Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
26. Metaphysics Book III, Part 1: How Many First Causes? Corruptible and Incorruptible Things, the One and Being, and Universal vs. Individual Causes
Class of 2005-04-21
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/026-metaphysics-book-iii-part-1-how-many-first-causes-corruptible/

[0:03] In the. Name of the Father, the Son, of the Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightenment. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, pray for us, and help us to understand all that you have written. In the. Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. amen. Amen.

[0:29] So to recall where we are here, in this second group of questions, which is in this third reading, you can divide these questions to some extent according to the positions of Plato, right? And we mentioned last time the reason, perhaps, why he did that, huh? That Plato was kind of the first thinker to speak, to any extent at all, about an immaterial world in addition to the material world.

[1:01] And if there's only this material world, natural philosophy would be wisdom. And for 200 years, almost the Greek philosophers proceeded as if natural philosophy was wisdom.

[1:16] Now, Plato had two major positions there about things apart from the sensible or material world, and one was the mathematical things, corresponding to the mathematical sciences and the pure mathematical sciences. And then he had the universals, separated from the singulars, the so-called forms, that corresponded to the definitions that Socrates was searching for.

[1:52] The way Thomas divides these 14 questions is that the first 12 pertain to the universal separated, and the last two to the mathematical things. So that's a division into two, I believe, right? Now, as regards the first 12 questions, you can see this more clearly in the first six than in the second six. And in the first six questions,

[2:22] you have two questions about universals, and then four questions about separated or separated from matter. Okay. So is the beginning of these words the letters right, or is it the universal word? And if it's universal, is it the more universal or the what less universal? The most universal or the least universal? And then. Assuming, which everybody does take for granted, that there is a cause called matter, right?

[3:05] Then you had the questions about separation. Is there any kind of cause besides matter? Yes or no? And if the answer is yes, does this other kind of cause? Does it exist only in matter, like the parents of the dog or the cat or something, something material themselves? But it's a different kind of cause to be a maker of something or a generator, and to be the matter out of which something is made.

[3:37] Or are there some causes other than matter that don't exist in matter? Now the answer is yes. There are some causes besides matter, and some of these are what not even in matter, like the unmoved mover and the greater mind that Anaxagoras spoke of, and so on. Is there just one such cause, right? Like the greater mind that Anaxagoras spoke of, or are these many? that Plato and the Platonists, speaker.

[4:13] And then the fourth question was a little more particular with Plato's position. I mean, besides the what whole together as he calls it, huh? I'm somewhat what what a man is, but I'm something besides what a man is, something private, you know, that

[4:35] my individual matter, right, and so on. There don't exist, you know, individual men. Is there, apart from individual men, what a man is existing by itself, right? And apart from individual cats, what a cat is. I know these cats. I see walking around these individual cats. What a cat is. And Plato, you know, thought that there was right because he thought that we were getting truth through the definitions that were looked for by Socrates, and we do get truth through definitions.

[5:09] But definitions knows universal and separation from the cingulars. and if truth requires that the way we know be the way things are, we must truly be in separation.

[5:24] And it's one reason why Plato came to the idea that there was this world of forms, and especially because his teacher, the teacher of his teacher, Heraclitus, had emphasized everything's flowing in the world around us. So how can you understand something that doesn't stand? And therefore, to have understanding, really, you've got to have something that doesn't doesn't move, that stands still. And therefore, there must be these.

[5:55] Things that they're getting some truth through these definitions. Now, the second group of six questions, and that first group of twelve, are dealing a little bit with how are these beginnings, right? Huh? The first ones are saying what are they? The universals, or something else, or they separated, or in some way they separated, and so on. But now, how are they as far as being one or many?

[6:24] And how are they as far as being an act or in what ability? And so, roughly speaking, the first four of those last six questions are about the one and the many, the unity or multiplicities, and the fifth and sixth, or maybe the eleventh and twelfth, in the whole group of twelve questions, are about act and what Ability. ability, huh? So, in the first six, the two came before the four, and the second group, the four comes before the what?

[6:58] The two, huh? So we're on the top of page what three, right? Okay. And actually, down in the third what paragraph is where this begins. Okay. The last two questions about separated there on the top of page three, and then the third paragraph. And whether the beginnings are limited in number or in kind, both those in the definition and those in the subject, two kinds talked about before.

[7:41] Now, what do you think offhand would be the answer to that question? Are the beginnings limited in number or in kind? In kind. Okay, but not in number then. Well,

[8:02] they're potentially an infinite number of things. Okay, now if that was so, then at best they'd be limited in kind, right? Huh? But is it possible that they could be in one way limited in kind and another way limited in number? Let's take a little likeness here. Suppose Berquist is the only typewriter in the world. I'm living in the past now, Chris. Berquist is the only typewriter in the world, and Berquist is typing away, you know.

