right?

[52:02] And so in a way, the Americans was seeking the pleasure appropriate to soda pop in wine, right? And usually, you know, anybody who has some experience of wine will tell you people tend to like a sweet wine before a dry wine, right? And they'll regard a dry wine as what? Sour, bitter. Yes, sour, bitter, right? And they like a white wine before a red wine. But as they get more experience in these things, they'll enjoy the red wine more than the what?

[52:37] White wine. There's more to taste there, right? Okay. So in a sense, they're seeking at first the pleasure that's not appropriate to wine, and it's more appropriate to soda pop or to something else, right? You see the idea there? Okay.

[52:56] Now you take you know funny but somewhat exaggerated examples, right? If someone orders a filet mignon, right, and then puts ice cream over the top of it, what would you say? That's wrong. Maybe it's not the flavor

[53:15] of the ice cream. No, regardless of whether the pleasure of a filet mignon or the pleasure of ice cream is greater, right? Without making any judgments, which is better, the pleasures are different, right? And one shouldn't seek from steak and eating steak the pleasure appropriate to what ice cream. You see, that's that's a mistake, right? Okay.

[53:42] Um. There was in my hometown in St. Paul, Minnesota, for a while there in the St. Paul newspaper. There used to be an advice column, right? Advice column for teenagers. But kind of like the one for adults, if you follow adults. And we used to kind of read just for the fun of it, just for the laughs. So, and

[54:11] one time the the teenage girl is writing in, right? What's her problem? Her problem is that her boyfriend wants her to wear the the candy flavored lipsticks. You know, apparently there are these you know for little girls are like that, strawberries on, and she wants to wear adult lipstick. You know, this is her problem, right? Great, great problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the column the advice column responded buy him a lollipop.

[54:53] But we don't have to recognize that he's seeking the pleasure in a kiss that's proper to a lollipop. So he wants you to wear a strawberry flavored lipstick buy him a strawberry lollipop, But he'll be able to get that flavor. But notice, huh? There's a pleasure proper to a strawberry lollipop and candy, and there's a one proper to a kiss? Right, that's not the same pleasure, right?

[55:20] So, so he's seeking in the kiss the pleasure that's proper to candy, and that's a what? Mistake, right? Okay. Of course, there's some people you know put ketchup or something on everything, you know, and everything tastes the same after a while, right? But they're seeking, you know, they're accustomed to one taste, they want it everywhere, and therefore they're missing out, right, and not tasting things

[55:49] as they in the way they should be tasted, right? Those vegetarian recipes that imitate meat all the time. Yeah. This has been imitating meat. So what's the point?

[56:05] No, I'll use bacon. Or you know, Jews who want imitation bacon. But but but on a higher level, and once we look closer at what Aristotle is saying here, is what I spoke of before: that the pleasure of say tragedy, right, and the pleasure of comedy is not the same, right? And if you look for the pleasure of comedy and tragedy, you're going to miss out, on the pleasures appropriate to tragedy.

[56:38] Now, and of course, what Aristotle said here, though, custom has a great what influence upon these things, right? And if you take, say, one of the early novelists like Henry Fielding, right, wrote Tom Jones, most famous for. But before Tom Jones, he wrote wrote Joseph Andrews. If you get an edition of Joseph Andrews, the novelist Henry Fielding has a little preface before the novel, right? And he is addressed to the reader, right?

[57:15] And that he's attempting in this work a form of fiction to which the reader may not be accustomed, and that the reader may be expecting a pleasure other than that intended by the author, right? And so he's trying to explain what kind of a work he's writing. I think that's very interesting because it's very similar to what Aristotle is saying here, right? If you have a form of fiction to which you are not accustomed, you may not approach it in the proper what manner, yeah, and therefore miss the pleasure that is appropriate to that form of fiction.

[57:54] And one very good example of that is what Joseph Andrews or Henry Fielding, in, the preface to Joseph Andrews, is trying to point out, right?

[58:05] C. S. Lewis, right, a very good literary critic in many ways, but one of his best books is called The Allegory of Love, I don't know if you've ever seen that, but it's about a form of fiction that was very prevalent in the Middle Ages, huh?

[58:25] A form of fiction that was more popular than the novel, which didn't exist then, right? But a form of fiction that was very popular for a longer time than the novel has been popular, he says, right? But a form of fiction to which we are not what accustomed, and so one of his reasons for writing the Allegory of Love was to what? Bring it, bring it back.

[58:48] Yeah, and to, in a sense, educate us, right, as to how to approach this form of fiction to which we are not accustomed, right? See

[59:04] if the if the author is proceeding the way to which we are accustomed, there's no difficulty in following him or trying to follow him, right?

[59:13] But if the author is proceeding the way to which we are not accustomed, or if the the subject matter requires a way of proceeding to which we're not accustomed, then very much do we need, as Aristotle said, to be educated, right, as to how to approach that. See, and so C. S. Lewis saw the need, right, to educate us, right, as to how to approach this form of fiction, which we call the allegory of love, for want of a better title here, right?

[59:44] Um. Now, C. S. Lewis has another work called a preface to Paradise Lost, right? And he's doing the same thing, right? How we can't read Paradise Lost the way we read say lyric poetry, huh? And if we do, we're going to You miss out, huh? Okay. Now, it's a little bit like with food. You know how you get accustomed to certain kinds of food, and partly because of your family, in which your mother cooked, and so on, and maybe your your nationality, your ethnic, you know, background, and so on.

