Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
29. Substance as the First Meaning of Being, the Philosopher, and Why Wisdom Must Consider the Axioms
Class of 2005-04-28
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/029-substance-as-the-first-meaning-of-being-the-philosopher-and/

[0:00] So in the fourth paragraph, he begins. Being, however, is said in many ways. Huh? It's a word equivocally. But towards something one into some one nature and not equivocally. Now, notice what I saw as a way of speaking there, huh? Let me just indicate this again here.

[0:32] I mentioned this way of speaking before. Sometimes we divide something into two things. One of them keeps the common name as its own, and the other member gets a new name, right? And so the most readily example here is this. And I say to my students, "How many fingers do I have?" And they'll say five, right? They'll say, "How many fingers do I have?" Four fingers and a thumb, right?

[1:05] So one of the five called a finger gets a new name, the thumb, right? And the other four keep the old name, right? Now, why does this finger get its own name, a new name, right? And why do the others keep the common name? What's the reason for that? Something's added to this one. Yeah, there's something that makes this one stand out, right? A sore thumb. These are not being a sore thumb, huh?

[1:33] That's an expression. It stands out as opposed to the other ones, right? So when I grab my water glass or my beer can or something, right? You know, the opposable thumb that biologists call, huh? Okay. Um. So one way this takes place is when one of them adds something noteworthy, right? Okay. So sometimes we say man is an animal, intending no insult, right? Other times we divide man against the animals, huh?

[2:06] Don't we? Um. So the the the beasts, the irrational animals, keep the name animal as their own. And man gets a new name because he adds something very noteworthy to the common meaning of animal, right? Maybe the possession of reason and so on. Why those beasts that have nothing beyond the common meaning of animal, sometimes keep the name animal as their own, right? Okay. Now, when you have an equivocal word,

[2:51] an equivocal word is a word that has many meanings. Period. Okay. Now, sometimes we divide that, as we say, into the word that's equivocal by chance, and the one that's equivocal by reason.

[3:17] And sometimes the word that's equivocal by chance keeps the common name equivocal, although sometimes people to be to avoid confusion, they'll say purely equivocal, right? And the one that's equivocal by reason adds something now. Not only are there many meanings, which is common to both, right? But in addition to the many meanings, there is an order among those meanings, right? There is a connection among those meanings.

[3:46] Maybe there is a fundamental meaning, and the other ones relate back to it. Okay. So, and sometimes they'll call the word equivocal by reason. They'll use the word analogous, right? And then they'll call the one here just equivocal. That's what Aristotle's doing here, right? Okay. Do you see that? The sooner you get that into your head, that way of speaking, that way of of in which the word equivocal here can become equivocal,

[4:28] the better off you'll be, right? Because it comes up again and again and again as you go through philosophy. And you find it in daily speech too. It's not just. it's just equivocal to contradict yourself, and not equivocally, right? But he's using equivocal, right?

[5:02] Purely equivocal, not equivocal by what chance, right? Okay. Now, Thomas will find Thomas often calling the word equivocal by reason analogous. To some extent, I mean, I really didn't know this. I wasn't spelled very well on the board there. You know how to spell it, right? Analogous or proportional, to use a Latin word, huh? But I think you've got to be kind of careful about that way of naming because not every analogous word or proportional word is by proportion, right?

[5:37] Because there's different forms. I think I've talked about some of them before, but this is not this one. Before this is not an example of proportion, huh? Like this of ratios. Um.

[5:56] So he says in the fourth paragraph, being always said in many ways, but towards something one into some one nature, there's a fundamental first meaning, and not equivocally meaning purely equivocal or equivocal by chance. Do you see that? And Aristotle makes a comparison here, but is everything healthy towards health, right? The one in preserving, another in making, right? Another in being a sign of health, another in being receptive of the same, right?

[6:30] So the body is called healthy because it receives health. The complexion something because it's a sign of health, right? The diet because it produces it or something, right? Okay.

[6:47] And then he says again the word medical is said towards one thing the medical art. For one is said to be medical in having the medical art. He's a medical man. Another in being naturally fit towards the same. He's a natural inclination of those things. Another in being the work of the medical art, right? Okay. So there's a clear example. Aristotle, you know, was the son of a medical doctor, right?