[8:39] And these words are filling up the pages, huh? Now, are the beginnings or causes of all these words in the page limited in number or in kind? What Would you say? Well, if you're talking about the intrinsic causes, they are limited not in number but in kind. There'd be no definite number or limit as to how many A's, how many B's, how many C's Berquist would fill out as he types away and away and away, right?

[9:11] You see. But if you examined all the words on the page that Berquist had typed, you'd say, "Hey, whiz, got the letter A there, and you got the letter B, and against the English alphabet, you've got 26 altogether. So there's just 26 kinds of letters, right? There's not an infinity of different kinds, right? So there's you could say then that the intrinsic causes, the letters out of which these words are made, on the pages of Berquist's desk, for God knows why, filling up page after page, that the intrinsic causes are limited not in number.

[9:54] There's no limit to how many A's Berquist can turn out, or B's, or C's, or F's, but There is a limited in the kinds of letters there are, right? There's just twenty-six in this case, right? But now, besides those intrinsic causes of the words on the page, there is this guy named Berquist, right? And Berquist is one man in number, right? And he has one typewriter in number, right?

[10:25] But these are now extrinsic causes, aren't they? These are the cause in the sense of the maker, right? Berquist, as the chief cause, and the typewriter as his tool or instrument, right, is making all these words, right? So now we see that, in some sense, the beginnings or causes of all these words is one in number, the typewriter and Berquist, huh? But in terms of intrinsic causes, the letters, they're limited in what kind, huh?

[11:02] So what is it in the universe, huh? Is it one of these two, or is it in one way one of these, another way the other, huh? When the twelfth book of wisdom, Aristotle will conclude that the first maker of the universe, right, is limited in number, one in kind, huh? One in number. That's a way of expression, you know. But the intrinsic causes are going to be limited in what kind, and maybe not in what number.

[11:37] So this is true about animals and plants and so on. They're not limited in number, but they might be limited in what kind, huh?

[11:58] So in a sense, that's a question about one and many in the broad way of classifying these questions. Now the second question, which is actually broken down a little bit into a couple, but Thomas puts it at first as one question: In whether the beginnings or causes of corruptible things and incorruptible things are the same or other.

[12:26] Now, if you say that the causes of corruptible things, destructible things, and of indestructible things or incorruptible things are the same, then somebody might say, well, if you have the same causes, why are some corruptible and some incorruptible? Right? If you have the same causes, why shouldn't they have the same effect, huh?

[13:01] Now, if you say there are different causes for corruptible things and for incorruptible things, well, obviously the causes of incorruptible things would have to be themselves incorruptible, right? What about the causes of corruptible things? Would they be corruptible?

[13:22] Well, if they are corruptible, then the causes of corruptible things could disappear. Incorruptible things could disappear from the universe, but there's a common thought of the Greeks that things keep on coming to be forever, and that's why they thought sometimes of the beginning of things as unlimited.

[13:45] So, if you have a universe of corruptible and incorruptible things, it doesn't seem to make sense to say that only the causes of incorruptible things are incorruptible. It seems that also the causes of corruptible things should be what incorruptible too. But I get the same problem again, right? Why should incorruptible causes here give rise to incorruptible things, and what incorruptible causes here give rise to corruptible things?

[14:14] Huh? Puzzling, isn't it? Okay. So this is a question, in a way, about the one and the many, right? Are there the same causes for both, or are there different ones for each? And that raises problems, right?

[14:44] Of course, if you go back to the Greek philosophers, they were just natural philosophers before Aristotle, and who thought, therefore, that all you have is these natural things that are corruptible, right? What did they think of as being the first causes of these things?

[15:04] Well, we saw in the fragments, if you recall, even of Anaximander, the second thinker there, that we spoke of the unlimited as the source of things, huh? But he said that the what is the source of things is that into which they are what broken down, right? Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return, right? What you made out of it first is that into which you are broken down to at the end.

[15:33] So whatever is the beginning of you is also found there at the what the end, yeah. So it seems that what was the beginning of things, even the sense of matter, in some way remains throughout what change, huh?

[15:53] And perhaps there is a kind of a an echo of that thought even in modern physics, where. Underlying all these things about change and so on are the conservation laws, right? That there's something that is conserved, right, and not lost. There's something in some way unchangeable or incorruptible underlying even the corruptible. So when we study natural philosophy, corruption and in general study change, we see the changes between opposites, like the hard becomes soft, or the soft becomes hard, or the healthy becomes sick, or the sick become healthy.

