Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
34. Metaphysics Book 6, Part 1: Wisdom's Subject, and How the Making, Doing and Looking Sciences Are Divided
Class of 2005-09-15
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/034-metaphysics-book-6-part-1-wisdoms-subject-and-how-the-making/

[0:02] Okay, let's say our little prayer. in the Name of the Father and the Son, of the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment. Guardian angels bring the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, We pray for us. and help us to understand all that you've written. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[0:30] Amen. You've seen that document, by the way, of Paul VI? It's an apostolic letter, I guess it's classified as, called Lumen Ecclesiae. For Thomas Aquinas it's called the Lumen Ecclesiae. It's like you know what the great said that Thomas died: you know the light of the church has been extinguished. So this is a document that he wrote at the time of the 1274. You know, the 17 1974 was it the 700th anniversary of the death of Thomas?

[1:10] So it's in the. on the internet, if you go to the Vatican to the Holy Father. You go to the. in the last seven or eight popes, you have one for each of them, and different categories and sections and apostolic letters. This is an apostolic letter, huh? And some of them there's nothing other than them yet. They haven't put them in yet, you know. But pretty strong there about Thomas in the beginning.

[1:39] But it's interesting to see that title coming back, Lumen Ecclesiae. Okay, let's situate again a little bit the sixth book of wisdom here. As you know, I prefer calling the fourteen books of the so-called metaphysics the fourteen books of wisdom, right? Or first philosophy.

[2:04] And I always cringe when I see you know what they call metaphysics in the bookstores, huh? Occult readings and metaphysics and that sort of stuff, right? Okay.

[2:23] So in the sixth book here, now Aristotle is going to finish stating in general what the subject of wisdom is, and separating it from all the other sciences or all the other forms of reasoned-out knowledge, reasoned-out understanding.

[2:44] And he's going to do so in a kind of unusual way. If you recall the proemium to the wisdom at the very beginning of Book One, when Aristotle was giving the. Order in which different kinds of knowing take place along the natural road from the senses into reason. He talked about how sensing comes first, and then secondly memory of what has been sensed, and then comes experience in the sense of a collection of many memories of the same thing, and only after that comes about a knowledge of the universal.

[3:33] And the reason separates out what's common to the many similar things that have been sensed and remembered and are now part of experience. And then he compared experience with this knowledge of universal, which he called art or science in a kind of broad sense, and

[3:57] he said as far as doing is concerned, the man of experience may succeed better than the man of art or science. And in terms that very difference, that experience is a knowledge of the singular, and art or science is a knowledge of the universal, and doing is always about the singular. You don't cure a man; you cure this individual man, and so if you have an experience in the singular, you may succeed better in doing something than the man who knows universals but doesn't have the knowledge of this singular in particular.

[4:35] But then he went on to say that art or science, nevertheless, as far as knowing is superior to experience, because experience as such only tells you that it is so, but art or science tells you why it is so; it tells you the cause.

[4:58] So this is kind of the perfection of art or science to know what and why, and this is to know the cause. So Aristotle is going to make use of that

[5:12] truth in order to separate wisdom from all the other kinds of reasoned out knowledge. He's going to begin to separate the different kinds of reasoned out knowledge by the distinction between the causes of what is studied in those sciences,

[5:34] and so he's going to begin by observing that every art or science, the greatest and the least, and so on, is about causes in some way, and then he'll use a distinction among those causes.

[5:49] So let's look at the first paragraph. There he says, "The beginning and the causes of beings are sought, and it is clear as beings. " Now that's recalling something we saw at the beginning of the fourth book of wisdom. Remember that. Aristotle had shown in the proemium to wisdom that wisdom aims at knowing the very first causes, the very first causes, and we pointed out how the more universal the cause is, the more universal is the subject of that science that is about that cause.

