Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
25. Dividing to Reach the Beginnings: Kinds of Whole and Part, Universals, and Hegel's Error
Class of 2005-04-07
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/025-dividing-to-reach-the-beginnings-kinds-of-whole-and-part/

[0:00] Now, when Aristotle talks about the four kinds of causes, he distinguishes the four kinds of causes and he defines them. And when he Takes first the material cause right? And he defines it as we've known before: that from which something comes to be existing within it, and he exemplifies this with

[0:35] artificial things, right? Okay, like glass is a matter of that, right, or silver, or take you know, great example, there wood is of the chair, right? Okay. But then, after he's gone through the four kinds of causes and gone through the three corollaries that follow upon the four kinds of causes, then he comes back to the four kinds of causes a second time, okay? And there's a difference in what he does the second time around because he shows you how broadly you can understand each kind of cause,

[1:16] and so he says that all parts out of which something is put together, right, are like the kind of cause called matter, okay? Because the whole comes to be from its parts, right? And

[1:36] they're in it, okay? So even in a immaterial thing, sometimes Aristotle gives as an example of material cause the premises of a syllogism, okay? And he's not thinking of the fact of there being like a efficient cause if they are another way,

[1:58] but he's thinking just taking the formal syllogism there: every B is A, every C is B, therefore every C is A, right? Well, the parts of the conclusion, the subject and the predicate, the parts that the conclusion is put together from, are in the premises, right? Okay, but now you're dealing with something immaterial, the syllogism there, right? But still, there's something like the material cause there when you have these parts, right?

[2:30] Okay. Or I could say, you know, that a statement is speech signifying the true or the false, and they aren't defining statement by its end or purpose, huh? But I could say a statement is speech put together from a noun and a verb, and then defining it by its parts, and I call that definition from material cause, even though you're dealing with something maybe in the mind, the statement, huh?

[3:00] Or I could define a definition as speech signifying what a thing is, or speech making known what a thing is. That's its end or purpose. I could also define it by its matter, its parts, that is to say, and say it say what? Speech composed of the genus and differences, right? You see that? Okay. So there's a certain similarity, right? You can say that the

[3:33] mother and the father, the children are the parts of the family, right? You can say the soldiers are the parts of the army, right? And which cause are the soldiers of the army?

[3:47] Yeah, yeah. Okay. So all parts, in a sense, are like matter, right? Okay. Now, we need a little comparison right now, because in the first two questions of the third reading, Aristotle is going to talk about dividing something, taking it apart to get to the beginnings of it, right? And that's what we do, don't we? You know, these were analysis all the time, right? Aristotle's famous books on the scientific knowledge are called the Prior and the Posterior Analytics.

[4:26] But the Prior and Posterior Analysis, the Prior and Posterior, taking apart, you might say, things, right? Okay. So the certain similarity in what he's doing in the first two questions in this first group of six, right? These ones here, as you say, they're all ordered from starting with matter, right? Okay. Now these first two ones are talking about if you want to get to the beginnings of things, don't you have to go apart.

[4:58] At least the intrinsic beginnings of things, right? Okay. Don't you have to divide, right? Okay. And now Aristotle takes in those first two questions three kinds of division. Okay. Now I don't know if you've heard me talk before, but imitating what Aristotle and Thomas do all the time, you know, Aristotle will say at the beginning of the Physics there, the natural Hearing, he'll say beginnings, causes, and elements.

[5:35] And those are the first three words of the fifth book of Wisdom: beginnings, cause, and elements. And strictly speaking, beginning is more general than what? Cause. And cause is more general than what? Element. Yeah. So every cause, as Aristotle explains in the chapter on beginning, every cause is the beginning in some way. But not every beginning is a cause. And the stock example is the point is the beginning of a line, but not the cause of the line.

[6:06] So beginning is more general than cause, and then cause is more general than element. That element is basically the material cause. And not even every material cause, but the most basic one as a form. So every element is a cause, but not every cause is an element. huh? Well imitate that? When I talk about these three words, I think I mentioned these before: distinction, division, and definition.