[7:12] Yeah. You know, a very illustrious doctor, right? He was the court physician there. That's how Aristotle became known there in the court of Macedon, right? Because his father was the court physician. So that's how Aristotle got to be chosen as the teacher of Alexander the Great. So Aristotle often takes examples from that. You see that in the Ethics, right? Where he says, you know, a man who listens to the philosopher in Ethics but doesn't act upon what he says is like the man who goes and gets medical advice but doesn't do what the doctor told him to do.

[7:49] One of my friends back home there, his lung collapsed, you know, and they can inflate it again, but the doctor told him to stop smoking, Well he refused to, right? So he's a useless hearer of medical advice, right? So some men you tell them that this is wrong to do, right? Morally, and and you know, they're going to do what they want to do anyway, so they're useless hearer.

[8:13] And so he often takes things from the medical art. Okay. And we can take other words said in like ways to these, right? So I was taking the word political there on the board a few minutes ago, right? Okay.

[8:31] And so he's saying now being is like the word healthy or like the word medical or my example like the word political, right? Thus also being is said in many ways, but all towards one beginning or first meaning. For these are called beings because they are substances. These because they they are the undergoings of substance. Others because the way to substance or corruptions or lacks or qualities or productive or generative substance, but always in reference to substance in some way, right?

[9:08] Now when Thomas comments on this son, he says in this plethora of meanings that Aristotle is giving, you can perhaps distinguish four. Meanings in direct order. And let's give those four. I think it helps to clarify things a bit to see these four as kind of simple.

[9:36] You can say the first meaning is substance, right? And the second meaning is what we call accident. Accident in the not in the sense of actions opposed to property, but accident in the sense of the categories. A thing that exists, right? But not by itself, exists in another as a subject, right? And can't exist apart from it. So an example of substance would be, let's say, a man or a dog, or maybe a tree or something.

[10:15] An accident would be a thing like what the health of a man, right? Or the health of a dog, right? But health is not something by itself; it's something of a man, right? Or the shape of a man, or the shape of a dog, right? Okay. So the second meaning of being, which is that of accident, refers back to substance, huh? Okay, it's something of another, right?

[10:49] Okay. Now the third meaning would be the coming to be of a substance or an accident, huh? Okay. Coming to be of a substance or an accident.

[11:22] And also that's more remote, huh? Coming to be, you say, well, coming to be is not being at all, is it? But in some sense, isn't there such a thing as coming to be? Right.

[11:36] Right. But certainly not is in the way which substance or accident is. So becoming a man or becoming healthy isn't like the same thing like being healthy or being a man, isn't it? You get it exists in some way, doesn't it? Yeah. Okay.

[12:00] Coming to know, right? Exists in some way, right? Not as much as knowing does. And then a fourth sense would be the lack of one of these, right? Okay.

[12:22] Lack of substance or accident, such a thing as blindness, right? Notice you get to blindness. You say, is blindness that being or is that not being? That's not being. Yeah, yeah. Yet we say that somebody is blind, don't we? Right. Okay. This is almost like what they call being a reason, right? Okay.

[12:56] I have blindness. You have something. You don't have something. But we'll say that you have it, right? Okay. Now notice how you're moving away from substance, right? But accident is something of substance, right? Something exists in substance, huh? Coming to be is coming to be of a substance or an accident. And these here is a non-being of some accident, right? Or substance, huh? Death, right? Okay. Blindness, huh?

[13:34] But some sense they are, aren't they? See. Now the Greeks had an interesting common statement: you can't get something from nothing, right? In a way, this is kind of a common thought, and King Lear says it at the beginning of the play, there, right? Nothing will get you nothing. Nothing comes from nothing, And Julianne was thinking about that in my, in Sound of Music, right? Nothing comes from nothing, right?

[14:06] I think you're a quit. Without saying, I'd say to you: you say you can't get something out of nothing. Does the word "nothing" have some meaning?

[14:21] Does it mean something? Now you're saying nothing means what? Something. Something. Yeah. So now you've carried the word "something" all the way over to nothing. And that's about as far as you stretch the word, right? Yeah. I'll teach you the circus to joke, and philosophy is the only subject we can get paid for talking about nothing. He says. Philosophy gets paid for. Yeah, yeah.

[14:52] You see, Plato, the dialogues, were wondering about this, right? You know, because the Greeks would often say, and you find in Shakespeare sometimes too, to tell falsehood is to say what is not. Well, how can you say what is not? Because what is not is nothing, right? So how can you say nothing? Let's not say anything at all. Yet we do say that you said nothing, right?

