Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
28. Wisdom as the Knowledge of Being as Being: 'Through Itself', the First Cause, and Words Equivocal by Reason
Class of 2005-04-28
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/028-wisdom-as-the-knowledge-of-being-as-being-through-itself/

[0:01] So, shall we turn to this pagan philosopher No, not excruciating In the. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, ordain 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've written. Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit.

[0:34] Amen. Let me come back here a little bit to this idea of kath' hauto as they say in Greek, per se as they say in Latin, and through itself in English. Although sometimes it seems that you translate by yourself, because if you're all by yourself in a room, Aristotle would say you're kath' hauto That's one meaning of kath' hauto. And if you're all by yourself in a room, I don't think we'd say in English that you're through yourself, right?

[1:08] No, no. But you are by yourself, right? But the philosophical meanings that are using philosophy, you could probably translate per se by through itself, right? And almost the same meaning is the phrase as such, right? Okay. Now, in the posterior analytics, which is about episteme or scientia, or reasoned-out knowledge or reasoned-out understanding, as they call it sometimes, you find out that the subject of episteme or reasoned-out knowledge is something that has parts and properties that belong to it as such, right?

[1:53] Or through itself, and sometimes we distinguish what is per se in the sense as pertaining to a thing's definition, and what is per se as pertaining to what a property that follows upon it, right? So, taking an example from geometry, right? You could say that it belongs to the triangle through itself to be a plane figure, or it belongs to the triangle through itself to be three-sided.

[2:38] Now that phrase "through itself" gets you down a bit. You know, "itself" is a kind of pronoun, right? So what you're saying is that the triangle, through being a triangle, is a what plane figure, right? Contained by three straight lines. So whatever belongs to the triangle. As part of its definition, as a genus, say, or a difference, right? That belongs to the triangle through being a triangle, and therefore to itself, right?

[3:16] Okay. Or you could say, in this other way of speaking, it belongs to the triangle as such. Now, if that phrase throws you just means that the triangle as triangle is a plane figure, right? Now, is the triangle to

[3:36] itself green? See, is a triangle green to be a triangle? No. Is a triangle as triangle green? No. So they would say that green is something accidental. Okay, it's not kath' hauto per se to itself as such. Do you see that? Okay. And so, what belongs to the thing as such or to itself in this sense as part of the definition of the thing? That's going to be considered in a science or a reasonal knowledge like geometry, right?

[4:14] Okay. Now, perhaps you could attach to that a little different thing. If you have some essential parts of the thing, that, for example, you and I are composed of a body and a soul, right? So, if I said it belongs to a man through being a man, right? To have a body and a soul, that would be through itself, right? Through being a man, right? It belongs to a man as such to have these two parts, right?

[4:54] Okay. Aristotle in in the Peri Hermeneias he talks about statement, right? Well, what belongs to the statement as such in these first two ways? What belongs to a statement as such to be speech, right? Meaning by speech, vocal sound signifies by human agreement having parts to signify by themselves. So it belongs to a statement as such

[5:31] to be a speech, right? Of course, it's a speech that signifies the true or the what false, right? So it belongs to a statement as such to signify the true or the what false, huh? Okay.

[5:55] So speech and signifying the true, the false, or the two of them put together, right? Speaks in defining the true or the false belongs to the statement as such, right? As statement, okay. Aristotle also points out that a statement is composed of a noun and a verb, right? So you could say that belongs to a statement as such to have a noun and a what? verb, huh?

[6:28] Okay. So these are things that belong to statement as such. Now, the geometer not only will define, let's say, the triangle, but he goes on to show, as you know, in the first book, proposition thirty-two, I guess it is, that every triangle has interior angles equal to what? Two right angles. Two right angles, right? Okay. That's proven through the parallel theorem, right? Okay.

[7:07] Now, this is a different sense of as such to itself, right? It's not a defining part of triangle. You don't define triangle by this, right? It's not as the word before triangle, right? Essential part of it, but it's something that follows upon triangle, like an effect or a property, huh? Okay. When what's his name, Porphyry distinguishes property and accident there, in the sense of the Isagoge. They both signify something outside the nature of the thing, what it is, but the property follows upon the nature, and the accident has no connection with the nature.

