Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
33. Metaphysics V, Reading 18 on 'Perfect' and the Start of Book VI: How Wisdom Differs from the Making and Doing Sciences
Class of 2005-05-19
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/033-metaphysics-v-reading-18-on-perfect-and-the-start-of-book/

[0:00] Okay, to the 18th reading. Now, as I mentioned before, there are many words in Book Five, but the angelic doctor there divides them into three groups. Usually divided into two or three, right? And the first group of words pertain to beginnings or causes. I took the first word there, beginning. The second word he takes up is cause, and so on. Then the middle group of words are words that pertain to being or substance or one, which are names of the subject of wisdom, or the parts of the subject.

[0:36] And then the third and last group of words are like properties of being, and the fundamental words are perhaps perfect and whole, very close.

[0:50] And perhaps in English you could translate the word perfect sometimes. Sometimes we might use the word complete. So Aristotle in the 18th reading here, this is the first word in the last group, just like beginning was the first group and the first first word in the first group.

[1:08] So he's going to distinguish now the meanings of perfect. So he says, perfect or complete is said in one way that outside of which not even one part can be taken. As the complete time of each thing is that outside of which it is not possible to take any time, which is a part of that time. Perhaps you can say more simply: the first meaning of perfect or complete is that you have all your parts.

[1:38] Okay. And when I was a student in Quebec, you see on the restaurant there in the menu, the price and so on, repas complet. And what did that mean? That meant for that price you're going to get some kind of appetizer, the main course, and something of dessert, right? Dessert might not be any more than a flan or something. But I mean, that's a complete repas; it has all the parts, right?

[2:03] The appetizer, the main course, and the dessert, okay? As opposed to a la carte or something of that sort, huh? You see? So you're a complete man if you have both your arms and legs and your head and your ears and so on, right? Okay. If you're missing an arm or a leg or something, then you're what? Incomplete, right?

[2:31] Like Schubert's unfinished symphony, right? Missing parts, huh? And some things have come down to us, some books even, you know, missing a part or something, right? You know, during the dangers of preserving books and so on. So that's the first sense, huh? Okay. And there you see how close perfect and whole are, right? It has all its parts.

[2:58] By partial means what? Incomplete, imperfect, right? Okay. So, complete, complete word, right? Cut all its letters, right? Not missing any letters, right? Okay. Okay, got that. Now, the second sense of perfect is like the first sense. What has all the ability of its kind? Okay. It's a little bit like whole and part, isn't it?

[3:41] And that not exceeded according to virtue and goodness in its kind, as a perfect doctor and a perfect flute player, when they fall short of nothing in regard to the form of their own what virtue, right? Okay. Now, take Homer, whom Aristotle in the Poetics calls the poet, right, and whom Plato in the Republic praises among the poets, especially Homer. Now, why is Homer called the poet?

[4:13] Well, because in some way he seems to be the perfect or the complete poet, huh? Aristotle in the book on the poetic art, he praises Homer for teaching all the Greeks how to make a good plot. And Homer realized that a plot is not about what happens to one man, like Odysseus, but a plot has to be a course of action that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

[4:41] And he taught that to the Greeks, huh? He doesn't take the whole Trojan War, like it's an historian. He doesn't take the whole life of Odysseus, right? But he takes a course of action that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So he has one part. That's one part of the ability of the great poet to make a good what plot. And Homer stands out because he taught the Greeks what a good plot has to be.

[5:09] Why one might say that Dickens had had trouble with his plots, huh? And Wilkie Collins and the other English novelists is trying to help Dickens improve his plots, huh? Okay, but Dickens is very good with his characters, but but his plots are not so good, hey? Now, if we can quote the devil here, Hegel, right? When Hegel talks about the characters in Homer, right, he has a beautiful passage there where he's comparing the characters in Homer's tragic epics with the characters in the French tragedies.

[5:45] And he says the characters in the French tragedies are one-dimensional people, you know, like a passion personified and so on. Why the characters of what Homer are like a multifaceted diamond, you know, with all these sides and things and so on, huh? So he excels in his what? Characters, right? Okay, characters like Achilles and all the rest of these men.

[6:10] And then both Aristotle and Hegel praise the language of Homer. Absolutely amazing the language, the similes, for example, Homer. He has these bloody scenes, you know, and then he brings in these similes they're so gentle and give a as Shakespeare says, a smoothness to all your violence, huh?

[6:33] Comparing the man of armor to the flower, you know, falling to its side and so on, and that's beautiful, beautiful similes. So maybe he has the whole power of a poet, right? He can. A poet has to make plots. He has to create characters, and he has to put it in the right language. And Homer's got it all, right? So he's a perfect poet, a complete what poet, huh?