[16:32] Underlying these opposites, there's got to be a third thing, which is the subject of these things. So there's always something underlying it, isn't there? Something always persisting throughout change.

[16:50] But it's kind of a strange reality, this underlying substance or nature, because it's able to be different things, but not at the same time. And when it's actually one, it's able to be another one.

[17:07] So in a way, there's something incorruptible underlying the corruptible, and that is conserved in some way throughout all change. As Anaxagoras said, "What is cannot cease to be by being cut."

[17:29] Even if I hate you, I can't cut you up into nothing. Going to slice you up until there's nothing left of you. How can I do that?

[17:41] I might be able to cut you up so that we couldn't find the pieces of you, right? But could I cut you up into nothing?

[17:52] Well, you cut something up into what it's made out of, right? So I could cut you up into nothing. You'd be made out of what? Nothing. Doesn't seem you can do that, right? So Anaxagoras says, it seems rightly, what is cannot cease to be by being cut. So even when things are destroyed, are they really annihilated in the etymological sense of the word? They're reduced to nothing.

[18:24] I mean, sometimes you know you find people speaking this way to annihilate something. But even when the physicists use that term, they don't, you know, they have energy or something conserved. They're not really reducing something to to nothing. But it seems like it, you know, somewhat, but it's not really what they think. So maybe there are subtle ways of understanding how there can be something incorruptible, namely matter, right, underlying the what corruptible things.

[19:04] And then the unmoved mover, in some other sense, underlie change and corruption, right? The unmoved mover, the incorruptible, but causing things by motion. So both the unmoved mover and the first matter are in some way incorruptible, but causes of changeable things, huh? Incorruptible things, huh?

[19:33] But then there is another question which will come up before long here in the speech, and that is, well, what about that first matter, right? Does that eternal always was, huh? And I mentioned, you know, how sometimes when you get to the

[19:54] thinking there of the great Anaxagoras, and he's arrived at. The conclusion that there is a greater mind behind actual things, and perhaps what leads him to this is the old statement that like effects have like what causes, and he sees the likeness between the order in the parts of this room or this building, right? The order in the parts of the automobile and so on, and how the parts are well arranged for the function of it, and a similar good order in the parts of animals and plants, huh?

[20:39] My teeth are where they should be, right? Not here on top of my head or down here on the sides of my thing or below my feet or somewhere, right? And all my parts are more or less where they should be, right? Which helps with my digestion and and so on. And my eyes are in quite a good position for my walking around and even driving up here, and so we see a real likeness there between the two, and that if the artists were to make what nature makes, he would make it in the same way.

[21:17] So my teeth are made out of something hard, and if he was to replace one of my teeth, he would use cotton or cardboard or some other thing, right? He would imitate nature, right? And if he made me false teeth, he would put the biting teeth in front and the chewing teeth in back and arrange them that way. If he replaced it part of a blood vessel, I guess he would use a tube of some sort, right, rather than a square thing and so on.

[21:46] And so now, what's the cause of that order inside the automobile engine or inside the room here, right? The order inside my briefcase or my ballpoint pen or whatever it is. Well, we know it's the mind, right? But the human mind, huh? So if like effects have like causes, and the order in the parts of animals and plants is like the order in the parts of the things made by man, and the cause of the latter is the human mind, then it's a reasonable guess, right?

[22:25] The reasonable conclusion that there's some other kind of mind, right? That's the cause of the order in the parts of animals and plants, and sense that mind is responsible for much more order and more marvelous order, right? Than things made by man, he calls it the greater mind. I ask students sometimes, has he arrived at the divine mind here?

[22:52] I said, you know, he might think of this as being more or less the divine mind. I say, as a Christian, you know, where we talk about the. Human mind and the angelic mind and the divine mind. What has Anaxagoras arrived at?

[23:10] See, he's arrived at a mind that is separate from matter, a mind that can move matter by locomotion, but not a mind that is responsible for the very what existence of the matter there. Right. So, what kind of mind is that?

[23:35] It's angelic mind, yeah. And Plato, in the famous dialogue, the Timaeus, he speaks of a greater mind, the Demiurge right, which is acting upon matter and reducing it to order. But again, he doesn't speak of the Demiurge as responsible for the existence of matter.

[23:59] So, in that sense, you you would get that far, right? And not get yet to the idea of creation. Because if there is a cause of the existence of the first matter,

[24:26] it can't be matter, because then that would be the first matter, right? So, if there is a cause of the existence of matter, it's not going to be a cause by motion transforming matter.