[7:55] So green would be purely accidental, right? It's either defining it or essential part of it, or it's a property of it. Um. Now, if you were dealing with number, you see, or maybe you say number is, as Euclid says, a multitude composed of units, huh? Aristotle says a multitude measured by the unit, huh? So multitude belongs to number as such, right? Number as number is a multitude, right?

[8:34] Number to be a number is a multitude of units, right? Okay. But now, if I say it belongs to, let's say, two as such to be half of what? Four or a third of six. Well, then that would be kath' hauto in this sense, right? It's a property, right? Um. Now sometimes too they'll say that there are certain divisions of the subject that are kath' hauto Now compare these two divisions here of triangle.

[9:18] If I divide triangles into red, white, and blue, that's a pictogram, right? And I divide triangles into scalene, isosceles, and equilateral. Well, you might say the division of triangle into red, white, and blue is an accidental division, right? It's not a division of triangle as such, but equilateral, isosceles, and scalene, which determine what's intrinsic to the very nature of triangle. They have three sides, huh? They contain three straight lines.

[9:51] They call that a what? Division of triangle as such, right? Yeah. So you will. You find these sort of things in geometry too, right? But you'll find nothing in geometry about triangles being green or red or blue. They might happen to be so, right? Yeah. But we're not concerned with what happens in reasoned-out knowledge, huh? We're only concerned with what belongs to a thing as said of itself in any one of these four senses, huh?

[10:29] Do you see that? Okay. And so Aristotle has talked about statement being a speech signifying the true or the false, and then having a noun and a verb and so on, right? And sometimes you divide it into the subject and the predicate and the copula that is and is not. Then he goes on to point out a property of statement. Every statement has a what? Opposite statement, right?

[10:58] So for every affirmative statement, there's an opposite what? Negative statement. Negative statement. And for every negative statement, there's an opposite affirmative statement, right? And in fact, you can be even more precise and say there's always a statement that's opposed contradictorily to the one, right? You know, in a contradictory opposition, one must be true, the other must be false. Whether you know which is the true one, which is the false one, right?

[11:27] President Bush is sitting. President Bush is not sitting. One of those is true. One of them is false now, right? But those are contradictorily opposed now. So that's actually a property, right? Of it, huh? Now,

[11:48] we defined the good. The first definition we give of good. It's not the end of our knowledge of what good is, but it's the starting point. The good is what all want, right? The good is what all desire. As Socrates points out in the Meno, right? Aristotle, in the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics. Well, that's kath' auto right? That's like a proper effect of the good, right?

[12:19] Okay, something is not good because you want it, but you want it because it is good, right? So you're still concerned with the kath' auto the thing itself, the as such, when you talk about the good as what all want, huh? Okay. That's not accidental to the goodness wanted.

[12:45] So at the beginning of this reading, Aristotle says there is a reasoned-out knowledge. the Greek word would be episteme? There is a reasoned-out knowledge. Of being as being, right?

[13:02] And what belongs to this through itself? Well, notice that expression "as being" touches upon this phrase "as such," right? And to itself, but those are to some extent interchangeable. Do you all have a copy of this? That's good. Okay. Now, as we go through some of the books on being as being, you'll see that it belongs to being as being, for example, to be

[13:38] good. You find understand what good and bad are. You find out that being as such is good, and that the bad is really a kind of non-being, a kind of non-being called lack or privation, right? So that's one thing that belongs to being as such, unto itself.

[14:03] Another thing that belongs to being as such is to be one. As Thomas reasons there in the either-or syllogism there in the Summa Theologiae, what is is either simple or composed. Now, if it's composed or put together. It obviously isn't unless its parts are what put together, right? So, if I smashed up this chair, you wouldn't have a chair, would you? Okay, so you can see that it belongs to being as such to be one, even if it's composed, right?

[14:38] And a fortiori, the simple is one, even more so than the composed. So there are some things that belong to being as such in the sense of a kind of per se property of being, right? To be good, which is more difficult to see, but more easily see to be what one, right? Okay. Likewise, and we'll see this especially in Book Five. There are some divisions of being as such,

[15:15] like the division of being into act and ability, or the division of being into substance and accident. These are divisions of being as being. These are different ways of being, right?

[15:37] But maybe being won't have defined parts, right? Because when you define, you define something by its genus, right, and by its what? For instance. Yeah, but maybe.