[7:03] They take Mozart. Maybe Mozart be the example of the perfect or the complete musician, huh? And you might say, well, Mozart can write what?

[7:18] For the human voice, he can write instrumental music, right? He can write violin concerto, or piano concerto, oboe concerto, bassoon concerto, flute concerto, right? He can do everything, and he adapts himself perfectly to the instrument, huh? And they compare Mozart, say, with the Baroque, you know, where they would transcribe their trios and one instrument or group instruments, but Mozart seemed to have caught the very essence of that instrument, huh?

[7:44] And he can write what, you know, symphonies, and he can write divertimentos, huh? You know, all the different kinds of music Mozart can, huh? Now they say Beethoven can't write very well for the human voice, huh? And they even singers hear that the ninth symphony there, where he has the Ode to Joy and so on, that singers find difficult to sing, right? And Mozart perfectly understood the human voice, and no one can write more beautifully for the human voice than Mozart.

[8:15] So you could say Mozart has what the whole power of a what musician, huh? What did the great Samuel Johnson say about London? When you're tired of London, he says, you're tired of life. London has everything, you know, the life can afford. Well, I say sometimes when you're tired of Mozart, you're tired of music, huh? Because he seems to have the whole, you know, power of a musician, huh?

[8:45] If you're talking about a rhetorician, say, well, there are three main means of persuasion, right? The image you project of yourself as a speaker, the way you move, the emotions and so on of the audience, and then the arguments or parent arguments you give, huh? And so a complete or perfect rhetorician does all three of these, huh? You see, not just one of them, right? And some of the rhetoricians, you know, before Aristotle, you know, they're trying to just deal with how to move the emotions of the audience.

[9:17] But Aristotle pointed out that the image you project of yourself as a man, you know, who's prudent, has your good in mind, you know, et cetera, et cetera, right? This is even in some ways even more important than the emotions, huh? Because we can't really know these things very well, we tend to trust this kind of a person, huh? And the argument has something to do with it too, although that's the least important Aristotle says.

[9:41] So notice, a complete or perfect what rhetorician is a man who has all the means of persuasion at hand, huh? Now. Interesting way of speaking here that kind of shows the likeness of the first, the second meaning to the first. John Dryden, now who's the English poet, who I guess is a poet laureate of England too for a while during his life. But John Dryden described, you know, his time people just began to realize the excellence of what Shakespeare.

[10:22] But when he was a young man, there'd be say as many plays, if not more, performed of Beaumont or Fletcher, as of what Shakespeare. You'd see Beaumont, Fletcher, Shakespeare. You know, one just one a many, huh? But as he went to see these plays more and more, he began to realize how superior Shakespeare was to Fletcher. And he finally described it, he said he began to realize Fletcher was just a limb of Shakespeare.

[10:48] Like an arm or a leg of Shakespeare, huh? He had something of Shakespeare, but only part of what Shakespeare had. Shakespeare had it all, right? That's the second sense of perfect, huh? Shakespeare had it all, right? He could

[11:06] write the plots. He could do the characters, right? He could do the language, huh? Yeah. He had the whole like Homer. He had the whole ability, right? Um, or you could say, you know, the complete poet, a complete playwright like Shakespeare should be able to write both tragedy and comedy, and Shakespeare excelled at both, right? Most people are more familiar with Shakespeare to say tragedies, you know.

[11:35] I remember years ago my brother Richard happening to see one of Shakespeare's comedies. I didn't realize Shakespeare was that funny, you know. But Shakespeare could do both, right? And Aristotle in the book on the poetic art, he talks about this work that is now lost of Homer called the Margites, which means I think in Greek they're the worthless fellow. But the Margites is a comic work, huh?

[12:01] Aristotle and Plato talk about sometimes, but Aristotle says the Margites is to comedy what the Iliad is to tragedy. So if that's true, then Homer was the complete poet. He could write both what tragedy and comedy, and we see this in Shakespeare, right? As well as some forms that may be in between too, but you see the excellence of Shakespeare in tragedy and comedy. There's this very puzzling play of Shakespeare, there, the Henry the Fourth, part one, right, where he has comic and tragic scenes in the same play, you know, and he does it so smoothly there, he just incredible.

[12:38] You can see how the man is a complete what poet, huh? And nobody can excel Shakespeare's language, huh? That's the second sense, not perfect, right? Shakespeare has the whole ability now, not a Mozart. Not of the carpenter, not of the cook, but he has the whole ability of the poet, right? Plot, character, language, basically, right? Tragedy, comedy, huh?