[6:38] Okay. Now I was always bothered. Want people break now? I was always bothered by Aristotle in the beginning of the Natural hearing there when he speaks of the definition as dividing.

[6:55] Um, but in a way, in a definition you do divide. So when I go from square, which in a kind of confused and indistinct way says what this thing is, right? When I go from square to definition, I say, "Well, it's a equilateral and a right angle a quadrilateral." I'm kind of dividing and breaking it apart, aren't I? Okay. So in a way, a definition is a division.

[7:26] Okay, but not every division is a what definition, right? Now, how about division distinctions? You say, Well, a lot of times we use the words interchangeably. You'll see Thomas using them kind of interchangeably, huh? But strictly speaking, division is the distinction of the parts of some whole.

[7:58] So not every distinction is a division, but every division is a what distinction? Okay. That becomes very important. Say, when you get you see in theology, you're talking about the Trinity, right? There's a real distinction between the Father and the Son, and between the Holy Spirit and the Father and the Son. And to deny that there's a real distinction is heresy. You you're back in those who are saying that there's just one person there, right?

[8:34] Um, but we never use the word division talking about it. God is not divided into Father, Son, Holy Spirit. That would be to falsely imagine God to be kind of whole, and these are what parts, right?

[8:56] So what Aristotle's doing here is touching upon three kinds of division to get to the parts at the beginning reality, right? Okay. And each of the three kinds of division. Will give you a different beginning for reality.

[9:23] Now, if you study the key chapter on part and whole in the fifth book of wisdom, you will find out that there are four. There are four central meanings of whole and part. and therefore there are four kinds of division.

[9:47] But here he uses only three of his processes that use, right? And the correct one is not used, by that. Okay. Now I see him do that a little bit elsewhere too. Let's Take a little break and then I'll come back to that. But three times he does it. But you see a certain affinity between asking how we should divide reality to get to its beginning, and. then when. he goes immediately afterwards talking about matter, right?

[10:22] Because in a way to divide to get parts, and parts may not be material in the gross sense, you know, but there's some likeness, huh? When you divide into parts, huh? There's an affinity there between those those questions and the questions of studying matter.

[10:44] But you find people, you know, not exactly knowing why, but they think in analysis is important to know something, right? And analysis means basically what? The chemical analysis, whatever it is, you're taking something apart, and therefore you're dividing in some way, right?

[11:03] But if there's three or possibly four ways of dividing, which is the one to get to the beginnings, right? The things, right? Okay, let's come back to the thing I was mentioning a bit.

[11:26] Division, in the strict sense, is the distinction of the parts of some whole. So there's a correspondence with the different senses of whole and part, and the

[11:42] kinds of division, right? Okay. Now, in the fifth book of Wisdom, Aristotle takes a whole and part. Just mention the kinds of whole and part he talks about there.

[12:01] The first kind of whole and part he talks about is the quantitative whole and part, and that can be not only if you have a pure quantity, like you're dividing a line up, you know, or you're dividing a circle up or something, but even if you're dividing our body up here, right, into its organs, right, because our body is quantified, huh? So you have the quantitative whole

[12:34] and part, and you know, when Aristotle defines, say, quantity, that continuous quantity, one definition of continuous quantity is a quantity whose parts meet at a common boundary. Another one is that it's what's divisible forever, so you can divide into parts. But as Thomas remarks, a quantity, by its very nature, has parts, right? So there's a real connection between quantity and whole and part in the first meaning.

[13:07] Now, the quantitative whole is sometimes called the composed whole, but there are other kinds of composed whole besides the quantitative one. The composed is a Latin word meaning put together, right? Okay. Now he'll contrast that with what is called the universal, okay?

[13:39] Because universal whole is not put together from its parts, but it's what set of its parts, right? And sometimes when he uses the word part, he uses the word particular for the parts of the universal whole, but the word particular is taken from the word for part. Now

[14:05] Aristotle, in the Physics, talks about going from the general to the particular. The Greek word for general is katholou, we get the word catholic, but katholou in Greek is running together with the word kata and holos, according to the whole. So the word for general in Greek there, that's translated in our text by general, is taken from the Greek word for whole. While the word for particulars in English or Latin is taken the word part.