[16:01] All created being has some kind of act and some kind of ability. in it. It's a composition of act and ability, right? So maybe there are kind of essential parts of being, right?

[16:17] So what's the science you go into the study of being as being? So you have to, we won't see fully yet, but you can see a little bit that there are things that belong to being as such, right? Being through being, through being being.

[16:37] Now, that's one thing you have to see. Now, the second thing you have to see is that this wisdom we're after, this knowledge whose end or goal is to know God, the first cause, that this wisdom is also the reasoned out knowledge of being as being. Okay. And how does Aristotle go about showing this, right?

[17:10] Let's look at his words first, and then I'll try to unfold them, right? Now he says, "This is not the same in the second paragraph of the first reading. This is not the same as any of those said in part. " What does he mean, "any of those said in part"? Well, every other reasoned out knowledge that we have is about something more particular than being. Nothing is more universal than being.

[17:42] Everything that is in any way whatsoever, right, can be said to be a being, right? Being means simply what is, right? So what is in any way comes under that. You couldn't be more universal than that, right? But any other form reasoned out knowledge is not that universal, isn't it? So geometry is about what? Continuous quantity, lines and angles and plane figures and solid figures and so on, right?

[18:17] And arithmetic is about numbers, right? It's not about all things, right? And even natural philosophy is about natural things, right? Okay. And logic is about the syllogism and statement and definition, right? Okay. And political philosophy is about the city and government. So every other reasoned out knowledge is about something more particular than this.

[18:53] For none of the others considers about being as being as a whole. But cutting off some part of this, something more particular, they consider what happens about it. He takes as example the mathematical forms of reasoned out knowledge. right Arithmetic is not about being as being is no, it's about numbers as numbers. As Aristotle point out in the sixth book, not only do the other forms of reasoned out knowledge consider something particular, but also in a particular way.

[19:29] So the arithmetic is about numbers as numbers, right? Not numbers as beings. And natural philosophy is about natural things, not as beings, but as natural things. And political philosophy is about political things as political things, right?

[19:52] And logic is about the syllogism, not as a being, because a being is a syllogism, but syllogisms as syllogisms, right? Okay, you make that even more precise there. So you see that there's a difference between the knowledge, the reasoned out knowledge of being as being, and all the other forms of reasoned out knowledge that you might bring up, right? I might be acquainted with them.

[20:20] Now, in the third paragraph, he's going to reason out that the science that seeks the first causes of all things, or the first cause, is going to be also the science that considers being as being, right?

[20:39] He says, since we seek the highest beginnings of causes, I think I mentioned before how the Greeks imagined the cause to be above the effect, right? They speak that way, right? And therefore, the what? Highest causes would be what?

[21:03] The first cause, right? Right. Okay. And sometimes we speak same way in Latin, and we speak of the effect as what? Depending upon the what? Cause. Well, you know this. earring they call a pendant there. Well doesn't mean it it's it's hanging from something, right? So it's kind of like imagining the cause to be holding this thing up in existence from above, right? Okay. Well, in the English language, right?

[21:41] Germanic more, we we imagine the cause to be what? Below the ground, holding up, right? I think I was mentioning there how in Comedy of Errors, right, the wife is complaining that her husband, right, is got a wandering eye, or she thinks he does, and that I mean, I guess, but look because when he married me, you know, but he's the ground of my defeatures of my defeatures.

[22:07] and that's kind of an archaic, feature there, but her declining beauty, right? But he's the cause, right? But she says the ground, right? Okay. And of course, sometimes in in Greek or Latin, we do speak of the cause as what? The underlying cause. Okay. And perhaps you know the original etymology of the Greek word hypothesis right? Meant placed under, right? Placed under, and therefore what? You imagine the cause to be what?

[22:40] Supporting something, right? Okay. Now, that's just kind of a etymology of the word, right? Where it stood in reference to above or below, right? But strictly speaking, the cause is not above or below the effect, right? But that's the way we speak, huh? So that's why I just want to use the word highest there, right? Okay. Since we seek, huh, in this knowledge called wisdom, the first beginnings and causes, but he calls them the highest here, right?