[13:11] Just like in that marvelous actor there, Alec Guinness, huh? Now you've seen Alec Guinness. I've seen him in comic roles, and I've seen him in what tragic roles, and he can do both very well, right? I've seen Jerry Lewis might be able to play a comic role and play a tragic role, right? And some actors, now they they get you know typed to suit and type the thing, and that's all they can do.

[13:33] They go and play themselves, as they say. And so he's not, but Alec Guinness is more a complete actor. He can he can he's got the whole ability of an actor, right? Can play tragedy and comedy. That's kind of marvelous to see that. I remember when I was teaching in California there, and went to my brother Mark, and I would go down to the San Francisco Artists Workshop, you know, and they had a a permanent core of actors in there, you know, fill in with other people too.

[14:06] But I saw this guy playing in Ben Johnson comedy, the Alchemist, playing a comic role, right? That's I first saw him on the stage. And then I know some year later I saw him playing King Lear, right? But I thought he made King Lear a little bit too senile, a little bit too ridiculous. And it's a delicate thing to do, right? Because he is a bit senile, a little bit out of it.

[14:39] But if you if you put him too much out of it or make him too comic in his orders, he's not really you know going to be the tragic character you want him to be in that play, right? So he hadn't really got out of it. They rolled the alchemist into you know the tragic role, right? I don't think Alec Guinness would have failed in that way, you know.

[15:01] But anyway, going back to Dryden discovered Marc and then he discovered that Fletcher was just a limb of Shakespeare. Well, that's kind of metaphorical way of speaking that he only had a part of what Shakespeare as a whole. But it looks back to the first meaning, right?

[15:19] If you're only a limb of me, in the original sense, you'd be very incomplete, right? You would missing most of your parts, right? You see, but you can see how how you can move from the first meaning to the second meaning there. That way of speaking, huh? The first sense of perfect is I have all my parts. The second is I have all the ability of my kind.

[15:43] If I'm a playwright or I'm a musician or you know, a complete or perfect cook can make what the appetizer as well as the main course. And the dessert as well as the main course, huh? Okay. My my son Marcus has a friend there who went to the CIA there, you know, the Culinary Institute of America, right? And he came to visit, you know, so we let him prepare the dinner, you know, and he makes the whole dinner, right?

[16:12] Everything, you know, so. But it's a man who can deal with different kinds of what, you know, steak and chicken and fish and each thing, right? He's got the complete what art in a sense, I mean, I forget the the different categories of CIA. You can go there for just partial training too, but if you're going to get the the top thing, you've got to be able to do everything more or less, huh?

[16:35] And then you've got to complete what cook, right? He's got the whole ability, but he can't write a symphony or write a tragedy, right? They don't teach you that in CIA. But you go to some of the restaurants around New York, you know, near my son Paul's at West Point, and you'd see something in the menu, you know, the CIA chef, here, you know.

[16:59] Okay. Now the third meaning of perfect is a little different now from the first two. Further, those are called perfect to which the end, when good, belongs. The third sense of perfect is something that has reached its what end or purpose, huh? Achieved its end or purpose.

[17:22] They are perfect by having the end. Since then, the end is one of the last things we also speak metaphorically about bad things that they are completely lost and completely corrupted, right? It's interesting, huh? You know, when your house or something gets hurt, and and they have a term insurance, you know, your house or car has been totaled. But that's metaphorical, right? Because it's far from being total or all at that point, right?

[17:53] But what has been, you know, my house is completely destroyed, right? Nothing left of it, right? Okay. That's kind of metaphorical thing, right? So these are the three senses that Aristotle sees for the word perfect, huh? And when I was teaching the students, you know, about what is better, right? We could say in a kind of abstract way that the perfect is better than the imperfect, right?

[18:20] But basically, you get two different senses here. You'd say the whole is better than the part, and the end is better than what is for the sake of the end. But perhaps the second is is more important, talking about the better, because you could say when you say the whole is better than the part, it's because the part is for the sake of the whole. So, like the whole is the end of the parts.

[18:50] So the most basic meaning is that of the end. So now these three senses of perfect. Are talking about perfection of what we would call in theology creatures,

[19:08] because God is not perfect in this way, right? He doesn't have any parts, nor does God have an end that He's got to reach, huh? Okay, He's the end of everything else, right? He is the end, huh? He is the good, right? Like I was mentioning there in the nineteenth chapter there, Matthew, where Christ says, "Why do you call me good when alone is good?" Huh? Ho, agathos.

[19:36] huh? but notice, huh? If you want to connect with this, you say not that God has reached His end or purpose, but He is the end or purpose of all other things, huh? Okay.