[14:34] So it's like a whole and part. And Aristotle in the beginning of Natural Hearing there, when he's showing that we should know the general before the particular. Among other reasons, he makes an analogy and says that the general is the particular, like a whole is the parts. He's thinking of this here. And if we know a whole before we can distinguish the parts, we need also the general before we can distinguish the particulars, right?

[15:01] So you see the likeness there. Now, besides these two kinds of wholes, he talks about two other kinds of composed whole. And one is the definition in its parts, huh? Okay.

[15:28] Now the definition, as you mentioned before, is put together from the genus and the differences. So the definition of square, as we mentioned before, is an equilateral and right-angled quadrilateral. So this is another kind of composed whole. But it's not the quantitative whole whose parts meet at a boundary and so on. But it is a composed whole, nevertheless, right? Now, the other sense he takes, huh?

[16:06] Is that of matter and form. Okay. Now, let's take a simple example of that. Let's take the word, let's say, cat. And the word act.

[16:28] At first, you know, if someone asks you, "What are the parts of the word cat?" You'd say c a t, right? You're thinking of the kind of quantitative parts of it, right? Material parts. Act and so on, okay? Now suppose someone comes along and says, "Well,

[16:48] why are there two different words, cat and act?" There's something in the word cat besides those letters. Otherwise, it wouldn't differ from the word act, right? And of course, it's the order of the letters, right? So isn't the word cat put together from the letters and the order of the letters? Now you get a different sense of the whole and part, don't you? The parts of the word cat.

[17:18] Are the letters and their order? It's kind of strange, sense of whole and part, isn't it? Okay. Now this is the one he's going to be about.

[17:34] Okay. It's kind of strange, right? So, if you if you ask the average person, is the order of the letters a part of the word? What would they say? No, because they're thinking of that first sense of whole and part, right? You think of the parts of the word cat as c a and t, the letters, right? Yeah. You don't think of the order as being a part of it.

[17:59] So this is a sense of whole and part. That's kind of strange, right? The parts of the word cat are the letters and the order of the letters. Now, what are the parts of you? Well, we probably think of my head and my arms, my legs, and other quantitative parts, right? And you do have those parts, right? Okay.

[18:27] But maybe you're a creature composed of what? Body and soul. What kind of a whole and parts is that? Different. It's matter and form, right? Okay. But that's kind of hidden from us, isn't it? If you think of your parts,

[18:48] we think of your quantitative parts, right? First, right? Because your body and your soul are parts of you, but in a quite different sense of part and all, right? It's more like the what order and the letters. Okay. And that might be what's most important for knowing you. Body and soul. Okay. act and ability act and ability. Okay. Um. So.

[19:26] The dialectic here is going to involve these three, and they don't know. Okay. Now, the first way you can divide these different sets of holes apart, you can say these three are all composed wholes, right? And divide them against the rest of the whole. Every whole has parts. Either that's put together from, or that it's set up, right? Okay.

[19:58] So you could divide the composed or put together wholes from the ones that set its parts. We could also put together the quantitative whole and part in the matter and form are parts and hole. And say these are in reality in things outside. This is only in our mind, and the definition is based in the mind too, huh? So these two could be divided against these two, because these two are in the things, and these two are in the mind.

[20:36] Okay. So it's very interesting to think about these four senses of part and whole. Now, in the beginning of the of the natural hearing, in the beginning of the so-called physics, you know, Aristotle is saying we have to go from the general to particular, so he touches upon this sense of whole and part. But the reason he gives is that we know things in confused way before distinctly, and then he takes this kind of thing to show that we know things in confused way before distinctly, and he says, you know, a sensible whole, right?

[21:15] And you can break that down take a symphony. Or a salad dressing, or something, right? You don't distinguish the parts at first, do you? Okay. And then he takes a name and the definition. We can name a thing before we can define it, right? But the definition is more distinct. Equilateral, right angle, quadrilateral is more distinct than square, right? Okay. But little child will call something a square before they'll be able to define it.