[6:30] And we gave a very simple example there to bring that out. If there is a science that talked about the king, and there is a science that talked about the general, well the causality of the king extends further than the causality of the general, and the causality of the king extends to all citizens in some way, and the causality of the general extends to all soldiers. Now, if every soldier is a citizen, but not every citizen is a soldier, then citizen is set up more, right?

[7:15] than soldier is set up. And that corresponds to the fact that the king is a what more universal cause? His causality extends further than the causality of the what general? Okay.

[7:33] Is that the causality of the president extends further than the causality of the head of some particular department of the government? Do you see the point? And that helps you to see why the wisdom aiming at the cause called the first cause, the cause therefore which is most universal, the cause whose causality extends in some way to everything, right? That that is going to be about a subject that is said of everything, said of all.

[8:13] So, wisdom aiming at the first cause, which is the cause of all things in some way, is also about a subject which is said of all. And what said of all is what being, right? Whatever is in any way whatsoever, right? Even if it only is in our mind, can be said to be a being. Okay. So he calls then, from what we saw in the beginning of Book Four, they were looking for the beginnings and the causes of beings, and he adds, of course, as beings, okay, because all reasoned-out knowledge.

[9:02] Is about what belongs to a subject as such, or through itself, and not about what happens to that subject. So the geometry doesn't talk about triangles being green or blue or red, right? Even though a triangle might happen to be green or red or blue, right? But it's not about what may happen to a triangle. But it's only about what belongs to the triangle through itself. that is, through its being a triangle.

[9:37] What belongs to the triangle as such, as triangle. So he's going to talk about the definitions and the divisions of triangle as such. So belongs to triangle as such to be a rectilineal plane figure, right? I'll tell you that, and to be contained by three straight lines, right? And he'll talk about the division of triangle as such on the basis of the length of those lines

[10:08] and equilateral, sides and scalene right And then he'll talk about what happens to triangle as triangle, like you'll show that the interior angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. You probably know that famous theorem there, number thirty-two in Book One of Euclid. Okay. But he won't talk about the triangle being red or green because that doesn't belong to triangle as such. Do you see that?

[10:38] Okay. So that's why he adds there in that into that first sentence, as beings, right? Okay. Now, as I say, there's two ways of saying that. You can say through itself, per se, katholou in Greek, or as such. Okay.

[11:06] And then exemplifies. There are some causes of health and vigor, right? And the medical art is going to touch upon the causes of health and so on. And there are beginnings and elements and causes of mathematical things. Huh? And so when straight lines intersect. The geometer will show you why those opposite angles are what equal, right?

[11:33] And in general, every science, and for want of a better word, or single word in English, I use the word science, but usually I use a phrase for that instead of science. Reasoned out knowledge, and that misspelled word there, reasoned out understanding. Okay.

[11:57] So he says, and in general, every science, understanding or partaking of understanding, is about causes and beginnings, but some in a more precise or more certain way, and some in a more what superficial way, right? But they're all about causes in some way.

[12:19] Now, the next paragraph he begins to distinguish a bit wisdom, but not fully yet. But he points out that wisdom is complete, universal, and therefore it is what different from all the other sciences in that way. But all these, he says, meaning all these other sciences apart from wisdom, drawing a line around, they single out some particular subject, like health, right, or something to consider about some being, yes.

[13:04] In some kind, but not about being simply nor as being, nor does he give an account of the what it is. Now, notice, son. Let's take a simple example here. Arithmetic, in the Greek sense, the subject of arithmetic is numbers, right? And this is much more particular than being.

[13:33] Okay. So one difference between arithmetic and wisdom is the fact that wisdom is completely universal about being as being, right? And arithmetic is about something much more particular, just about numbers, okay? But a second difference is that it considers a particular subject in a particular way. It considers numbers as numbers, right?

[14:07] It doesn't consider numbers as beings, son. So you see, this in a way, two differences here in the second paragraph between wisdom and every other form of recent knowledge or understanding. Wisdom considers a completely universal subject, and other ones draw a line around something more particular, right? And secondly, they consider that in a particular way.