[19:53] Now, in the next paragraph, Aristotle is going to. distinguish. now, as Thomas explains in the commentary, between the way in which creatures can be called good and the way in which God is called good, right? Things called perfect by themselves are said then in so many ways,

[20:22] but some by lacking nothing in goodness. Now he's thinking of God, the way God is good, neither having anything above nor taking anything outside. Now Thomas would express that sometimes by saying God is universally perfect, right? He's lacking nothing,

[20:40] and some now this is the creatures in not having an above in some genus or anything outside. So you could say that Homer or Shakespeare lacks nothing that a poet should have, but he lacks what Mozart has. He lacks what the cook has. He lacks what you know someone else has, right? Um,

[21:05] but God is lacking in what? Nothing. He's universally perfect, huh? So that's very interesting. He distinguishes the sense in which God is said to be perfect and the creatures perfect. The creature can be perfect in its kind, in its genus, right? Cook or

[21:31] musician or poet or carpenter or something, right? Um, but its perfection is limited to that kind of thing, right? Okay, but God's perfection is infinite. In fact, in the *Summa Theologiae, you know, if he takes up the perfection of God; he takes up infinity of God, right? Which is not to be understood in a quantitative sense, right? But that God is infinitely perfect, right? Okay, but Aristotle is kind of touching upon that difference, huh?

[22:09] The way in which the first cause will be perfect, and the way in which all other things can be said to be perfect in their kind, huh?

[22:24] I happened to read that it was out at TAC last year. There, they had a copy of Mrs. Jamieson's book, you know. So I, you know, I often see it quoted, you know. I mean, she's a 19th century, I guess, woman, but she wrote this famous book on the female characters of Shakespeare. That's really something, you know, huh? And I was finding a little thing there on the internet, or a thing on Ophelia there in Shakespeare's play, you know.

[22:50] She's pretty solid, you know, writer about what a woman should be. When she says a woman should be three things: modest, graceful. And tender, merciful, and if she doesn't have these things, she's not a woman. I wouldn't get a car, But she's not a woman. right? But it's pretty good. you know? I don't know. But if you see her full book, you know, you know, it shows all different types of female characters in Shakespeare It's really kind of beautiful instead.

[23:24] But yeah, that seems like a fairly solid thing. I was thinking, you know, of the Blessed Virgin, you know, the car of the Mother of Mercy, right? But some of the prayers used the word tender too. That's, what she means by that? And she's obviously graceful and modest and humble. Humility has a modesty. well said.

[23:48] But Ophelia has then the perfection of a woman, right? Okay, But not the perfection of a philosopher or a poet, or you know, so perfect in their kind, huh? Okay. Gene Autry's horse champion, Jeremy Champion, I met Champion. I was a boy, and I would say Champion was a perfect horse. Didn't have the perfection of a philosopher or a cook or a pianist or a musician, right?

[24:20] But he was the perfect horse, beautiful, beautiful horse. And Gene Autry, you know, at the end he went around, you know, doffing his hat, and Champion went sidestepping like that around the whole whole auditorium, you know. That's a marvelous step, you know. Perfect horse, but perfect in that kind of thing, right? Yeah.

[24:48] So Shakespeare represents Portia there in the Merchant of Venice as the perfect woman, right? The perfect in that kind, huh? Yeah. That's the only perfection the creature can have to be complete in its kind, huh? But its kind lacks all kinds of things that other kinds of things have, right? But all the perfection that is divided up into creatures is all united in God in a simple way, right?

[25:22] Because we shall never fully understand or fully what love, huh? Now, in the last paragraph, Aristotle says there can be some other senses of perfect, like what produces one of these conditions that we talked about, right? But the basic senses are the three that we met here in the beginning, huh?

[25:57] So when I talk about, as I said. Better in general. I go back to this text on the whole thinking, and most people right away will agree that the whole is better than the part.

[26:15] It's better to have a whole automobile than part of one. Better to have a whole meal than part of the meal, right? Better to have the whole shoe than part of the shoe.

[26:29] The whole pants rather than part of the pants, and so on. Pretty hard to deny that, right? When you come to this even more basic, in some ways, thing that the end is better than what is for the sake of the end. I think we've talked about that before. How you can show that, right? You can show it inductively, right? Health is better than medicine, right? Knowing is better than learning, which my students usually agree.

[26:57] And having money is better than making money, earning money, and so on. But you'd also give a kind of more general reason, going back to the reason we saw in the second book there, which I expand a bit upon, where you say when the same belongs to two things, right, but to one of them because of the other, it belongs more to the cause. So if good is said of the end and of the means, but of the means because of the end, then the end is always what better than the means when both are good, first.