[21:53] He makes comparison between this whole as parts and this one. So this and this and this, and he takes something like this in the senses. There's something up there on the hill. Something moving. It's a dog. It's Joe's dog, right? Okay, but it's like this, you know. Missing, right? But later on in Book One, he's talking about what's found and everything that changes. That's what Natural Philosophy is about: changing things.

[22:21] This is much more important than anything else matter and form, right? Okay. So that's hidden, right? This doesn't appear in the first chapter. It doesn't appear here. Very subtle, right? And that's the one that people kind of what miss. Miss. It's a very strange kind of whole part.

[22:47] I mean, it was just you know, think of talking to somebody, try talking to somebody in the street about you know whether the order of the letters is a part of the word. You know, they wouldn't think of that part, would, they you know it's kind of it's really a different meaning of part. You wouldn't call that part. See. See. But isn't in some way the word made up of not just the letters but also the order of them?

[23:09] Yes, see. How does you can't explain that it's intrinsic thing? Like parts are inside the thing, right? Yes, sir. In some sense, the word "cat" is put together not only from those letters but also from that order. Kind of funny thing that order. Kind of strange part, isn't it?

[23:33] See. And of course, if you cut up the word "cat" into letters "c", "a", "t", you got the letters still, right? What happened to the order? Not there. Doesn't seem to be there, you know. It's like the materialist, you know, doctor saying, "I cut all these bodies into the lab, and never saw a soul there, right? "

[23:55] I never found the the order there, right? Here's the C, here's the A, here's the T, is the order. But you're looking for the wrong kind of part there if you're looking for it in that way, right? It's not a part in the sense of a quantitative part, huh? Okay.

[24:12] So he says, and with the beginnings and the elements, and perhaps he mentions elements because he's thinking of what the parts. They make up a thing, right? Okay, they're like matter, but they're like matter, right?

[24:27] Are they the genera or those into which each thing is divided, existing within? Okay. In other words, am I getting to the word "cat" better when I say, "Well, if you want to know the word 'cat, ' you got to divide it into C A and T, then you can know it, right? You got to be able to spell the thing, right? C A and T, right?

[24:51] Okay. Or do I know "cat" better when I tell you what "cat" is? It's not C A and T. Cat is a word. That's what it is.

[25:10] Now, would you have told you more what "cat" is when I say it? The cat is something put together from C A and T, or cat is a word. The letter. And see, Socrates in teaching Plato to ask the question, "What, right? What is that? " Haven't you begun to answer what it is when you say it's a word? And what it is? I think. Okay, but the materialist or the biologist or something, right?

[25:43] He'd say, you know, water is H two O. Cat is C A T. That's its formula, right? Yeah, Socrates or Plato would say, "Hey, you haven't told me what it is,

[26:03] right? " Yeah. Now, if you say it's more in terms of the what universal, right? Well, then you have these two ways the mind divides, right? Okay. Now,

[26:24] when I divide a genus into its what species, right? And if those species are genera, I divide them into something even less universal. The end result of all this dividing would be the least universal of all, right? Okay. But when I divide a definition, and then divide a part of the definition into its definition, and a part of that into its definition, right?

[27:00] If I let's say the definition of square, an equilateral right-angled quadrilateral, right? Now, quadrilateral can be divided into a rectilineal plane figure contained by four sides. Now I've got something even more universal: a rectilineal plane figure than quadrilateral and then square, right? What's a rectilineal plane figure? Well, it's a plane figure contained by what straight lines. Now I got something more universal, plane figure, and then I can line, right?

[27:34] So when you divide in the way you do when you define, you keep on getting something more and more what? Universal. Yeah, yeah. You see?

[27:49] But when you divide in this way, you keep on getting something less universal. So two different ways of dividing, where we both agree that you get to the beginning of things by dividing. You follow this way, you end up with the most universal.

[28:10] But see, at this you end up with the what least universal. Okay. But the first part is asking you to divide in this way or these ways here, right?

[28:24] Who knows that first question there? Our friend Empedocles said, right? Here are the four roots of all things, and he gives poetic names to earth, air, fire, and water, right?

[28:49] That's the way to know these things. They're made out of earth, air, fire, and water, and some ratio, perhaps, right? Okay. Empedocles would say, no, what is this? It's a body, right?