[23:20] It is clear that these are necessarily of some nature through itself. These are the causes of something as such, right? And then he takes the sign. If then those seeking the elements of being sought these beginnings, is necessary for the elements to be a being, not by happening but as being. Whence also it is necessary for us to grasp the first causes of being as being. Now, in order to maybe make that a little more understandable,

[23:56] go back to something a little better known to us, huh? Suppose you had a science which is about the king, right? We're going to take a kingdom here as our example. The science is about the king, and you had another science which is about the what? The general, right, huh? Okay. Here he's

[24:35] talking about two causes, and the king is a more universal cause than the general. The causality of the king extends to more than the causality of the general,

[24:53] and the causality of the king extends to everyone who is a citizen of his kingdom. And the causality of the general extends to everyone who is a soldier.

[25:21] Now notice that to simplify our example here, you've got a citizens there are soldiers, right? Let's say every soldier is a citizen. But. Which is more universal? Which is said of more? Soldier or citizen? Citizen. Yeah. Is every soldier a citizen, but not every citizen is a soldier, right? Mm-hmm. Now do you see why citizen corresponds to king and soldier to general, right? Mm-hmm. The more universal cause, right?

[25:54] His causality extends to things of which something more universal can be said, right? And the less universal cause, this causality extends to all those of whom something less universal can be said, right? And if you wanted to

[26:14] have a reasoned out knowledge about the king, you'd have to bring the citizens, wouldn't you? Because he's the king of all the citizens, right? So it belonged to the same reasoned out knowledge to talk about the king and to talk about the what citizen, right? Okay. Or in general political philosophy, it's the same knowledge, political philosophy that talks about the government, right? And talks about who is or is not a citizen.

[26:47] Okay. Well, if there is a science about the general, it would also be a science about the what soldier, right? Because the general's causality extends to everyone who is a what soldier. So what is a cause of more considers a subject, right? said of more. What's the most universal cause? The highest causes, as he calls them, right? The very first cause, right? So its subject is going to be what everything something said of everything, right?

[27:23] And what is it said of everything that is and even its work? Being being, yeah. Do you see how it's proportional to what you have here? Okay.

[27:34] It's like Aristotle was reasoning right, In saying that the science that considers the king should consider what a citizen is. The science that considers a general just what a soldier is, right? But the science that considers the first cause of all

[27:54] should talk about what what is said of all. Okay. So you don't want to confuse cause of all with said of all, but you want to what?

[28:07] See that they belong to the same knowledge. Yeah. You see that? Okay. Now let's take another example now, which is a little more profound in some ways.

[28:29] When you study ethics, we looked at the proemium to ethics there at the beginning of Nicomachean Ethics. And Aristotle points out that ethics, in a way, is about happiness, huh? It's about the end or good that is desired for its own sake, and not for the sake of anything else, but everything else for the sake of it.

[28:59] So it's a cause in the sense of. In the sense of end or purpose of everything in human life. Okay, so that's the first thing he points out, and he says in a way, this is political knowledge, as Thomas says in the commentary, ethics gives you the elements of political philosophy. So you can say ethics or political philosophy, which is the elements, it's about human happiness, the end of the whole life.

[29:44] Now, when you go to the most famous work in Introduction to Philosophy, the most read work even in this crazy country we live in, the apology of Socrates. Right?

[30:04] Well, you read that work carefully, and you come to the place where Socrates is talking about the life he's been leading of examining people, his fellow citizens, and how he got into this way of life, huh?

[30:24] And how when he examined men he, found out that they didn't usually know what they thought they knew, and so on. But then, after that more general view of his life, he singles out something that he's especially been talking to his fellow Athenians about, and it's about their pursuing the goods of the body and exterior goods more than the goods of the soul.

[30:56] He's been examining them about whether it's reasonable to try to get as much as you can of exterior goods and the goods of the body and be satisfied with the minimum necessary of the goods of the soul to acquire these other ones and preserve these other ones. as a fool with his money is soon party, as they say, Or whether it would be more reasonable to get as much as you could of the goods of the soul and be satisfied with that minimum necessary of the goods of the body and exterior goods, right?

[31:31] Now I know what side you guys have chosen, but the Athenians have chosen the other, right? Okay. Well, Socrates doesn't develop it there, but he's touching upon the division of all the goods of man into the goods of the soul, the goods of the body, and the outside goods, huh? And Aristotle himself, in the seventh book of the Politics, says he takes up this division again, huh?