[27:45] So you could say in a very general way that the perfect is better than imperfect, but then you could distinguish these three what senses, huh?

[27:56] It's better to have all your arms and legs, right? They come back, you know, from the Iraq War, from the mother war, missing an arm or a leg, right? And the musician, right, who has the whole ability. Oh, yeah, that reminds another expression. I don't know if you know the connection there between Mozart and the youngest son there of of Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Christian Bach. Johann Christian Bach, he he went down from Germany to Italy, right, and picked up you know kind of international style of music and so on.

[28:29] I guess he married a Italian and became a Catholic, right? And then he moved to London, right? And so when Mozart went around Europe with the tutorship of his father, right, he went to what London, right? And he became very fond of Johann Christian Bach and Mozart, you know, four or five years old. But he would sit on Johann Sebastian Bach's leg, you know, and lap and Johann Bach would play something and Mozart would carry it, and so on.

[28:59] And so Mozart was very devoted to Johann Christian Bach. And the first, you know, several concertos of Mozart are kind of imitations of Johann Sebastian Bach. I mean, Johann Christian Bach. And you can buy some CDs, you know, where they give you the piece of Johann Christian Bach, and you can hear Mozart's thing, you know. And Einstein, not the Albert Einstein, but the famous Mozartian critic, Alfred Einstein, speaks of a pre-established harmony between Mozart and.

[29:26] And if you like Mozart, you kind of like Johann Christian Bach and his music. But someone described Johann Christian Bach as Mozart with something missing. Well, that's a little bit like you know, he's saying you know that Fletcher's a limb of Shakespeare, right? There's something missing there, right? And so he's not perfect in the way Mozart is, huh? I joke about that. I would like someone to describe Berquist you know, is Aristotle with something missing. Uh but I would consider that a great compliment, nevertheless.

[30:06] Or Berquist is Thomas Aquinas with something missing. doesn't have a complete power this man, right? you know, the thing about Aristotle, that's kind of striking about Aristotle, is you have on one hand is doing, what Boethius and Thomas call inward philosophy, logic, and philosophy of nature seem kind of remote from our experience. But then he does, you know, politics, and he does the theory of how revolutions take place, and he studied 150 of the Greek city-states.

[30:40] See, that very concrete work, right? They actually have, I think, you know, the Thanksgiving given to Aristotle for clearing up the chronology of the Greek plays and so on. And then he did what? He cut up animals and plants, and did all kinds of anatomy, and had Alexander sending back animals and plants from the the East and so on. So there's something about Aristotle, a kind of universality about Aristotle, that he could do historical research, which is very particular, and then he can do logic and wisdom, which are very universal.

[31:19] He can do anatomy, right? Marine biology and so on. He's kind of the what? Complete poet, huh? Or a complete philosopher, rather, in the way that maybe Plato was not, right? Plato can do certain things, mathematics, abstract things, but he can't maybe do history or do historical research or study the way the revolutions actually took place in the Greek cities and so on. So I think Aristotle, in some ways, was the most well balanced mind in history.

[31:51] There had been a mind quite like that. What he wrote about how tyranny can be preserved in other forms of government. I still use for the tyrants, they say. So,

[32:09] there's that sense He has the whole power of a philosopher. So, we give you the a sixth book now. We're going to think. We won't say too much about it now, but I'm going away, you know, to California on Saturday. It's kind of funny going to

[32:39] the Los Angeles Airport, right? And it's a terrible thing going in there. You have like six, seven lanes going this way, six, seven lanes going that way. You know, so usually you get some kind of public confrontation. So I'm in in face this murderous highway, you know, but. They call the bus the great stagecoach, you know, the great wooden stagecoach. But anyway, kind of funny place. Passer.

[33:05] Pass me on. Yes. Good morning. They're coming around the sixth copy. They want to switch the copies here. A lot of people make the move. Okay, one another.

[33:38] Yeah, I got more copies here today. Okay. You know, thanks around. Because they make the computer fail. Thank you. The three words they did there in book five will give you a little idea of what he's doing in book five. But there are other words that eventually should be studied. Them, in fact, all of them should be studied eventually. But it's not appropriate the first time to do all the words, you know, think about.

[34:18] I mean, just think of the word "being" enough to occupy you for some time. But the word "cause," the word "whole" and "part," the word "nature," all these words are very important. Let's look now at the book six of it here. Now, book five could also be considered, as we've said before, as the end of a

[34:47] getting a distinct knowledge of the axioms. Because it might be considered an axiom, for example, that the perfect is better than the imperfect, right? But a distinct knowledge of the axioms that is able to defend them and so on. Book five is going to be useful for that purpose, especially to defend them against the the mistakes of the sophists from mixing up the senses of these words.