[1:00:19] And it's sometimes hard to enjoy some other kind of food, right? And I shouldn't pretend to like some food you don't like. I'd say to be polite, maybe. but I think it's also a matter of experience that sometimes food that you didn't like at first, you get, you know, very much, yeah, yeah. Why did you like it at first? see? Well, it's partly because of the way you what approached that food, huh?

[1:00:54] When I was first, I first had Chinese food when I was in Quebec, huh? Of all places, and I used to go with a couple of these other students, you know, to a restaurant, and they had American food and Chinese food at that restaurant. They'd always order Chinese food, and I'd order American food. See, and that was rather interesting, you know, huh? And I started ordering Chinese food with them.

[1:01:16] You see, and now I'd probably rather go to a Chinese restaurant maybe than most American restaurants. All different, the food and so on. So it's a question in a sense of getting what accustomed to something, right? That you're not accustomed to, right?

[1:01:34] And even you know, when I drink soda pop, if I drink, say, root beer or orange sodas like that, you know, it's like slurp, you know, you know.

[1:01:53] Now, if I try to pick up a glass of dry red wine and drink that way, I would not enjoy it at all. You know, I'd probably be, you know, regurgitating or sping it up. You know, you see. I got to know sniff it and a little bit, let it roll to the sides of my mouth, and so on. So the way of drinking wine to enjoy it, and drinking wine the way wine should be drunk, right, is not the way you would drink root beer, orange soda, or something of that sort, right, or even water, right.

[1:02:31] So you have to find the way of drinking or consuming that's appropriate to the thing, huh? Okay. But anyway, going back to the to the fine arts, huh? Take an example first of Joseph Andrews, right? And then these two examples from C. S. Lewis, right?

[1:02:51] I remember the first time I tried to read Homer, and I know Homer was a great poet. My brother Mark had an edition of it, you know, paperback edition. I tried, but just couldn't get into it, you know. And then when it came to assumption, there one of my colleagues there. He pulled onto some book club, you know. It was a beautiful edition of Homer, you know, the Iliad, the the Latimer translation.

[1:03:16] And okay, I'll order through your book club, you know. And so I said, I know what I do. It's twenty-four books, you know, in advance. I'll read a book tonight. See, you know. So the first night I read a book, and second night I read a book, and I couldn't put the thing down. Right. All of a sudden, I had what started to read it the way it should be read.

[1:03:37] Right. But I know people. I won't mention who they are, but people close to me, but people can only read, you know, detective stories or mystery stories. You know. They can't read Shakespeare. They can't read, you know, Homer. They can't read, you know. You know they can read a form of fiction to which they are accustomed and that is, you know, customary in our age, right? But they get out of that, they just can't, you know, they can't read poetry, They can't, you know.

[1:04:08] But there you see very much the the force of what of custom, right? And regardless of whether you know Sherlock Holmes is is more or less enjoyable than Shakespeare, you can't read Sherlock Holmes and Macbeth or or Hamlet in the same way, right? My friend Jim back home, you know, he's teaching high school, right? And he had to teach Macbeth, right? Oh. And he was getting frustrated trying to get them to appreciate it.

[1:04:41] So finally, he told them one day, you know, well, it's a mystery story. Well, in a sense, he was giving up the attempt, right, to overcome this this barrier that there was, huh? You see. Um. So you see something like what Aristotle is saying here, but in a different matter, right? Huh? There are many forms of fiction, right? You know, there's the epic, right? And there's the drama, and there's differences between tragedy and comedy.

[1:05:12] But even Shakespeare, the you know, there's at least four different types of play, right? And you can't look for the same pleasure, right? And I know people who've read Homer, right? And build up Achilles Achilles the way he builds up these guys and so on. Then they read Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. And they're dumbfounded, right? You see, but Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida is not an epic, you know.

[1:05:40] Yeah. It's a what black satire. You see, so the way Shakespeare treats Achilles there is quite different way Homer does, right? And he does so in a way that's appropriate to a black satire. While Homer treats them in a way that's appropriate to epic, you know, the grandeur of epic, huh? And so there are many forms of fiction. Some of which we are accustomed to right? and some of which we are individually inclined to right?

[1:06:16] You see, but when you get to a form of fiction to which we are neither accustomed nor individually inclined, we have a hard time getting the pleasure we should get out of that work, right? Which may be greater or lesser than the ones to which we are accustomed. But we have to be kind of what educated in this respect, and perhaps we we need C. S. Lewis or somebody of this sort

[1:06:43] to teach us a bit how to approach this, right? Just like when you introduce somebody to wine, you have to teach them how to, in a sense, drink wine and drink it differently than they drink Coke or something else like that. Do you see? Yeah. Yeah. So, so that's another likeness there, right? huh? With all these forms, huh? But you'd also see that with

[1:07:10] something like that with food, right? That that the different kinds of food, right, and each kind of food has its own pleasure, right? And some of these pleasures you may appreciate right away, and some not, and some because you are accustomed to them, and other ones because you are not, right? And you have to be kind of educated to taste these things, right, and to seek the pleasure that's what appropriate to them.

[1:07:41] Okay. It's a similar thing to what Aristotle is saying here, right? So, hope those likenesses are helpful to understand what he's saying here. Now, when you get to the

[1:08:03] sixth book of wisdom, Aristotle begins to distinguish between the way of proceeding in natural philosophy and in mathematics and in wisdom and so on, right? And maybe there we can go into some of those differences, huh? Kind of the classical text in Thomas's his commentary in Boethius's De Trinitate, where Boethius takes off from Aristotle but kind of expands somewhat on it, right? And we can bring some of those things in at that time, you know.

[1:08:34] Okay. But now we're going to turn. Is it time for our little break yet, or not? We take a little break now, and then we'll be turning here to the third book. Okay.