[15:14] What'd you say? You said nothing. In some sense, that's what you said. You know nothing. So you see how far you moved towards the end.

[15:28] So the fundamental meaning of being is substance, just as the fundamental meaning of political is the what? Polis, the city, the nation. But the other meanings of being, like accident, or the coming to be of substance or accident, or the lack of one of these things,

[15:55] have some connection with substance, right? Okay. Because the health is something of the man or the dog or whatever is healthy, right? And the shape is the shape of something, right? Other than itself, huh? Do you see that? So Aristotle's saying the word being. Then is not equivocal by chance; it's not purely equivocal, but there is an order of the meanings. It's equivocal by reason. You use that phrase "equivocal by reason" some places, okay?

[16:34] But the fundamental meaning is substance, huh? And so, this science of being as being is going to be chiefly about what substance, yeah? So, the seventh and the eighth book of wisdom are devoted to substance, huh? Okay.

[16:55] So, in the next last paragraph, he says, "Then, just as there is one reasoned-out knowledge of all healthy things, because the word is not equivocal by chance, right? But they all refer back to one thing. So, likewise, the same in other things, for it belongs to one reasoned-out knowledge. Not only to look at those said by one by having one meaning, like you might say, well, arithmetic is about number and numbers said univocally of all these things, but also those said towards one nature, for these are also said in some way by something one, right?

[17:35] It is clear then that to look at being as being belongs to one reasoned-out knowledge, and we saw before that that was the same as the one that aims at the first cause, right?

[17:49] So, is that clear? Do you want to take a little break before going to the next page? It's the end of this reading. So the top of second page here now. Aristotle's going to point out that the chief subject of this is what substance, right?

[18:14] But the chief subject of revealed theology is what? God. Yeah, yeah. That's not the chief subject of wisdom in this thing, although it's the end or goal. You might say, "to know God."

[18:30] So Aristotle used the word theology later on, describing wisdom, but you got to realize that God is not the subject of the science, but he's the end of the goal. But in revealed theology, God is the subject of the science as well as the end of the goal. So it has more right to the name theology, right? Right. But before that, some people might call this theology.

[18:57] as Aristotle will in the sixth book, right? call this that, I don't know the name he gives it. When I was in college, I used to have a course in philosophy. It's called natural theology, and what you could know about God by by reason. And there, there would be more appropriate to say that that's a part of metaphysics rather than natural. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Culmination of it, but some people you know say you know Aristotle really interested in God because he doesn't spend the the way Thomas does, but that's not the subject of the science.

[19:30] It's the end of the goal. If you want a more expansive knowledge of God, you've got to go to Thomas and revealed theology. That's right.

[19:43] To me, it doesn't make any sense for a Catholic who's a philosopher not to be, you know, ordering his studying to theology eventually. Doesn't make any sense not to do that.

[19:56] Something, disordered, right? My old teacher Kasurik had a beautiful passage from Albert the Great, you know, where he says, "If you're not studying everything you're studying for the sake of knowing God, you have a perverse attitude towards knowledge. You know, unless you've been forced to based on necessity, you're a plumber you've got to do something else. But I mean, you know, if you're pursuing knowledge in itself or by itself, it should be all ordered to eventually knowing God.

[20:29] Shows shows that modern philosophy is not too good, right? It seems like almost the purpose of modern philosophy is is to show that it's impossible to talk about God or to know Him or something.

[20:43] So at the top of the second page here, but everywhere reasoned out knowledge is chiefly about what is first, right, and that upon which other things depend and to which they are named. So what's first in under being is substance. And the others depend upon that, like the accidents are something of substance, and so on, and to which they are named or called beings, right?

[21:13] If then this is substance for being, it would be necessary, for the, philosopher, to especially have the beginnings and causes of what substance is. Now notice here he calls the wise man

[21:27] the philosopher. Right now, what kind of a use of that of the word is that? Because sometimes you'll you'll call wisdom philosophy, period, and the man who's engaged in this the philosopher.