[32:05] And he says everybody knows that there are these three kinds of goods: early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. To some extent, we're all kind of aware of that, but not as distinctly as a philosopher is. And everybody Aristotle says agrees we need some of each of these three kinds, and so the laws will have reference reference to all three of these things, even our laws, huh?

[32:35] But men disagree as to which ones are better, and the philosophers and most men disagree about this. Now I point this out because it seems to belong to the philosopher, like Socrates. Who's primarily a moral political philosopher? and Aristotle, following Socrates, and so on. It seems to belong to the moral or political philosopher to consider, in general, all of the goods of man, right? And

[33:14] the art of cooking doesn't talk about all the goods of man, does it? And even the medical art doesn't talk about all the goods of man, right? Ah, is there some reason why

[33:32] the consideration of all the goods of man should be made by the moral political philosopher? Well, before you get to that point, right? You might ask the question: Is it necessary to consider at some time all the goods of man and divide them and find out which ones are better? Is that necessary?

[34:01] It would seem so, because there are the moral philosophers asking what the nature of happiness is, and in a way we we need all three of these goods in a different different degree. Because if you don't know which ones are better, right, you might be spending your life pursuing the lesser goods, right, more than the greater goods. And then, as I tell the students, your life is based on a mistake.

[34:30] Not want your life to be based on mistake. So someone right has to talk about all the goods of man, right? At least in the very general way, someone has to divide all the goods of man into these three and more, consider which are better. Now, does that belong to the medical art or to the art of cooking? You see,

[34:59] is there some reason why it belongs to the moral political philosopher and not to the medical art and not to the art of cooking?

[35:11] Well, if you examine the end of the medical art, is health right? Health is a great good, but is it the end and purpose of life? No. No one looks at health as being his inner goal. He wants to be healthy so he can do other things that he wants to do. And the end of the art of cooking is that the food be tasty. Now, is that the end of life that food be tasty?

[35:37] It's nice; the food is tasty, but is that the end of life? No, see. And so that's not the end of everything in life, right? But hey, the the moral and the political philosopher he considers happiness, right, which is the good that's desired for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else. But everything else, for the sake of it, as Plato points out in the Symposium, or Socrates points out in the Symposium, See, if there's a reason for the fact that the philosopher, meaning the moral and political philosopher, considers happiness.

[36:16] right? He considers the end of of man, the end of human life, the goal of man the end of human life, that it belongs to him to consider, at least in a general way, all the goods of man, right, and how they, in a more proximate or a more remote way, right, contribute to, or enter into, or don't enter into, the final end or purpose of man.

[36:39] Do you see that? Okay. So there is a connection then between the universality of the cause, right, that ethics and political philosophy are about, and they're talking about all human goods. They're talking about the division of all human goods, right, and the order in goodness of those three parts, huh? Do you see that? So once you see this connection, right, that the more universal the cause,

[37:21] the more what universal set of right corresponds to that, right? Okay. So the science about the king talks about the citizen, the science about the general, about the soldier, the science of happiness, about all human goods.

[37:49] Right. The medical art just talks about what's healthy and food and exercise and other things, right? Okay. So that's, in a sense, the reason that Aristotle is assigned for, but the reason why the science that aims at the very first cause of all things, right, is reasonably the science that talks about what is said of all things, huh? Okay. Especially for us mortals who have a hard time understanding universality of a cause, except by saying that extends to all things of which this is said.

[38:29] Do you see that? Okay. So notice what Aristotle has done here now in the first three paragraphs, huh? In the first paragraph, he's pointed out that there is an episteme, a reasoned out knowledge or a reasoned out understanding of being as being, right, and what belongs to it as such or to itself, and that this is none of the particular sciences that we're familiar with before, right?

[38:59] And then finally, the third paragraph that this. Must be the same reasoned out knowledge that is seeking the first cause, right? That wisdom, whose goal is the first cause, is going to, because of that, talk about what is said of all things in some way. It's going to be about all things in some way, right?

[39:23] You could also see that a bit from the description of the wise man that he's a know-it-all, in the way in which a man can be a know-it-all, right? Because a man can't know all things in particular, but even in knowing what an odd number is, I'm knowing in a way an infinity of things. So I can know even an infinity of things in some way, right?