[35:18] Now, in the sixth book of wisdom, in the first reading here, Aristotle was going to complete to some extent the distinction of wisdom from all other kinds of reasoned-out knowledge. From all other arts and sciences, it's interesting the way Aristotle comes back to this distinction. You saw him doing this in part. Already in the premium rate, in the premium, we separated wisdom to some extent from all other knowledge.

[36:00] But then, in beginning of book four, we learned again some other things that helped us to separate wisdom from all other things. In the premium, we learned that wisdom is about causes, but at last, about the very first causes, and that's unique to wisdom, and it separates wisdom from all other knowledge. In the beginning of book four, we realize that wisdom is about being as being, right, and the one and the many, and this is more universal than the subject of any other knowledge.

[36:38] And the others don't even consider their particular subject as being, but in some particular way. Arithmetic doesn't consider numbers as beings, what kind of beings they are, but numbers as numbers.

[36:54] Well, now in book six, he's going to add more to separate wisdom from the other kinds of knowledge in the first reading, and he's going to also a little bit like we saw in the premium. He's going to be separating the forms of reason out knowledge that you could call theoretical or looking, and the ones that are productive or making, and the ones that are concerned with the doing.

[37:34] Okay. Ah, and then since wisdom is among the looking knowledge, he's going to distinguish among those in particular, and he's going to distinguish between looking knowledge and practical knowledge, whether it be about making or doing. In a different way here in the first reading than he did in the premium, when you distinguish looking knowledge from practical knowledge, perhaps the first way you distinguish them is by their end or purpose.

[38:12] The purpose of looking knowledge, as the word "looking" suggests, and theoretical is just a Greek word for looking, the end is to see in the sense of to understand. That's the end of this knowledge.

[38:31] The end of the practical knowledge is not to understand or to know; it's in the one case to make something. The end of the art of cooking is to make dinner, not to know and understand food. There may be some of that involved, but the end is to make dinner. And how do you make dinner? And the end of the doing knowledge is not to know what it is to be just, even, or what it is to be modest, or what it is to be courageous, but to be courageous, huh?

[39:13] To be modest, huh? To do what is modest, to do what is courageous, to do what is just. So the end here is doing and not making and not knowing. That's the first way we distinguished them, and we saw that already in the first two books of wisdom. But here he's going to distinguish them in another way. He's going to distinguish them by the cause that they are concerned with, and so he's going to distinguish

[39:47] the looking knowledge that is closest to doing and making, namely natural philosophy. He's going to distinguish them by distinguishing between nature and human art, like he did. Already in the second book of natural hearing and choice, okay.

[40:09] He's going to distinguish between a knowledge is about which is about things that are by nature and things that are by art and things that are by choice,

[40:22] and he's going to distinguish them by distinguishing between nature and art and choice, and then he's going to distinguish natural philosophy or from natural philosophy, mathematical philosophy, and wisdom or first philosophy. And it's interesting the way he does this, right? Because he doesn't distinguish looking philosophy as a group from making or doing, as he does when he did it from there in. But he separates simply natural philosophy from the others, right?

[41:06] Now, how does that suffice, right? Well, be like if I was going to separate New England from Canada, and I separated what Maine and Vermont from Canada. Well, if Maine and Vermont are not parts of Canada, then Massachusetts and Connecticut, even further away, are obviously not part of what Canada, right? Okay, so you can do it in that way. Okay,

[41:46] it's like you two guys are different, right? Then he must be even more different from you, right? These have been further away, right? Okay, but anyway, it's a different way here of separating them.

[42:00] And Aristotle was the man who discovered. well, he has some help from Plato. Discovered how the kinds of looking philosophy should be distinguished, and how they are to be distinguished, and that

[42:24] there's only three kinds of looking philosophy that's involved. And once you understand how they're distinguished, and although he doesn't make it explicit here, you could point out that the way you distinguish the making sciences is a different way, and the way you distinguish the doing sciences is a different way. Okay, and this is interesting. Aristotle could do this.

[42:59] I've been noticing, you know, how Thomas, in talking about the mistakes of the philosophers before Aristotle, he often points out that their mistake comes from not seeing some distinction, and from not understanding some distinction, or not considering enough some distinction. And you see that a lot when you come to the point of distinguishing the different kinds of knowledge. That Aristotle, I think, knew how to distinguish them, and most academics don't know how to, right?