[29:06] So, in other words, do you go to universal or do you go to those quantitative parts to know it, right? But then, if you go to universal, then you have two ways of proceeding, right? One is by dividing the universal into less universals. The other is to define universal and end up with something more universal.

[29:27] So you are going to get three different answers, possible answers to what is the beginning of things, right? But Aristotle is going to say later on that just as matter and form are fundamental to changing things, right? So ability and act are fundamental to what? All things. Yeah, the ability and act are like what? That division of matter and form, right? You see. So the the answer is not here.

[30:02] But interesting what he's doing though, right? And the similarity between those questions, which are trying to get to the beginning of things by dividing, if you think about dividing as giving you parts and parts being like what? Matter. Okay,

[30:22] so let's go back. We said that Plato had two unique positions, right? He made universals exist, separated from all matter, in a world of forms, right? What they call the world of forms.

[30:52] So two things, right? The first two questions are about universals in a sense, right? But notice that the first question brings in the other people's opinions, doesn't it? Okay. So if you went to Empedocles, as we mentioned already, he'd say, well, you take these things apart, to Find their earth, air, fire, and water. Um The famous Democritus, right? Democritus says you cut these things up, and you'll get to these indivisible things, call it atoms, right?

[31:30] Okay. So they have disagreements, you know what they say, but they're answering one side, right? Okay. So Democritus is getting to the beginning of things, the atoms, by dividing in a kind of quantitative way, right? You know, I think I mentioned that when we talked about Democritus. He used the what they call thought experiment, or what Einstein calls a thought experiment, and he said, "Imagine the bodies around you being divided in every way they could possibly be divided.

[32:01] " Well, would nothing be left? Could I hate you so much that I could catch you up into nothing? I might catch you up into such small pieces we couldn't find you, like Jimmy Hoffa or something. But could I catch you up into nothing, really Huh No, matter of fact, did you? As much as Stalin hated you, I still couldn't cut you up in nothing, could I?

[32:26] Because you couldn't be made out of nothing, could you? You cut something up into what it's made out of, right? If you cut something up in every way it can be cut up, you must end up with something uncuttable, right? And this is what the atoms mean, right? The little tiny things. But no, that's a quantitative division, right? Okay. And Empedocles says, "Well, hate, you know, divides up flesh and blood and bones into earth, air, fire, and water, right?

[32:54] " Kind of quantitative division. Okay. So is that the way to get the beginning of things? Well, all the natural scientists, all the chemists, all the chemists, and all the departments in the country would agree with Democritus and Empedocles. That's the way to divide to get the beginning of things, right? Okay. But Socrates or Plato following him might say, "Hey, no, you haven't begun. Tell me what this is, right?

[33:31] " Man walks. What is that? What's the noun man and the verb walks, That's what it is. You mean tell me what that is? Is that the noun man and the verb walks? Well, sure. Divide up. That's the noun, man. and you've got the verb walks. That's all you know, all you need to know, right? Right.

[33:56] It does tell you something about it, doesn't it? It's made up of a noun and a verb, right? You know. Well, what is that, Bill? It's a noun and a verb. A statement. It's a statement, yeah. See, but now statement is something universal, right? See, it's not a quantitative part of it, is it? Okay, so that's what the first question is about, right? What did you do?

[34:23] Socrates is always going around asking the question, "What is this?" Right? And when you answer the question, "What is something," you always end up with something universal. But the chemist doesn't do that. He gets up there and he starts electrodes and he gets separating. I guess the hydrogen, the oxygen, I guess, and something and this goes to that battery, that goes that battery, right? And that's the way to know this thing, right?

[34:47] He's got a point too, I think, right? It's not as if there is no alternative to what he's saying, right? Very fitting to know something you divide into a noun and a verb. Aristotle does in the in the book on the statement. He does divide into a noun and a verb, right? But he also tells us that it's a statement, right? He defines statement, right? Okay. So it's not as if one of these guys has got the the only way to to know things, right?

[35:19] You know, maybe you have to divide into a noun and verb, and that's part of knowing this, right? But also part of knowing it is, no, this is a statement. This is speech signifying the true or the false, right?