[39:46] Not simply, but in some way by knowing what is said of all things, right? And so, in knowing being as being, I know in some way all things, and we think of the wise man in that way. Just as we started speaking of the practically wise man, hear this kind of a common phrase in the common discourse nowadays, people say he's got it all together, right? You know, it's kind of a vague way, but somehow he sees the whole life, right?

[40:16] And he's got some kind of a proportionate view of things, right? You see, he's got it all together, right? Doesn't know everything in particular, but okay. You see that?

[40:34] Now, starting in the fourth paragraph, Aristotle is going to, in a way, touch upon what you might put in the form of a question,

[40:50] and that is: Is being said with one meaning of all beings? And he's quickly going to indicate that being is said equivocally, not with one meaning, right? And someone might object and say, "Well, now, is there one science or one reasoned-out knowledge of all bats? Anything called a bat?

[41:26] Could be. I mean, you have the same knowledge of baseball bats and the bats that fly out of the thing. Same. So, if the word 'being' is like the word 'bat' in meaning more than one thing, right? Just because you have one word, does that mean you have one knowledge of such things?

[42:00] If honey is said of a man's wife instead of the stuff the bee produces, is there one knowledge of these two things? Just because they happen to have a common name or a name, same name, instead of them.

[42:18] So you could form it even kind of an objection, right, against there being a reasoned-out knowledge of being as being on the grounds that doesn't mean one thing.

[42:33] Okay. Now we we learn even in in logic when we talk about genus, right? We learn in logic that there's not one genus set of all things in the so-called categories that there are ten highest genera. Now, as I think I mentioned before. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, casts a certain light upon the distinction of the five predicables in Porphyry, because in a capitulum, a little chapter, on whether any name is said with the same meaning of God and creatures, and he's arguing that no name is said univocally or with the same meaning of God and creatures.

[43:23] One of his arguments is that every name said univocally is a genus or a species or a difference or proper and accident, and then he eliminates all five of those, right, from any name said of us and God.

[43:40] Now you may recall when he arrived at the ten highest genera. Bit we begin by saying, you know, that the same thing can be a genus and a species. Remember that. So, for example, quadrilateral is a genus of square, with a species of rectilineal plane figure.

[44:03] Or man, animal is the genus of man and dog, and a species of living body, right? The plant. But then we ask: Is every genus a species? Does every genus have a genus above it? Right. And then we ask, well, there are many difficulties if you say that every genus has a genus above it, because you have to know an infinity of things and to know anything.

[44:32] And how could you begin to know anything, right? But also, if every genus had a genus above it, since a genus is said of more than a species, you'd always have a name said of more things than any name.

[44:50] But can there be a name said of more things than say the the word thing, or something, or the name being? Can there be something that isn't a being?

[45:07] Well, being can be said of anything that is in any way whatsoever, right? And everything is a thing in some sense. It's something. So the fact that there are most universal names shows that not every genus has a what. genus above. Yeah, yeah. But then there arises the question: Is there just one highest genus, like being or thing, being or something, or are there many highest genera?

[45:36] Right. That's a question, right? Just think about if you and I were to say, you know, the same man can be a father and a son. But is every father a son? If you say no, not every father is a son. For whatever reason you can give it is. Then so let's put the question: Is there one father of us all? Like Adam, or is it more than one father, right?

[46:00] And so he asks, "Say, you can't. If every genus is not a species, is it just one highest genus that covers everything, or are there many highest genera? " That was the question, right? And you do have words like "being" or "something" that is said of everything, but are they genera? Well, if you go back to the definition of genus in the strict sense, that's a name said with one meaning of many things, other in kind, signifying what it is.

[46:35] Um, are is the word "being" or the word "thing" said with one meaning of all things? Well, I can show in some simple ways that it's not.

[46:54] Starting with Hamlet, there, right? He comes out on the stage and he says, "To be or not to be, that is the question." Right? What's he talking about? To live. or not live. Yeah, yeah. He's not talking about to be a student or not to be a student, is he? To be in Denmark or not to be in Denmark? To marry Ophelia or not to marry? To be married, right?

[47:23] If he's talking about that, he'd have to qualify it, wouldn't he? Okay. So, doesn't seem to be exactly the same meaning of to be, is it? When he says to be or not to be, then we talk about to be in Denmark or not to be in Denmark, right? Okay. Another

[47:50] way I express that is if I say to you now, if you leave this room, you will cease to be. Sounds threatening, doesn't it? See.