[24:47] I raise that because someone might say, you know, well, are the first causes before which are no other causes of corruptible things one group of causes, and the first causes of incorruptible things before which there are no causes another group. So, you only have one set of first causes of all things, right? Or, see, because if there is going to be some way of uniting those to something one, there'd have to be some kind of cause that can give existence to something, not using what matter, in other words, creating in the strict sense.

[25:34] And of course, that's very hard for our mind to what understand, huh? Okay. But we think, from what we know, that Aristotle had some understanding, right, of the idea of creation, huh? But if so, he would be really kind of the first thinker among the Greeks that we know, and that seems to what. See something of this, huh?

[26:07] We know, for example, that Aristotle said that explicitly he says in the *11th book of wisdom* wisdom that the human soul exists after the body, right? But he denies that the human soul existed before the body. So here is something that begins to exist that's not made by transforming matter, huh? And in his book on the generation of animals, he says that the human soul comes from without; it doesn't come from the parents.

[26:37] That's kind of marvelous that he sees that, right? But he doesn't agree with Plato that there is this transmigration of souls, where souls are are reincarnated, like the they still you know think in India, you know, and places like that, huh? And those ideas that crept into Greece too, and Socrates talks about them in the Meno Right? I've heard the priests say this, you know, not you gentlemen, but some kind of priests, you know.

[27:02] But you still find this, you know, thought in India and so on. And so, if the human soul then didn't exist before the the body, right? But it wasn't coming into existence by the transformation of the body. Well, then it was created, right? There is something causing existence of something without matter, right? Okay, that's what creation is.

[27:36] When you say that creation is, you know, making something out of nothing, out of nothing, there is a grammatically affirmative way, but it should be understood negatively, right? You're making something not from matter, right? You're making the whole, in other words. Um,

[27:58] that really takes an infinite power to do this. But it's very hard for our mind to understand that, huh? We can't understand that. And so, as we mentioned before, the the early thinkers were basically materialists, huh? Just like most natural scientists today are materialists. They see matter as beginning of things, a source of things. But then finally, you get people like Anaxagoras, right, and people like Plato, who see the mind, the understanding, as something not really dependent upon matter.

[28:36] But they don't see a mind that could what be responsible for the existence of matter. So you have kind of what we might call a dualist, right? Okay. And I was mentioning that before, you know, and sometimes when I'm teaching the the early Greek philosophers, and and I'll I'll go to to the what Karl Marx and Engels says, you know, they have that famous division of thinkers there, I think, in the German Ideology, and that.

[29:05] There's just two group of thinkers, right? Those who say that matter is the beginning of everything, including mind, as as Lenin said, mind is the highest product of matter. And then there are those who say that mind is the origin of everything, like Saint John the Evangelist, right? Or even Hegel speaks his way of it. Why I say now is this a good division of all thinkers?

[29:32] They either say matter is the beginning of all things, even of mind, or they say some mind, like the divine mind, is the beginning of all things, even of matter. Is that exhaust all the thinkers?

[29:47] Well, where would you put Anaxagoras, right? Where would you put Plato or Timaeus there in the dialogue called the Timaeus, huh? Because although you could say that Anaxagoras,and Plato, or Timaeus, are putting the mind in some way superior to matter. They're not thinking that this superior mind, or this greater mind, is responsible for the very existence of matter. So they have, in a sense, two first beginnings that, as far as existence is concerned, are what independent of each other.

[30:27] Although one can act upon the other, and maybe not the reverse, right? But I think there is something you know, kind of diabolical in a sense, in leaving out that middle position because it's very hard to go from the the almost inevitable first position of our mind that matters the beginning of all things to the truth without at first coming to that middle position and seeing that mind or understanding

[31:04] is something immaterial that doesn't depend upon matter for its existence. Until you see that, you wouldn't even raise the question whether there could be a mind responsible for the existence of matter, right? If if mind can't be without matter, right? If mind is simply

[31:25] the result of a formation of matter in some way, right, or an organization of matter in some way, then one you wouldn't even raise the question, right? So if you leave out that middle position, I think you make it impossible for human reason

[31:48] to go from saying matter is the beginning of all things to what is the truth that there is some mind that is the beginning of all things.

[31:59] So you kind of taken out the bridge between the two, the two sides that that they do talk about, huh? So you shouldn't neglect that that in between position, huh?

[32:17] Okay. Now the third question, further the most difficult of all, and having the most question, whether the one in being. Now, one and being, as you find out in the fourth book, one and being are both the subject of wisdom,

[32:53] and of course the Pythagoreans and the Platonists, being influenced by mathematics, tend to start with the one, which is the beginning of number. Whether the one and being, as the Pythagoreans and Plato say, are not something other, but the substance of what is,

[33:16] or not, but some other subject, as Empedocles says, love, another fire, another water, or air. Now, let's let's think a little bit about numbers, okay?