[21:52] You might say, isn't the political philosopher a philosopher? Yeah, isn't the geometry philosopher? Yes, isn't the natural philosopher a philosopher? Yeah, isn't the logician a philosopher? Yeah. So how can he call

[22:06] the man pursuing wisdom here the philosopher? Because he's pursuing the highest part of of so is it most appropriately predicated of him? Yeah. Yeah. Of course, philosophy, although etymologically philosophy means the love of wisdom, right? The meaning of the word philosophy is not the love of wisdom, but the knowledge one would pursue because of the love of wisdom. Well, that's like Grant's who's buried in Grant's tomb, and it's wisdom obviously the knowledge that the love of wisdom is going to be pursuing.

[22:42] So, is a reason to call wisdom and the man pursuing it philosophy and the philosopher? So Aristotle step into calling him that. Okay. But this is the other reason why we call why the common name is kept, right? By one of them, right? This is not because he alone has it, but because he alone has it. What most of all, or most of all, they have Yeah, It's like this other example we give here, where we use the word understanding to mean not the act of understanding, but the ability to understand, right?

[23:27] In which they call Latin intellectus. Well, sometimes we'll divide the understanding into understanding or intellectus and reason or ratio, right? Okay. And so the understanding of an angel is called understanding intellectus. The understanding of a man is called the reason or ratio. Now this is the other way. Of naming right, why does man get the new name, and the angels understanding keep the name understanding? Why? Because everything they know is under that aspect, whereas we only know first principles as, intellectus.

[24:18] everything else we know as reason. Yeah, it's because reason is a kind of what overshadowed as Thomas says. overshadows understanding, right? Very weak understanding, right? Because we have the ability to understand in an imperfect way, and not fully, and we have to reason out things to get a little bit of understanding to get very far. So we get the what new name? This is for the because you don't have fully what is meant by the common name.

[24:53] Yeah. Okay, it's a little bit like you know if you say you know if your little child asks you you know what's the difference between a kitten and a puppy and you say well a kitten is a cat and a puppy is a dog right? But then you might sometimes divide dog against puppy, right? Cat against kitten, right?

[25:17] So when you divide dog into dog and puppy, cat into cat and kitten, that's like dividing understanding into understanding and reason differently. Mm hmm. That's a different thing than what we had before, where we divided

[25:37] disposition, disposition, habit, right? Or we're dividing equivocal into equivocal and analysis, right? You see that? Okay. See, we divide animal into animal and man. Man has what is meant by animal just as much as the beasts have it, right? He's an he's a living body with sensation, but he has something noteworthy in addition to the common meaning. But when you divide understanding and understanding and reason, it's because

[26:19] the ability to understand is so imperfect in man, and and and it's perfect in the angel, and therefore he keeps the name understanding, and man gets a new name because he's not fully possessed of the ability to understand. Okay, do you see that? So there are two different ways in which one of two things which something is said

[26:50] keeps the name right. One because it alone fully has what is meant by the common name. And another because what? That's all it has, nothing more. Is it? So those those two ways of naming come up again and again and again, right?

[27:14] Okay. What do you think? Say. Do you think you think the next election will be won by the Republicans? Hmm? I say, yeah, I think so. Do you know that, Mr. Berkwist? No. Say. Do you think the two is half of four? Yeah, I think that. Right. You know it. Yeah, I know it. So sometimes you divide knowing against thinking, right? Mm-hmm. And then thinking, and just thinking, by knowing adds the certitude that you have that you have, right?

[27:54] Okay. So I think I'll live to be 80. Do I know I'll live to be 80? No, no. You say, what do you think I'm going to be 80 purpose? I think so, yeah. Think I'll let it be 80. You know that? I don't know. Do you think that two is half or four? Yep. But I know that, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, as people start to say to you, do you know?

[28:26] Do you know that, or just think that's all right? And then they're using thinking as opposed to knowing, right? We're distinguished from it. See? but the man who knows something thinks something too, doesn't he? Right. Which Which of those two ways is that?

[28:46] It could be either, actually. Could almost be either. You could say that knowing adds certitude. You could say that thinking is sort of an imperfect knowing.

[28:57] Yeah, yeah. But you see, thinking doesn't. in its very meaning, right? imply certitude or something, right? So you can say a thinking that is just a thinking keeps the name thinking. And the thing that adds the certitude of being sure gets a new name, knowing, right? Is it? And a little bit like Socrates, you know, when he's distinguishing between opinion and knowledge, right? You don't use the word opinion because that's already more particular, right?