[43:32] Monsignor Dionne used to say, if you want to, you give a good example of confusion in the modern mind. He said, just look at any college catalog. And

[43:47] students and even professors, I say, they don't understand how to distinguish things, huh? And distinctions aren't clear. So, but when he gets to separating wisdom, then from all other kinds of reason out knowledge, then in the beginning of the second reading, he's going to recall in the first paragraph the distinctions of the senses of being that we just saw in the fifth book,

[44:25] and then he's going to consider briefly in the second and third reading accidental being, but also see why we don't have to consider it to any great extent here in the science of being as being. And then in the fourth reading, he's going to talk a bit about being as true, say some very important things, but he's going to set aside those two kinds of being as not being what we're chiefly concerned with, right?

[44:55] And then come the three great books about being: seven, eight, and nine. And seven and eight are about being, according to the figure of predication, but chiefly about substance. And book nine is about being as act and ability, and then book ten is on the one and the many, and that completes the consideration of being as being and the one the many. Now you're ready to start the search for the first causes.

[45:24] Okay, there's a lot here in the sixth book, huh? So he's going to recall here the distinction that we saw already in the fourth book, but let's look at the first reading. Here So we're writing a title here. The beginnings and the causes of beings are sought. And it is clear as beings, right? They were looking for the causes of being as being. And now he starts to point out how every science seems to be looking for some kind of causes.

[46:05] There is some cause of health and vigor, right? You might, in the medical science, investigate that. And there are beginnings and elements and causes of mathematical things, huh? And in general, every science—and by science, the Greek word episteme, right—means reasoned-out knowledge, right? And that's spelled reasoned or reasoned-out understanding, huh? Okay. And generally says every science, understanding or particular understanding, is about some causes and beginnings, either more precise or in a more loose fashion, right?

[46:46] Or more certainly, or more less certainly. Translate that way too. So he's putting out something, huh? That reasoned-out knowledge seeks to know something in the light of its causes, huh? Okay.

[47:02] Now, but all these drawing a line around something more particular, you might say, consider about some being in some kind, but not about being simply. That's the first difference that we saw back in Book 4. And the second difference: nor do they consider that particular thing as being, right? Okay. And consequently, they do not give an account of what it is. But from this, some by sensation make this clear.

[47:31] Some taking the what it is as laid down, they demonstrate more necessarily, or in some cases more loosely, right? What belongs as such, and we saw that reasoned-out knowledge considers what belongs to something as such. Hence, it is clear from such an induction that there is no demonstration of substance of the what it is, but some other way of being shown, like definition. Likewise, they say nothing as to whether the kind of thing about which they consider exists or does not exist, because it belongs to the same understanding to make clear what it is and if it is.

[48:05] He's kind of touching there in an obscure way upon the fact that these other sciences need to be propped up a bit by wisdom, huh? So, arithmetic is about numbers. Where do you get these numbers, Well, a mathematician doesn't say he just, you know, assumes that there are numbers and let's talk about numbers and let's forget about the way they exist, you know, and so on.

[48:33] And now he's going to, in the third paragraph, begin to distinguish the looking knowledge that is closest to making or doing, and that's natural philosophy, right? Because natural philosophy. Is about things whose cause is nature, and nature is the cause of motion, and so on. So, in a way, you're dealing with motion. That seems a little bit like doing and making, doesn't it? So, if natural philosophy is not a doing or making science, then a fortiori mathematics, which kind of, you know, is more abstract and further away from matter and motion, will not be a doing or making science.

[49:12] And a fortiori, wisdom, right, which is about ultimately immaterial things, right? It's not about doing or making those things, right? Okay. Now, in this third paragraph, what he's going to do is to start to distinguish natural science or natural philosophy from the making sciences and the doing sciences by distinguishing the cause of what it studies, nature, from art and from what choice?

[49:43] Since natural science is about some kind of being, for it's about such substance as has in itself a beginning of motion and rest. You saw the definition of nature, I think, didn't you, before in the second book, where nature was defined as a beginning and cause of motion and of rest, right? In that in which it is being an innate cause, as such, and not by what happening.

[50:10] It is clear that it is neither a doing nor a making science, for the beginning of things made is in the maker, not in the thing made, and it's either mind or the art in the mind, right, or some power that you have to carry out what the art prescribes. While things done, it is choice in the doer.

[50:35] So, the first difference, we get between nature and art, is that nature is a cause within the thing, and art is a cause what outside of the thing, right? Okay. So the cause of the tree getting taller is within the tree, huh? The cause of the church getting taller or the brick wall getting taller is in the brick layer, right? And it's art, it's not in the bricks, huh?