[33:31] And in the number two, just there is two ones in the number two. Two ones in there, aren't there? Somewhere, okay? Number three, there is three ones, right? Okay. So we say one is the beginning of all numbers, and every number is composed of ones, right? Okay. Now, what is this one that is the beginning of all numbers? What is this one that measures all numbers? What is this one that seems to compose, right, all numbers?

[34:11] Sometimes they call it the unit, but unit is really a word for one, right? What is this one? Is it is it one point or is it one line or is it one circle or is it one man or is it one horse? Which of these is it? Is it one something or is it just one? period. What would you say?

[34:39] Mathematics you're talking just one. It seems to be just one, right? I mean, if it was one point, how could you speak of of three lines, right?

[34:53] If it was one line, how could you speak of three circles? Was one circle? How could you speak of three cubes or something? So the Pythagoreans and the Platonists thought well, it's just one. That's all it is.

[35:10] And since this one seems to be involved in the very what substance of something, you know, if you take me out there to the guillotine, right, and divide me, that'll be the end of me, right? If I saw this table here in half, divide it, I have a table anymore, right? I put your little hat through the shredder, right? You know. So the Platonists, as we all note, saw that things resist being divided, right?

[35:54] What's the old military adage, divide and conquer, huh? So they f they try to preserve the unity just as they try to preserve their what being right. We just elected the cardinal just elected a new pope right okay. In some way he's the what the unity of the church right okay. So in sense to adhere to the unity of the church is to adhere to the very being right of the church.

[36:29] Um, so an army or something like that or a city right. A house divided. What did Lincoln say? A house divided can't stand right. Or Christ himself had said this. I'm just borrowing the words of Christ there, and they're accusing him of casting out devils by Beelzebub or something. Um.

[36:54] So they saw a connection there between one and what the very substance of things. But since one is also the beginning of number, then they begin to think the numbers are the what

[37:07] key to all things right. And there's some truth to this, but we'll see that when we get to the book a little bit. But let's go back to the question here. So this is very much a question about the one and the many, whether the one is just one, nothing more. That's what Pythagoras is saying, right? And more obscurely, but kind of hinting at it, is there some being that is just being and nothing more?

[37:40] And of course that reminds us of what Scripture, right? He says, "I am who am," right? You might say, "Well, who are you?" That you want to add something there, right? No, I am who am. See, is there something one or being right? Something one that is just one, and that one point or one line or something else, and being that is just being.

[38:09] So here's the most difficult of all and having the most questions. but it is a profound thing he's he's talking about here. I think I mentioned that in in I think it's Hilary the doctor of the church, right? Hilary in his book on the Trinity, right? Just kind of a famous book there. I know Thomas in the Treatise on the Trinity follows Augustine most of all, but after Augustine he quotes Hilary seems a lot.

[38:34] If you look at the beginning of Hilary's book, where he gives a little kind of autobiographical sketch of his coming into the church and so on, but part of it was picking up the Old Testament and reading this. What do I tell them? What's your name? I am who am. That you know struck him as very profound as a man of some shall we say philosophical erudition, right?

[38:58] Huh? Yeah. I'm sure Plato would be interested in that, huh? Now, contrasting Pythagoras and Plato who are saying this, with the other Greek philosophers who say no, unity is not one period. It's one something that's making things one, and he gives the opinion of Empedocles, right? Now, Empedocles spoke, if you recall, of earth, air, fire, and water, the four matters, and then love, what is what brings them together, right?

[39:46] Love is what unites them, and then hate would be what makes them many, what separates them. So it's not one itself that is making things one, but it's love, right? Huh? You see. Love is the unity of things, and we think of love as a what? Something that binds and unites, huh? So when we studied love and friendship, if you recall, the first effect of love was to what?

[40:15] Unite, huh? Okay. I mentioned how in Shakespeare's play there, the title of their play, not the play but the poem, you know, Wherefore reason is puzzled at love because it's making two one. How can two be one? Okay. Um.

[40:36] So he's contrasting Empedocles and and other thinkers with Pythagoras and Plato, right? For which the one period, right, um, is um, is and is the foundation of things, and they say no, no, it's something else that is the source of unity, love. Why others, you know, who speak of what? Um, all things are made out of one matter, right? Like some said, fire, like Heraclitus, maybe, and water, the very first philosopher of all, who was Thales, right?

[41:16] And air, Anaximenes there, the third philosopher. So that's the unity of things, right? We're all made out of water, right, huh? Okay. What does Shakespeare say there in Henry the Fourth? Talk about the Englishmen, you know, they shouldn't be fighting amongst each other. All of one nature, of one substance, bread? Okay, we're all made out of the same metal, so to speak, right? We should be friends, huh?