[14:41] Consider what kind of being numbers have would belong to the wisdom, because this is considering beings as beings, right? But the mathematician is considering numbers simply as numbers, son.

[15:03] Now, don't worry too much here about what he means by giving an account to the what it is. But sometimes when we talk about the most universal,

[15:18] there is actually a number of words that are most universal. And being is the fundamental one, right? But then you have the word thing, right?

[15:32] Or something, huh? And that's rather universal too, isn't it? Because outside of something, there is only what Nothing. nothing, yeah, yeah. Now, is the word being

[15:54] and the word thing, the root here, something? These words are both completely universal. They are, the magician might say, convertible, right? Every being is a thing in some way. Every being is a being, right? Okay. But are these two words

[16:21] synonyms? No, no. Later on in theology, you know, we have many names of God. We say, for example, that God is wise. We say that God is just.

[16:45] But is the wisdom of God and the justice of God two different things in God? No, God is altogether simple, right? So the wisdom of God and the justice of God are one and the same thing. But

[17:07] are they synonyms? I say God is wise, and I say God is just. Are the words synonymous No, no. Well, this is a little different, but something like that, right? They might be convertible and go together, but being is taken from to be in some way, right? And thing is taken from what it is. Okay. So,

[17:48] in logic, when we talk about a definition, right? And a definition makes known what a thing is. We usually use the word "thing" when we define definition, if you recall logic. A definition is speech making known what a thing is.

[18:12] So you could say everything that is is what it is, right? It's the same reality in a way, but in one case you're naming it from to be, and in the other from what it is. huh? And we won't get into any subtleties here now. But as you perhaps know already, in God these will be the same.

[18:47] But later on, you find out that in creatures they're not the same. Okay, but this part we don't have to worry about that. Yeah. Okay, but there's a little difference here, right? Okay. Now, when you read the seventh book of wisdom, which They had me do a TAC one time there, but which is the last book I would choose to do, and I never do it. You know, with first time I do books of wisdom people.

[19:18] That book is very much about what it is, right? And whether a thing and what it is are the same, and all kinds of questions that nobody but the wise man asks, right? And so Aristotle is pointing to this consideration of what it is in wisdom as being something you don't find in the particular sciences. Okay. In other words, the geometry. You can read Euclid all about these triangles and wonderful theorems, but Euclid never asked, Is a triangle and what it is the same thing?"

[19:55] Not to ask those questions. But the wise man does, and the wise man will say that in material things, a material thing and what it is are not entirely the same, and that's why you can have many material things of the same kind. You can have two circles, in fact, even exactly the same what size, huh? Because one's here and one's there, but that involves the continuous, huh?

[20:30] Part outside of part. Well, you come to the immaterial things that are not continuous. Then what it is is not multiplied by these immaterial things. See, but the other sciences don't talk about these things, huh? You hear the biologists, you know, talking about a dog and what a dog is—exactly the same or not? Doesn't worry about that. It's a question, right? That's another sign of the universality of wisdom, right?

[21:02] The other sciences don't consider numbers, for example, as numbers, right? And they don't consider whether a number and what a number is are the same or there's some little difference between them.

[21:22] He also points out that the other sciences take for granted that their subject exists, right? Whether the subject is known by the senses, or it's known by our experience of human life, or it's known by the imagination, right? Okay.

[21:47] But now, in the third paragraph, he's going to begin to distinguish, huh? Wisdom in another way, making use a little bit of the fact that they consider causes from all the other forms of reasoned-out knowledge, and there is really three genera here, three groups, you might say, of reasoned-out knowledge of art or science, which could be distinguished, as he did earlier in Book One, by their end or purpose, okay?

[22:29] So you could have what we might call the looking sciences, and some people might prefer to use a Latin-derived word, speculative sciences, or a Greek-derived word, theoretical, right? But those are really the Greek and Latin words for what looking. So I like to speak English, huh? Plus the fact that speculative has taken on what stock market connotations, and and I'm speculating, meaning I'm guessing, let the let.