[35:37] Okay. I don't know what matter and form would have to do with this. Then see what first sight does he do with it, does it?

[35:57] Notice that the genus though and difference is a bit like matter and form, isn't it? Because the difference determines the genus, a bit like form determines matter.

[36:09] But if you see in some way it's better to say that this is a statement than to say it's a noun and a verb, right? Then you go to the second question, right? And they say, well, now you've got to get at universals to get the beginnings of things, right? Universals are the beginnings of things, and now you are going to find Hegel there coming up, right?

[36:30] Okay, Hegel he he starts everything from the most universal, right? So in the second question, Hegel is coming down to what being is the most. He starts everything from being, right? The whole Hegelian system, you know, if you see it laid out in Stace's diagram, you could buy the old Stace's book on the Hegelian system, right? That Dover put out, right? Now it was republished by Dover, but in the back they have you know put out like a map, you know, the whole Hegelian system.

[37:00] But it all starts with being, right? And being just rises to its antithesis, non-being, and then the two of them arise to becoming, and you go through the whole thing. But Hegel. Divides things all the way down to the most what most universal, okay. But if you divide the way we do, and we divide a genus into its what species, and then sometimes the species can be subdivided into lower species, you end up with the what least universal, right?

[37:36] Probably more people though, like Plato and Hegel, who are Hegelian, who might go back to the most universal, right? Okay. As you mentioned before,

[37:49] you know the distinction they make sometimes between the universalis causando right, and universalis praedicando right. Now you don't want to confuse those two, right? And I was mentioning how Shakespeare and Prince and Cressida, right, kind of plays with the two meanings of jungle, right? Because in Cressida, the project we can Agamemnon, who's the general of the army, right, he gives her a kiss, right, and she's kind of a free woman, so I usually say, you know, she's been kissed by the general, but she's been kissed in general, and he's kisses her and every he kisses her here, and this is just had the downfall of Cressida, I see.

[38:34] But there's two things of general there, right? You take the United States Army, and you say Douglas MacArthur, he's a general, right? But then you can say that soldier is general, in other sense, huh? In general, it's everybody in the army is a soldier, right? Two different senses of general, right? But when you make the most universal

[39:00] and the beginning of all things, right, sort of like confusing soldier with Douglas MacArthur, right? You see, because MacArthur is a universal cause of the movement of the army, right? He's directing the army. Um, but soldier is something what Said of everybody, right? It's not a cause of everybody, right? Now, first the wise man, as you'll find out, he talks both about the cause of all and the set of all, right?

[39:36] But are they the same? We're all Christians here, right? Christian is said of all of us, right? See, is Christian the cause of all of us? No, it's Christ, right? He's a cause of all, The Christian is the set of all. See, They should know both. You want to know what a Christian is, right? Okay, you want to know Christ, right? And the cause of all is more important than the said of all, but that's something I know too, right?

[40:16] But what you want to avoid is to confuse the two, right? If you look at Hegel's logic, so-called logic in any normal sense of the word, but he explicitly identifies that being which is said of all things, that most confused notion of our mind, with the one who said, "I am who am," right? See, so that's why I kind of make fun of him and say, you know, that Shakespeare is wiser, right?

[40:41] See, he distinguishes the two senses of general, right? But in a way, Plato is kind of making that mistake, right? Insofar as he's making the forms, universal forms, the causes of all these things down here, they all, in some sense, partake of this, right? Um,

[41:04] just like all the moral virtues partake of reason in some way, so in a sense, he's taking what is universal, what is said of all or said of many, and making that the cause of all or the cause of many, huh? Because everybody has a hard time understanding universal cause, and

[41:30] we can't, you know, get what a universal cause is without knowing to some extent what it extends to, and then we have to use the sort of what is said of everything it extends to.

[41:47] Like, this is a good comparison to make. If you wanted to distinguish the king and the general, right? Well, the general's causality extends to everyone of whom soldier is said. The king's causality extends further, right? To everyone of whom citizen is said, right? Well, citizen is said of more than soldier. Every soldier is a citizen, but not every citizen is a soldier, right? That's a difference in universality, right?