[29:29] Um. That's like you know if you contrast man and beast, right? You get two different names. Each has got its own name, right? But sometimes instead of saying "man and beast," you say "man and the animals," and then "animal" has been taken by "beast" as its own name. Because it adds nothing beyond what an animal is, That's greatly noteworthy, huh?

[30:01] So thinking is sometimes divided into thinking and knowing, and knowing gets a new name because it adds something—the idea of the certitude. Okay. So it's like the fingers, huh? Five fingers and four fingers and a thumb.

[30:22] The animals can be divided into the animals of man. Okay. So, once you kind of understand those two ways, you'll find examples, you know, over and over again of these things. I want to buy a plant. Well, you don't think you want, you know, a tree? No, they kind of exclude a tree when you come into the thing, you know. But in some sense, a tree is a plant, right?

[30:46] So the little the little plants keep the name plant, and the tree gets its own name. I want to buy a tree. See there.

[31:03] Okay, but there is one sense and one reasoned-out knowledge of every one genus, as one grammar looks at all speech. Hence, to look at the species of being as being, using the word species now loosely, right? Huh? The more particular things belongs to one reasoned-out knowledge in general, but the species, the special ones.

[31:24] So the ways of being that our division of being as being, pertain to what? The science, huh? The division is not a division of being as being, but not pertain to the science.

[31:44] So we know now that wisdom is about causes and ultimately about the first causes, right? And now we know secondly that wisdom is about being as being, right? Now in the part that I'm skipping here, going up to the fifth reading, he shows that being and one are kind of convertible, right? So he'll speak of wisdom as being about being and the one, okay? But now in the fifth reading, he's going to show that wisdom is about the what?

[32:14] Axioms, huh? And this will be a third thing now that wisdom is about, huh? Now let's recall what an axiom is. What is an axiom? He said from Aristotle, he's using the word now, not the sense which the moderns use for axioms.

[32:52] The first principles, a self-evident principle. Well, that's true, but the genus of axiom is statement. Okay. Every axiom is a statement, but not every statement is an axiom. Okay. So the first thing you want to say about an axiom is it's a statement. Now, in logic, we define statement as speech signifying the true or the false, right? Okay.

[33:23] And speech is vocal sound, signifying by human agreement, no part of which having parts to signify by themselves, huh? Okay. But now an axiom is a statement known through itself rather than through other statements. So it's a statement known through itself

[33:53] not through other statements, huh? Now, are there statements known through themselves, or only statements known through other statements? There have to be some that are known through themselves, or you have an infinite regression. Yeah, yeah. Because if you have statement A through B, and that had to be known to another statement, and that to another statement, and so on, you'd have to go through an infinity, right, of statements, infinity of reasonings, in order to know a statement, right?

[34:33] So, if every statement was in need of being known through other statements, then no statement would be what known, including the statement I just made.

[34:52] And sometimes, you know, someone denies that there are some statements known to themselves. What about the statement that statements exist? Did you try to prove the statements exist? And if

[35:09] someone says the statements do not exist, he's showing that they do exist, right? You can't deny the statements exist without making a statement, right? So there are statements that are known to themselves, right? Now, Boethius in the Book of the Trinity makes a further distinction, points out a distinction. There are statements known to themselves by all men, and there are statements known to themselves by those who are wise, in some sense.

[35:57] Now, which are the axiots? Are they a statement known through itself by the wise only, or by all men in some way? By all men, yeah. The statement known to itself by all men.

[36:21] Now, an example of a statement known to itself by all men would be that a whole is more than one of its parts, right? Because everybody knows what a whole is and what a part is, and if you know what a whole and what a part is, you know that a whole always has parts, right? Then it should be obvious to you, right, that a whole is more than one of its parts.

[36:48] And can you live without experiencing whole and part, and what a whole and part, are? Unless you take your steak in one gulp and your water or beer or whatever it is in one gulp, you're going to experience whole and part. You know what a whole and part is. So that's an example of a statement known to itself by all men.

[37:15] But now, if I say that a perfect number is always a composite number, right? Is that known to itself by all men? No, probably not, because most men don't even know what a perfect number is, and some men don't even know what a composite number is, right? But to a man who knows what a composite number is, which is a number measured by some other number, right?