[23:05] Speculative means, when they speak of speculative philosophy, they mean looking philosophy. Now, as that name "looking" indicates, looking means what? Trying to see, and to see in the sense of to understand, right? So, the end or purpose of the looking sciences is just to understand,

[23:36] to understand what and why. There is no end beyond the understanding itself. But then you have the doing sciences, like say ethics and domestics and political philosophy. And Thomas Aquinas, incidentally, distinguishes those three in his Proemium to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. I don't know if you gave that text before or not. I can give it to you sometime. Have a translation of it. But in the case of the doing sciences, the end or purpose is not to know or to understand, although you have to know and understand some things.

[24:26] But the end is what to do. It's not to know. So you can be more precise than that. You can say it's to do what is good or better. Okay.

[24:52] To at least do what is good, or to do what is better, and that can be for oneself, right? Okay. So when I go home tonight, should I read Shakespeare or should I read a comic book? Well, maybe better to read Shakespeare than a comic book, right? And thinking about what would be better for for me, right? Okay. Wouldn't get much out of comic book.

[25:22] But in domestic philosophy, you're considering what is good or better for the family, right? Okay. Now a lot of good families, and in fact, when my children were growing up, we thought it was better not to have a TV in the house. People are always offering us a TV, but instead, you know, father or it's not even mom, but a lot of times father reads them, you know, and so on, huh?

[25:50] And then they get attached to words and to reading and they and so on. And then in political philosophy, the end is to do what is good or what is better for your city or for your nation. Okay, so you can distinguish these by their what end,

[26:12] and then you have making sciences, and there the end is like to do, except it's a little different. There's a product, right? Like a chair or a table or a glass or a briefcase or something, right? Pair of glasses, huh? So it's to make, yeah. And there are many making sciences concerned with making the different kinds of things. Huh? Might be dinner, right? Might be a chair to sit on.

[26:48] Might be a car. Might be a blackboard, green board. Okay. Now Aristotle could have distinguished these three in those ways, and in a sense he did so in the premium, right? When he showed that wisdom is a what looking knowledge. Remember that? You know, he showed that wisdom aims at the first causes, and then he showed that it's looking knowledge, liberal knowledge, not a human possession but a divine one, and it's the what best and most honorable knowledge because it's the most divine knowledge, huh?

[27:29] But you may recall how he showed that it's a looking knowledge, huh? And used what Socrates had said in the Theaetetus that it began in wonder, right? And wonder is simply the desire to what know, huh? Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. You can't do anything about the star, right? But you wonder what it is, right? And so, because philosophy began in wonder, especially wisdom, then it was simply sought for the sake of knowing.

[28:03] If it had begun in hunger, right, or thirst, or desire to to be healthy, or the desire to get warm, which is not a problem today, yes, it would have given risen rise to something practical, right, like farming or fishing or something of the sort, right, or digging wells or whatever else, right. But because it arose from wonder, then its end was something to understand. Because it began in wonder, it's wonder what things are and why they are, which is answered by knowing their causes, huh?

[28:39] Its end had to be wisdom to know the first cause. But Aristotle is going to now distinguish them in another way, and that is by the cause they aim at or consider, right?

[29:03] Okay. Now he's going to do something kind of tricky here, and you got to see what he's doing. He's going to distinguish three causes: nature,

[29:23] choice, and art. Art being right reason about making it, not art in this artsy sense, but art in the sense like the art of carpentry, right? The art of cooking. So we have definite what rules and definite steps you take to make something out of whatever it may be, wood or dough or what is. Okay.