[51:08] The bricks don't build themselves up into a brick house or a brick wall, will they? Okay. So, and this is why the word nature is taken from what birth, right? The original meaning of nature is birth, and in birth, the baby comes from within, right? So if the woman is making an apple pie, and then she gives birth to a baby, the baby comes from within the woman, right?

[51:38] While the apple pie doesn't come from within, she's acting upon something outside of her. While this word for birth was then carried over to the source of the birth within, inside the woman, and then in a third meaning, it was generalized to mean not just the source within a birth, but of any change. It could be growing or falling and so on, right? And although, as Heraclitus says, nature loves to hide because it's within, yet the fact that things move or behave differently in the same circumstances is a sign that there's something within that's at least in part responsible for this, huh?

[52:25] So the rock and the tree there, in the same soil and in the same rain, the same sunshine, the one grows and the other doesn't. So it's not just due to the water alone or to the sun that the tree grows and the stone doesn't, but it's due to something within, and that cause within is what we call nature, right? That's what we're trying to find out about the natural philosophy.

[52:51] Why the art is something outside, right? So the art of the carpenter. Is not in the chair, right? And the carpenter is not inside the chair, to the best of my knowledge. Okay. And the cook is not in the pie, right? It shouldn't be inside the pie, huh? But he's made, huh? Okay. And the bricklayer is not inside the brick wall, right? So if nature and art are not the same, what cause, right?

[53:23] Then the knowledge which is about things that are by nature, and the art of science which is about artificial things, things that are by art, will not be the same knowledge, will they?

[53:41] Now, ethics and natural philosophy and so on—I mean, domestics and political philosophy—are about things that are originally by what choice, huh? Yeah. And choice is not in the action, but in the what the doer, right? Huh? So choice is not the same thing as nature, right? And what does Shakespeare say there? Nature cannot choose its origin, in Hamlet, there, right? He sees a difference, right, between nature and choice, huh?

[54:17] Hence, if every science or reasoned-out knowledge or reasoned-out understanding is either doing or making or looking, right? Natural science or natural philosophy will be a particular looking science, which is about being as is able to be moved, and about the substance which, by definition, is for the most part not what separable from matter. He says for the most part because he's aware of the human soul, right?

[54:45] Okay. So notice what he's doing, huh? He's separating natural philosophy from the the making sciences and from the doing sciences by separating nature from art and from choice, right? But in a way, he's separating all the looking sciences, right, from the making and doing sciences by separating the one closest to them, namely natural philosophy, because natural philosophy is about motion or change, and that seems to be a little bit like doing and making, right?

[55:25] But mathematics is about quantity or numbers and not about motion or change, huh? So if mathematics, if natural philosophy is not a making or doing science, then a fortiori mathematics is not, and a fortiori wisdom will not be if it's about immaterial things,

[55:49] things which are not subject to our art or our choice, huh? Okay. So I'm asking my guardian angel to think that out of my mind, not telling him I choose for you to do this.

[56:05] Okay. Now, in the fourth paragraph, he's going to begin to separate natural philosophy from the other kinds of looking philosophy, which will be the mathematical philosophy and first philosophy or wisdom. Okay. So in this case, he'll end up then separating eventually natural or wisdom from every other knowledge, right? Okay. But now, how should one separate it? Well, we got a few minutes to say it.

[56:47] I'll think about that, huh? And you might, to amuse yourself, how would you distinguish the making sciences, right? And how would you distinguish the doing sciences, huh? Aristotle doesn't subdivide those because that's not his purpose here. He wants to separate wisdom from the rest. But I think it's interesting to see that there's going to be a different way of doing it, and there's a reason why the way you distinguish the looking sciences and the way you distinguish the making sciences and the way you distinguish the doing sciences, all three ways are different.

[57:28] There's a reason why. Okay, so I leave you with that puzzle, right? Huh? You might be back here in August, huh? Okay. Because in July, I go to Denver with other. Mhm. Year. I'm going to speak to you there. And you're hermit there, and some people are going to come, I guess, to there. So maybe the first week of August, you know, I ain't coming back from Denver now.

[57:56] August second or something like that, Saturday or something, Sunday August, and then Monday maybe. Maybe Monday I can say that week. That Thursday that week, if you want to start then, it's very handy. Well, I'll speak to the Abbot more. Yeah. We'll communicate with him. Yeah,

[58:16] I'll be back a little bit in July for everybody in Denver, but you know that we're expecting them to come up. Yeah. I'll be in the basket case. I'll be in the basket rather than than leaving wisdom there.