[48:04] And now, if you charge me in on court, you know, with threatening people and so on, I say, "Well, Your Honor, all I meant was that if he left the room, he would cease to be in the room. " Well, Mr. Berkwist no one would understand what he said in that way, would he? See. So when you think of what ceasing to be when you leave the room, right?

[48:28] Then you're thinking of life and death, right? Death. If I meant you would cease to be in the room, I have to kind of qualify, right? So it doesn't seem that to be is said of dying, you know, or coming to be, and and coming into the room in the same way, does it? Um.

[48:55] See if I said, you know, you you come to be when you walked into this room. Yeah, he came to be in this room. You had to qualify, right? So to be doesn't seem to have just one meaning, does it? In the same way for the word thing, right? Huh? So if I ask the man in the bar there, is my nose and my ear the same thing?

[49:28] What would he say? They're two things, right? Okay. But is my nose the shape of my nose two things? Like my nose and my ear are two things. What would he say?

[49:45] be a little puzzled, right? Huh? See, if you got a man and a dog in a room, and the dog leaves, you've got one thing left in the room, right? Or do you have two things: the man and the shape? of The man, or three things: the man in his shape and his health. Well, at first you'd say you have one thing left, right? And my nose and the shape of my nose don't seem to be two things like my nose and my ear, right?

[50:18] So you begin to see that the word "thing" has more than one meaning there. And therefore, being or thing, although said of everything that is and everything,

[50:35] are not said univocally of everything. And being is not said of everything that is with exactly the same meaning. And therefore, there can't be a what genus, right? And then you realize there's more than one genus. It took the genius of Aristotle to find out what the the many were, right?

[51:05] But now Aristotle is going to point out that even when a name is said of many things with different meanings in mind, it can describe or can name the subject of one knowledge when there is a connection among those meanings, huh? Whereby they should be studied together, right? In the same knowledge, huh? And one example he'll take there is healthy, right? Okay. Now, when I say your body is healthy, when I say your complexion is healthy, when I say your diet is healthy, right?

[51:50] Or your exercise, your food is healthy. Does the word "healthy" mean the same thing exactly in all these cases? But is there a connection among the meanings, huh? Because kind of the central one there is the health of the body, right? And the diet is said to be healthy because it preserves that condition of the body, right? And the complexion or something is a sign of that good condition of the body, right?

[52:20] And the food is healthy because it preserves the health of the body, and so on. So maybe the medical art would talk about what is healthy, even though everything is not healthy in the same sense exactly, but because there's a connection. Okay.

[52:41] Wouldn't make too much sense to talk about what is a sign of the good condition of the body, and a science other that knows what the good condition of the body is. Really? Okay. Now,

[52:56] let's take a different example here. More from philosophy. Now we have a part of philosophy, which is a combination of the practical philosophy, called political philosophy. Now, what's political philosophy about? This is the Groucho Marx question, right? Who's buried in Grant's tomb? So the safe answer is that political philosophy is about political things, right? Just like natural philosophy is about natural things.

[53:43] But are political things all political in the same meaning of the word political? Well, if you know a little bit of Greek, you know the word political comes from polis, right? Which means the city, but you know, sovereign city, right? Okay.

[54:06] So in political philosophy, we talk about the polis, right? Now we also talk in political philosophy about government. But is government a polis? No. So the word political is equivocal instead of polis and government, right? But is there a reason why they're both called political? Yeah, because the government rules and directs the polis, right? So it makes sense in the same knowledge to talk about the polis and government, right?

[54:57] How can you talk about government without talking about the polis? Because the government rules the polis, right? Okay. Now Plato has a famous work in political philosophy called the the Laws. The last work, some people think that we have of Plato's, right? Now is law a polis? No. Is law a government? No. Well, why talk about law in the same knowledge, it talks about the polis and the government.

[55:38] The government rules the polis by means of the law. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Then you get to the fifth book of Aristotle's Politics that he talks about revolution, right?

[55:55] Now, is revolution a polis? No, is revolution of government? No, revolution of law? No. What talk about that? I mean, you know, but is it connected with these, right? Yeah. Now, revolution is further from politics than government. Revolution is a change of government, right? So, does it make sense to talk about government in one knowledge and the change of government in another knowledge? Might be a different part of the same knowledge, right?