[41:43] Um. We're all flesh and blood, right? That's what unites us. We're all made out of the same stuff. That's our unity. It's not one period. It's that one matter out of which we're all made, right?

[42:02] Okay. Now they can make a a red wine and a rosé wine and a white wine out of the same grapes, huh? You know, they can separate the skins right away and so on. So you know, you look at these three, you say, "Well, they're the same, what? They're the same, huh? They're all one." Um. He had the same thing with tea, huh? They make a they can make a a green tea and a black tea, so called, a red tea, and an oolong tea, which is in between, out of the same tea leaves, huh?

[42:35] But they're fermented more. You see, and the green ones are hardly fermented at all, and then the the the red ones or black teas we call it, the Chinese call it red, that's fully fermented, and then oolong is in between, huh? You see, but they're made out of the same thing, right? That's our unity, right? The same tea leaves that we use in all these, huh? Someone gave me some white tea.

[43:01] It all is kind of funny, huh? Yes. Huh? Yeah, the same. Yeah, from from China, and actually, somebody gave it to to somebody, and then they gave it to me because I like tea. You know, there was like a really nice box, like a red box and a green box and a yellow. And I thought, what's going to be a red tea and a oolong and a?

[43:26] But they're all white, white teas. Actually, I'm not sure I like them better. But but this is the way these people see the unity of things, right? Okay,

[43:40] all things are one in some way. They're made out of the same what matters? Unity. Unity. Yeah. Heraclitus says what? All things are exchanged for fire, and fire for all things. So fire is unity of all things. And Heisenberg in the twentieth century says if we substitute the word energy for fire, we can repeat what he said word for word: all things are exchanged for energy, energy for all things.

[44:13] That's the unity of things, right? It's not this abstract one that you, Plato, is talking about, huh? Well, which isn't. I mean, there's some truth to what Empedocles is saying, right? And and the materialists even are saying, as far as unity of these things are concerned, huh?

[44:42] Is there some truth to what Pythagoras and Plato are saying? See, is the being of God belong to some substance other than that being itself? Is there a composition in God? No. I've got to be careful to not confuse, though, the being which is said of all things with the being who said, "I am who I am." Right? Like I mentioned, how Hegel makes that confusion, right?

[45:24] But he's talking about what is just being, right? But you have to be careful distinguishing what is just being in these two what senses, huh? And is the one that is the beginning of number? Is that the one that is convertible with everything that is?

[45:48] Because all things to be have to be one. Because all things are either what simple or composed, and if they're composed, they won't be if they're not put together, right? Which is a kind of oneness, a kind of unity. And if the composed is one, then the simple is one." The simple is one. So everything that is is one. But is the one that everything is the one that's the beginning of number?

[46:21] Well, the Platonists can't distinguish the two, huh? And Aristotle says, "Well, they're not the same one—the one that everything is, and the one that's the beginning of number. The one's beginning of number is limited to the genus of quantity."

[46:42] And that's tied up with the continuous and the infinite divisibility, continuous, and that's why things can go on forever. But it's very hard for our mind to separate the one that is the beginning of number from the one that's convertible with what being. That's caused people difficulty all the way down through history.

[47:08] Just as our mind's a hard time separating what is basically substance from what body, right? And so the Greek philosophers, as Aristotle reports in the book on place, there the fourth book of Natural Hearing, was a common opinion that whatever is must be somewhere. If it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist. So to be in some place is a property of what is. But to be in place, to be contained in a place, is really a property of natural bodies.

[47:41] So they're identifying what is basically substance, fundamental things, with bodies, right? And they can't separate them, right? It's very hard for the mind to rise above that, because we we always think with images, huh? And if something cannot be imagined, it's hard for us to think about it.

[48:11] So we can see this is most difficult of all, and having the most questions, right? And we think Aristotle had arrived at the idea that God is being itself, but it's most difficult.

[48:27] But it's made even more explicit in the in the great Arab philosophers, starting I guess with Alfarabi, and Thomas takes it over too, develops it. It

[48:38] was really a profound question Aristotle was raising there. Is that that distinction? Is that what they mean? What that what the term means? The analogy of being. No, the analogy of being is first referring to the word "being" that has many meanings, huh? And what analogy means?

[49:00] That the word is equivocal by reason. Right? Equivocal means it has many meanings, but there's a reason why it has these many meanings. There's a connection among these meanings, and we'll see that when we get to the beginning of the fourth book, because Aristotle is showing that wisdom is about being as being, he will point out that the word "being" has more than one meaning, and then the question arises: Well, can there be one knowledge then of everything that's called being?