[37:49] One not being considered a number, right? And a perfect number is a number which is equal to the what sum of everything that measures it, right? Well, obviously, if you're measured If you're not measured by some other number, but only measured by one, you're not going to add up. to the number again, right? So the first perfect number is what six, right? Which is measured by one and by two and by three, but not by four and five.

[38:23] And one plus two plus three adds up to what six. And so Augustine and Thomas refer back to six being a perfect number, the first perfect number, and the things that measure it, one, two, three, are in perfect order, one, two, three. And this is one reason why Scripture speaks of God making the universe in six days. Right. It doesn't mean six in the sense of days in the ordinary sense of day, right?

[38:50] But the six they're symbolizing the perfection of what God has made, right? They use this perfect number and they think. But they say most people don't know what a perfect number is, and even some who don't know what a composite number is. So that every perfect number is a composite number is a statement known to itself by the wise, not wise in the sense of fully wise, but someone who has a little education in geometry or arithmetic in this case, huh?

[39:20] Okay. For every rhombus is a quadrilateral. Well, some of you know what a rhombus is, right? But the man who knows what a rhombus is is a little trained in geometry, right? Of course, a rhombus is a quadrilateral, right? Okay. And so that's the statement known to itself by those who are wise in some arts or science,

[39:46] huh? Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics, he will speak of these two kinds of statements. I'll put them down just as a comparison. Statement known to itself

[40:10] by the wise. Aristotle will point out that these two kinds of statements are the beginnings of reasoned-out knowledge. But the first kind he'll call the common beginnings of reasoned-out knowledge.

[40:34] And by common, I mean common to more than one or to all forms of reasoned-out knowledge. They're the common beginnings of reasoned-out knowledge. The common beginnings of every statement. And the ones that require you to have a certain foundation in the science. Like the man who knows what a rhombus is and knows what a perfect number is, and so on, right? Those beginnings are beginnings private to one former reasoned out knowledge.

[41:17] So that a perfect number is a composite number is a beginning private to arithmetic, science of numbers, and that a rhombus is a quadrilateral is private to geometry, right? So those are the private beginnings,

[41:35] private beginnings of reasonable knowledge. So Aquinas distinguishes between a statement known to itself by all men and a statement known to itself by the wise. In the book on the Trinity, and Aristotle distinguishes in the Posterior Analytics between the common beginnings of reasoned-out knowledge and the private beginnings. But the common beginnings are the same as the axioms, right? And the private beginnings are the same as the statements known to themselves by the wise in some art of science, huh?

[42:28] So this is an important, a very important distinction, and you can see in the case of the statements known to themselves by the wise that you need some consideration, some, some teaching, right, to know those, right? So it's not until I was taught, let's say, the definition of perfect number and taught the definition of composite number that it just became obvious to me, right? No great advance in my knowledge, but something to have to have in mind, right?

[43:00] But the first one you don't seem to have to be taught, right? Everybody knows that, right? So I learned what a perfect number was when I when I started reading Euclid. Euclid taught me this, right? Well, who taught me that a whole is more than a part? Just experience. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't really taught this by somebody, right? Didn't have to sit down, right? Now, as we asked before, it was one of the problems there in the third book of wisdom.

[43:35] Is it necessary that we stop and consider these axioms, right, and say some things about them and so on, or can we say that because everybody knows them, we can just use them and proceed from them, right? We don't have to prove them, obviously, because they can't be proven, right? They're they're before all proof, and everybody knows them, so why just you know get down and use them, right?

[44:02] See, is there some reason that we have to stop and talk about what everybody knows? Instead of just you know using it and proceeding from it, that might seem to be sufficient, right? And what was the reason we gave before why it seems you've got to stop and consider these to some extent? Sometimes indistinctly, or okay. Use. Yeah, what one thing that you discovered when you examined the axioms is that the words in the axioms are all equivocal.

[44:39] Oh. Equivocal, not by chance, but by reason, right? And even the axiom that the whole is more than a part, the words "whole" and "part" are equivocal.

[44:55] And from the equivocation of the words, men called sophists right will sometimes tie people up. And I give a very simple example of that with the whole and the part.

[45:16] I tell my students, I repeat this even for this one. I say, man's an animal, isn't he? Yeah, yeah, but is that just an animal, right? Is an animal that has reason? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So animal is only a part of what man is. Yeah. Okay. But animal includes besides man what dog, cat, horse, elephant? Yeah, yeah. So it's only a part of man. Includes much more than man.