[42:18] What is said of more than the other, right? As the king and the general, right? King is a cause of more than the general, right?

[42:32] But if you tried to say or to express that causality, of the king's saying to more. you'd say what extends to everyone as a citizen. The general doesn't command every citizen. He commands only those citizens who are what soldiers. Yeah, you see. So there's a connection between said of more and cause of more, right? But they're not the same thing, right? But in trying to understand the extent of the cause of more, we tend to use something said of more, which you want to confuse those two, right?

[43:08] The king's more general. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In other sense, see. Okay. You see that? So, in a way, the opinions of the moderns come up too, right? Because you say, where's Hegel come in here? Well, he comes under one side of the first question, and then in the second one, he comes under the what? The way of getting more universal. You see, and perhaps Plato does too, huh?

[43:45] And of course, there are many thinkers in the German universities, right? Even theological schools who are mixing up those two. But they they end up, you know, with kind of a pantheism, you know.

[44:01] If you make the cause of all what is said of all, you kind of mix it up with everything, don't you? And I mentioned how, in in my favorite work, there, the Summa Contra Gentiles, in the first book, after Thomas has shown that God is I am, who am, and so on, then he he's got a whole chapter or capitulum, as they call. That this is not the being which is said of all God is not being that being.

[44:28] It gives me arguments, you know, against that. But people are falling into that mistake again and again. In Hegel, in some sense, them are, more gross, right? But he's kind of anticipated by Spinoza, who says the order in thoughts and the order in things is the same. And if that's true, then what is first in our thoughts is first in things. Well, first in our thought is confusion.

[44:53] And the most confused, right? So that's beginning reality. But again, there's a likeness of that to those who want to reduce everything to matter, because just as you know wood say can be shaped into a table or into a, a cabinet or bookcase or something else by its form, right? There's a kind of indetermination, right? So when you take the more universal, it's going to be what?

[45:28] Less determined. Yeah, it's going to be determined by by the difference, right? And so on. So a little bit instead of genus, in a bit is like matter, right?

[45:40] And so you find people, you know, making the same kind of mistake about genus that they make about matter, right? Even the great Anaxagoras, in a sense, he's trying to put actually into matter everything that is their own inability. That's why he gets into difficulties. He does, huh? Or like the modern physicists say, every particular particle is composed of all the rest, and they're getting a lot of difficulties doing that.

[46:05] Um, but that's a little bit like the problem that Locke has, as you mentioned in the text from Locke there, where he's saying, you know, this general idea of triangle is very difficult. That isosceles gave you what's all or none of these? He says, right? So in a sense, he wants to kind of put them all in there, right? And it's like you take the particular ideas and you put them together, right, and you get the general idea.

[46:32] It's kind of difficult to do because it's made up of inconsistent parts and so on, right? But in a sense, that's what Anaxagoras is trying to do. Right? Take everything that you can get out of matter. It's all in there, you know. But you got to make it real small to get it in there. So all these things and none of these things does not really distinct, you know.

[46:50] Okay. Have to use a lot of force. What? Have to use a lot of force, violence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, the problem is if you say, are the three lines in the definition of triangle in general are they equal or unequal? Are they all and none of these? No, you'd say it's all of these in ability, none of them in act. But he can't make that distinction between ability and act, which is that kind of whole and part.

[47:18] That you have in matter and form, which is the one that Aristotle is Okay, but nevertheless, elements of truth in all these things, right? You get a little sense here of the first six questions, right? Now, next time, which will be two weeks from now, you said. huh? True. Um. The next six questions will be a little more particular, but they're divided into four and two also.

[47:46] Except the four comes first, and the two come second, right? So four of them are about the one and the many, the multitude of these beginnings, right? And two of them are about whether the beginnings are in ability or an act. Okay. So, but you get some unusual questions there. You'll find out when you get into the one and the many. Okay, so it's like:

[48:21] are the causes one or many? Right? You see the questions of what it developed, and they're in ability or an act. Very interesting, very interesting questions you'll find when you get into them. But okay, so that's a good place to break. Four thirty.