[49:35] And if the word was equivocal by chance, like say the word "bat" instead of the baseball bat and the bat that flies out of the belfry at night, if the word is purely equivocal, there'd be no reason for studying in the same knowledge the baseball bat and the flying mouse or the flying rodent, as we call the other. bat. Right,

[50:03] but let's take the word political, right? Political is an equivocal word, and political first of all refers to the city, the polis. But we also speak of the government as something political. Now, is the government the polis, the city? No, but is there a reason for calling both the city and the government political? Is there a connection between the two? Well, the connection is that the government rules the city, right?

[50:42] Okay. Well, then we talk about law. Law is something political, but is the law a city? No, is the law a government? No, but is there a connection between city and government and law? Yeah, because the government rules the city by laws. Let's say, right?

[51:12] Or then we talk about revolution, right? Like Aristotle in the fifth book of the Politics, but is revolution a city? No, is it a government? No. Well, why talk about revolution when you talk about city government then? Revolution is a change of government, right? Okay. And would it make sense to talk about government one science and the change of governments another science?

[51:42] Would you know and understand the change of governments without understanding government? See, but I can understand the baseball bat without understanding the flying rodent at all, right? And I can understand the flying rodent without knowing about a baseball bat, right? So the fact that the word bat is said of those two just happened, right? There's really no connection why they should have the same same what name.

[52:09] You see, but there's a reason why the city, the government, law, revolution are called political, and a reason why they should be studied together. So you don't have to have

[52:29] everything that's studied in a reasoned out knowledge be called the same and exact the same meaning, right? But they've got to be connected. And so I'll be pointing out in the fourth book that the word "being" is what equivocal by reason. Yeah, and it says it says say equivocal by reason. they'll say analogous, right? Proportional, but but it's maybe more precise to say it's equivocal by reason.

[53:00] Okay. Okay, so that's really a terribly profound question right here in front of us, huh? Is there something that is just being? Is there someone who is I am who am? In a sense he's asking that, right? See, because it doesn't seem to be true of these things that are around us, huh?

[53:38] To be a brick is something to be. I don't think that's something, right? It is that way. Very, very profound question. You wonder how Aristotle could come up with these, you know, somehow. But in a sense, the Pythagoreans, the Platonists are kind of raising the question. And Aristotle saw the connection between one and being, as the Platonists did to some extent,

[54:23] and how one and being go together. How the unity of a thing and its being go together. And then, if you make some one that is just one, then maybe there's something that's just being, right? But they say, there are all kinds of problems, you know. Is the one that is the beginning of number the same as the one that's convertible with being? And the Platonists were proceeding as if that were so, and therefore everything is numbers.

[54:49] Aristotle says, no, they're not exactly the same. Those two. The one that's the beginning of number is the one we know first, but is that the one that's convertible with being?

[55:02] Very difficult. Very difficult things. And then the last question he raises in that group: and whether the beginnings are universal, as the Platonists said, man himself and dog himself, the other things, or as individual things like what? This father, this cat, this dog, right? Huh? Now, it seems to me that that the difficulty of this, in a way, is the difficulty of understanding what we call a universal cause.

[55:48] You want something whose causality extends to what many, huh? Many, many things, an infinity of things. And the only thing that kind of seems to extend to infinity of things is universal. Because that is said of many things, in fact, in some cases of an infinity of things. So I think everybody here knows to some extent what a number is, huh? And everybody here knows the distinction between, say, an odd number and even number, and how many things is an odd number set of, and how many things is an even number set of?

[56:26] Yeah, yeah. So if you want something that extends in some way to an infinity of things, to a large multitude of these two things, I tend to think of the universal, don't you? But some might say, yeah, but is is that real? Is that something real, right?

[56:51] Karl Marx kind of makes fun of Hegel for doing this, trying to get the universal. He says, "This is what Hegel does," and kind of making fun of Hegel. He's got an orange here, right, and an apple here, and a pear and a peach, right? And he thinks about the four of them, and then he comes up with this idea of what a fruit is, right? Now he's got the universal idea of fruit, huh?

[57:16] Now he's got to get a way of deducing apple and orange and peach and banana and so on from the idea of fruit in general, huh? That's what the deducing system is, right?

[57:30] And so you might raise a question: Is is that just an abstraction of the mind? This idea of fruit, right? But this universal fruit does in some way extend to the apple and the orange and the peach and the banana and all the rest of them, right? Okay. And of course, in wisdom, we're trying to get at universal cause. Okay. Now let's get down to some real causal.