[45:46] So sometimes the the part is actually what not only not less than the whole, but includes more than the whole. Oh my God! Yes, the students say, "Yeah, yeah, Jimmy. Oh, oh, yeah." So now I've apparently refuted the axiom that the whole is always more than one of its parts, right? My students, you know, they're convinced, yeah. Now Thomas calls that leaving. If I left them in that situation, Thomas calls them leaving the cistern open, right?

[46:19] Somebody falls down and responsible for them, right? Well, this argument against the axiom, most people couldn't answer. At least not right away. But what's wrong the argument? Huh? It's a different. It's a different type of whole. Yeah. In a way, animal animal is only potentially these things. Yeah. Not actually. In the fifth book of wisdom, Aristotle would distinguish between what is called the composed whole, which is a Latin word meaning put together.

[46:58] Right, the whole is put together from its parts, and then what is called the universal whole, right? Which in Greek is katholou gets its name from kata, according to the holos, the whole, and the less universal or the particular gets its name from part, right?

[47:21] And this is the whole which is said of its parts, but not put together from them, right? And so what you're doing in this argument is confusing animal as a composing part of the definition of man as an animal that has reason, and obviously that whole, the definition, has something besides animal as a part of it, namely has reason or two-footed, as Aristotle says, two-footed animal, and then animal as universal whole, said of man, dog, cat, and horse, right? If you stick with one whole, a composed whole, it's always more than one of its composing parts.

[48:13] If you take universal whole, it's always said of more than one of its parts, right? So, if animal is a universal whole said of man, dog, and cat, horse, it's said of more than dog is said of, right? It's said of more than man is set up, right? Okay. If you're taking animal as a composing part of the definition of man, then it is what?

[48:39] Put together from more than just that part, right? Okay. So, I'm making the most common mistake in thinking, according to the father of logic, where he says most common mistake in thinking is from mixing up different senses of the same word. Let's take another example here.

[49:01] We've seen those the meanings of the word before, haven't we? Before and now, right? Okay. And you say, well, now Chaucer, okay. Now, axiom about before is that nothing is before itself. Nothing is after itself, right? Now, Chaucer came before what Shakespeare in English fiction,

[49:26] but all the critics put Shakespeare before what Chaucer. So Shakespeare is before Chaucer, and Chaucer is before Shakespeare, and Shakespeare before himself, right? I do. And so I seem to have contradicted the axiom that nothing is before or after itself, right?

[49:50] But again, I mixed up two different meanings of before, right? Because the first meaning of before is in time, and that's the sense in which Chaucer is before Shakespeare. But when you say the critics all put Shakespeare before

[50:07] Chaucer, that's the fourth sense of before, which is better, right? All better, better, yeah, quality, yeah, yeah. Before in goodness, yeah, better. And so you mixed up two different senses, right?

[50:24] So no, it's like in the other case there. In one sense, animal is a part of man, but in another sense, man is a part of animal. But using the word "part" in two different senses there, otherwise one could be a part of the other and vice versa in the same sense. In the same way here, in one sense Chaucer is before Shakespeare in time, right? In other sense, Shakespeare is before Chaucer in goodness, right?

[50:51] But if it were the same sense of before, they couldn't be before each other in the same sense of before. Um. Did you see that? So it was Aristotle's discovery.

[51:09] That the words in all the axioms are equivocal by reason, right? And that people who can't distinguish those senses have an indistinct knowledge, you might say, of the axiom. But also, the sophists, right, can

[51:36] deny the axioms by a sophistical argument, that's an argument in this case, resulting from mixing up different senses of the word. But in addition to that, there are other arguments that the that the sophists use to deny the what axioms, son.

[52:03] You know, one of the famous arguments: in order to grasp something, you have to separate it from everything else, right? If I'm going to grasp this this glass, I've got to separate it from everything else. If

[52:20] everything else is is infinity of other things, right? So you never grasp anything then, can you? Right. See, I can't grasp the center of this table because it's connected to the rest of this table, right? I had to get a knife out here and cut it off and separate it from everything around it, huh?

[52:42] So, for your mind to grasp something, you would have to what separate it from everything else, right? But everything else is there's infinity of other things, right? You got to cut off from all these things, right? And obviously, you can't go through an infinity of things; you can never grasp anything. Of course my first objection to this objection is to say I can't grasp your objection. And you can't grasp me, either, but...