[56:31] But does it make sense to to consider the revolution independently of government? No, you can't really understand revolution unless you know that's a change of government, right? You know, you know, Plato in the Republic, right, talks about what kind of government something changes into, right? And and Aristotle talks about that, and Aristotle talks about that, right?

[57:04] So democracy gets a little bit too unruly, right? Ends up in a tyranny, right? Dictator and so on. So there is one kind of one knowledge, one kind of episteme called political philosophy that's about all these things that are political in different senses. But the word political here, when said of these, is not equivocal by chance, like the word bat said of the baseball bat and the flying rodent, right?

[57:39] But it's what we call equivocal by reason, right? Okay, and that means that there is an order. This reason is concerned with order. There is an order in connection among the meanings, and there is a fundamental meaning, right? And the other ones refer back to that. huh? The government rules the polis. Revolution is a change of art. The government rules the polis by law, right? So it's reasonable to consider them the same thing, right?

[58:08] So the question is, granted, huh, that the word being is said of my nose and the shape of my nose, equivocally, right? Granted, being is equivocal when I say that I came to be when I don't know just my parents generated me, right? God infused my soul, so on. That's when I came to be, and when I came to be in this room today, right? Granted, the word to be there is equivocal.

[58:48] Is it equivocal by chance, or is there a reason? Right? Is there a connection among these meanings? There's a connection. Yeah, yeah. And just like in the case of political, there's a first meaning, right? Of political, which is the polis, right? And every other meaning of political, in some way, refers back more immediately or more remotely to what? Yeah, polis is the first meaning. Government is the second meaning.

[59:22] Revolution is a third meaning, right? Okay. But they all refer in some way back to the polis. That's the chief what political philosophy is chiefly about, right? Okay.

[59:36] Um. In theology, right? Theology is about. I'm talking revealed theology now. Revealed theology is about what? God, right? And does it talk about anything besides God? Yeah, but only in relation to God, right? Okay. Um. So they say, you know, kind of the theological definition of man is imago dei, the image of God. Okay, you've got to see man in relation to God in theology.

[1:00:17] If you consider man as an animal that has reason, you don't have to bring God into that, do you So the philosopher would say he's a he's a two-footed Aristotle because the two-footed animal put reason in there. But but if you say that man is an animal that has reason, you don't have to bring God in, right? Um, but in theology, you would speak of God as what made in the image and likeness of God.

[1:00:41] We can't speak of imago dei without talking about God, right? Okay, so you can say theology is about divine things, but the primary meaning of divine is God Himself, right? Okay. Well, what about grace? Is grace God? No, but it's a partaking of the divine nature, right? Okay. So other things are what. Yeah, related to God, right? Are we talking theology about faith, hope, and charity, right?

[1:01:17] The so-called theological virtues, right? Well, our faith and hope and charity, God. Maybe charity is in some sense, but look at that. But faith, hope, and charity—the virtues, their object is, their object is God, right? Okay. So you can't talk about something whose object is God without talking about God, right? Okay. You see that? So divine said of God and grace, or divine said of God and faith, hope, and charity,

[1:01:56] or divine said of God in our soul, right? That's equivocal. We're not divine. My soul is not divine. And it says God is divine, huh? Say, but my soul is made to the image and likeness of God, right? Okay. Faith, hope, and charity are not God, but their object is God, right? Grace is not God, but it is a kind of partaking of the divine nature. So

[1:02:26] the word divine here is equivocal by reason, not by chance, huh? You see that? So what Aristotle's pointing out here, we'll be putting out in the second part here, is that although the word "being" has many meanings, and in the fifth book of wisdom, we'll see Aristotle's very lay out the meanings very clearly. Um, that is not enough to say there can't be a reason out of knowledge of being as being.

[1:03:05] If the word "being" is said equivocally by chance, then you wouldn't have one reason out knowledge. But if it's said equivocally by reason that there's a first meaning, right, and the other meanings in some way refer back to it,

[1:03:24] then you could what have one reason out knowledge, just like there's one reason out knowledge of political things, because there's a primary meaning, of polis, and everything else in some way refers back to that, right? Okay.