[58:02] You know, this in our experience. Well, the the woman is pregnant, right? Huh? Okay. And she gives rise to this boy or this little girl, right? Huh? Or the cat is pregnant. The cat produces this, right? Or the carpenter, right? He doesn't make table in general. He makes this table right here that I'm wrapping with my fingers, huh? You see? And the real causes are individuals, right?

[58:29] Well, in a sense, it looks back to that first question, you know, whether there's one cause, right? Whether in kind or in number, right? Because if there's one, in some sense, in number, it's going to have to extend everything, but it's universal that extends to everything, right? Yet the universal doesn't seem to be real. So what you're looking for is individual that's universal,

[58:58] but individual is rather unique. And the universality of the individual is going to be something quite different from the universality of what is said in many, huh? Okay, who's commanding the army? Is it general? General? Is is it soldiers conducting, you know, directing the army?

[59:24] Well, soldiers said everybody in the army, right? Is there some universal thing called soldier that's influencing the army? Or is it individual, like MacArthur, that we call the general, right? But he's called general because he's said of everybody. No, because his causality extends to everybody.

[59:49] Well, the human mind has a hard time understanding that kind of a what cause. They sometimes, you know, refer to the to the. Sun as the as the nearest thing to an example of it, right? The sun seems to be an individual body; it's not universal, is it? See, but yet its causality extends to all the plants in some way, all the life here on the face of the earth, right?

[1:00:27] So, if thinkers before Aristotle, either that the causes are individuals, who are definitely causes in some way, but their causality doesn't extend very far, right? My causality doesn't extend to the whole human race, does it? See, my causality extends only to my children and maybe something to my grandchildren, but not to the whole human race, you see. Maybe Adams does, huh? So you try to get to the idea of what an individual that is universal cause.

[1:01:04] It's very hard for our mind to what understand that, huh? When we try to express the universality of a cause, we tend to understand it by something that is said of many or of all, right? If I say God is the cause of all things, right? I'm using the word "thing" there, which is said of all things, right? I'm trying to express universality of God's cause by saying He's the cause of all things, huh?

[1:01:45] I wanted to, you know, take the man who's in charge of the whole army. Let's say if there is a man in charge of the whole army, chief of staff, or where he might be, I might say his commands extend to all soldiers, right? Okay. Why, why, Sergeant Stone? So his causality extends to all the members of Squad B or something, right? So if I try to understand the universality of the cause of the chief of staff, I make use of the universal "said of all," right?

[1:02:21] But it's a different kind of universality that the chief of staff has because he's an individual, right? Well, if you just think of the cause, the real cause being an individual, then you say, "Well, if individuals don't influence much, right? " I'm just a just a number there in a telephone book or something. My causality doesn't extend very far, you know. A couple of students listen to me, maybe that's it.

[1:02:49] I don't. I'm not the light that lightens everybody that comes into this world. I can't even light to my class, you know. Everybody comes into my class, though.

[1:02:59] So, so you see the the individual's causality that is very real causality. I mean, we're very sure that there's this causality, but it doesn't seem to extend very far, right?

[1:03:11] So people are often confusing this. They see those two universalties, right? Just like the supreme confusion, as we said many times here, is to confuse the being said of all things with the cause who said, "I am who am." Very hard for the mind to separate those things.

[1:03:31] So notice the difficulty is saying, and who are the beginnings of universal individual things. If the beginnings are universals, they don't seem real, right? Although they extend everything or many things. If they're individual things, they seem to be real, but they don't extend very far.

[1:04:04] Looking for something different than poetry, too, huh? It's kind of interesting how they say that the great poet represents more the universal than the singular. But the universal singularized, the singular universalized, and so one of the commentators there on Sophocles' great play, there I guess, Oedipus the King. You know, when he falls, you know, the choir comes in. It's kind of like a commentary almost on what's happened.

[1:04:33] You know, instead of saying "Oh, Oedipus," it says, "No, oh, you generations of men, you know, you know, you miserable thing, man. You know, you see something universal in the downfall of this man. And so when you see Romeo and Juliet. they say this is young lovers. You know, it's not just individual pair. But looking for something that's universal and singular, it's a other way than that, than the poet has, huh?

[1:04:56] Right. The poet's getting a universal singularized or a singular universalized. They say trying to express that, huh? But even that is something kind of mysterious, huh? What the poet does, huh?

[1:05:13] But here we have to have it another much more difficult way: universal and the individual, right? The reality of the individual. That's what you need, but the universal extent of the universal. How do you combine those two? That's really a problem for the philosophers.

[1:05:34] We should take a little break here before we, you know, with the break here between the first four and now the next two questions, which are about ability and what act, right? Okay.