[53:13] Would the answer come down to simply that when you do grasp something, you are in that grasping of it, separating it from everything else, you're seeing it on its own? now? Well, in a sense, this objection proceeds from an ignorance of what? No, of the universal. Now, if I had to separate seven, let's say, from every even number, seven is not two, is not four, it's not six, it's not eight.

[53:41] If I had to go through all the even numbers. I'd never separate seven from them, would I? say? but if I know that seven is not an even number, you have made that separation. Yeah, from infinity of things. Yeah. So our mind or reason, by the universal, can separate something from an infinity of other things, huh?

[54:08] So there are objections against the axioms, other than simply based upon what the fallacy of equivocation and objections that most people can't answer. And De Koninck you know, Charles De Koninck has a beautiful article. Unfortunately, it's in French, but in the Revue Thomiste... was called "Paradoxes du devenir par la contradiction, " and it's about the famous

[54:50] attack which was really made by Hegel and others, but others not trying to see the way out of it against the axiom about being and not being; something cannot both be and not be, and there is an apparent contradiction in all becoming, which Aristotle unties in the sixth book of Natural Hearing. But most people can't untie it, and Hegel revives this mistake in the 19th century. But in the article, it kind of shows the problems that it created in theology in the Middle Ages and so on.

[55:28] And so you say there are objections to the axioms that are very difficult to understand, right? And objections that puzzle people all the way down through the centuries, huh? Now, if you have an objection against an axiom that you can't answer, right, then you might be in the position of thinking you don't know what you do know. And Aristotle pointed out in the second book of Natural Hearing that it's possible to think you don't know what you do know,

[56:02] and if that's so. That's going to really be a problem for the life of the mind, and so it seems someone has to defend the axioms against these objections that make people think they don't know what they do know. And so long as that objection seems to stand, well, then the man thinks he doesn't know the axioms, and therefore he doesn't think he knows anything.

[56:33] So it's really going to be necessary to consider the axioms, isn't it? Both to have a distinct knowledge of them because the words in the axioms are all equivocal, and to answer the common objections against the axioms, huh?

[56:49] So there's at least a couple of good reasons, right, for a consideration of the axioms. And one is to have a distinct knowledge of them, because everything else is going to be built upon them. And the other is to answer the objections, right? Whether they're based upon, you know, mixing up the different senses of the words of the axioms, or based upon something else, right? Because those objections are very hard to answer, and people think they don't know what they do know.

[57:26] I was thinking of you know this heretic, as we call him that, Roger Haight there, that he's he's judging the articles of faith by the customary or fashionable ideas of what is called postmodernism, right? Okay, but he's putting the cart before the horse. That that but our friend Saint Anselm has got it right when he says that theology is faith seeking what understanding. Yeah, you gotta have the faith first. And you believe what the church teaches, and so on.

[58:07] And then you seek to understand what you believe, right? You believe that there are three persons and one God. You seek to understand this insofar as it's possible in this life, and there's all kinds of qualifications there. But he's judging by the customary or fashionable ideas of postmodernism. The Trinity He's got it all wrong, right? Well, in philosophy, you might say that philosophy is the natural understanding of the axioms, right?

[58:43] Seeking a reasoned out understanding of things, and ultimately seeking wisdom, right? But if a man is in doubt that he naturally understands the axioms, then you've got to clear that up before you can go forward, right? Such a man is, you know, if a man is is convinced by one of these sophistical arguments against the axioms that he doesn't know what he he does know, he's in a terrible situation, right?

[59:12] Socrates spent his life showing the reverse problem, right? People think they know what they don't know. There's also a problem in thinking you don't know what you you do know. And Socrates himself almost gets in that sometimes. But Aristotle realizes you've got to avoid both of those mistakes. So you see some of the reason why it's necessary to say the axioms, huh? But now next time I'm going to ask the question which Aristotle will be concerned with here in the fifth reading here.

[59:44] Why should that consideration of the axioms belong more to the wise man than to somebody else, right? Why should it belong to the wise man to consider the axioms and to defend them against the sophistical objections that are made against them? Why? Well, we're gonna ask that next time, okay? We have to stop. We'll stop at 4: 30, right? Otherwise we're in trouble with the powers that be.