[29:53] So he's going to distinguish the looking sciences by distinguishing nature from choice and from what. Art. Now you might say, well, nature is the cause of things studied in one kind of looking science, namely natural philosophy, huh? But it's not the cause pursued in mathematical philosophy,

[30:22] and it's not the cause pursued in wisdom, which is ultimately the first cause, namely God Himself. Okay. So how can he separate looking sciences as a group, right? Which he will eventually point out or show has three kinds, right? Natural philosophy, mathematical philosophy, what Aristotle usually calls first philosophy, or he could call it wisdom, right? Okay.

[30:54] Well, let me use a homely comparison, right? Is New England a part of Canada? Okay. I suppose I showed that Maine and Vermont, which I guess get their names from the French, right? Vermont means what? Green Mountains, right? And I guess Maine is what province of France, huh? The British were trying to get back during the Hundred Years' War or something or hold on to or whatever it was.

[31:31] But suppose I showed that Maine and Vermont are not a part of Canada. Would that kind of show that Massachusetts and Connecticut also are not a part?

[31:48] Because New England is this whole region up here that's cuddled up here in the northeast here, United States, right, and borders Canada, right? But the ones that are closest to Canada, I guess, are what? Maine and Vermont. Is my geography correct here? And New Hampshire. New Hampshire borders. I think. Does New Hampshire border Canada? I think it ends before? I don't think it borders Canada. I think just Vermont and Maine.

[32:22] Okay. Because I don't have to go up through New Hampshire sometimes to go to Canada to get back. I have to go up through either Maine or go up through Vermont. You can't just go and stay in New Hampshire all the time. Okay. We understand my example that way—that Maine and Vermont are the only parts of what

[32:47] New England that touch Canada, right? So being the closest to Canada, if even they are not part of Canada, then a fortiori, Massachusetts and Connecticut, which are further away in Rhode Island and so on are not a part of what, yeah, yeah. Now, when you study nature, if you recall the definition of nature, nature was defined as the beginning and cause of motion and rest, in that in which it is first as such and not by happening.

[33:24] So, nature is a cause of motion of change, and motion or change seems something like what choice and actions, right? And activity seems something like motion, right? And making seems something like a motion, right? While in the case of mathematics, you're dealing with things that are what defined without matter and without what motion or change. So the geometrical sphere has no matter, right? It's not made out of glass or marble or anything like that, right?

[34:02] And therefore, it has nothing to do with change. It has no melting point, no freezing point. The geometrical cube has no melting point, no freezing point. An ice cube does, right? Okay.

[34:19] So if natural philosophy is something distinct from these two, right? Because nature is a distinct cause in these, then mathematics, being more abstract and remote from doing and making and motion, right, will not be part, right? And even more so, what wisdom, right? Because there wouldn't be any wisdom or first philosophy. Natural philosophy would be wisdom if there were no immaterial things, right? So wisdom is about things that don't depend upon matter for their existence, and ultimately things that do not have matter in them.

[35:03] So you see what he's doing here, right? He's going to separate the looking sciences from the doing sciences and making sciences by taking the looking science, which is closest to acting and making and so on, right? Namely, natural philosophy, and showing that that is something different, right? And then he'll turn around and distinguish mathematical philosophy and first philosophy or wisdom from natural philosophy, okay? To see what he's doing there, right?

[35:42] He's taking one of the three kinds of looking philosophy and separating that from practical, from the doing and the making sciences, but also. In a way, in doing that, separating the looking sciences as a whole from these. Do you see what he's doing? Okay.

[36:21] You know those animals that are attached to the floor of the ocean and seem to be like plants. If you stick them with a pen, they seem to be in pain and so on. So they're classified as animals because they have sensation, right? But if they're not plants, then a fortiori, the dog and the cat and the horse are not, right? You know, that's one way of proceeding, right?

[36:46] Okay, and it does emphasize the importance of cause. Now, in the third paragraph, he recalls the definition of nature, in a way that we have in Aristotle's eight books of natural hearing. Since natural science is about some kind of being in particular, namely natural things, it's about such substance as has in itself a beginning of motion and of rest. Aristotle points out that the artificial things don't have a what source of motion or change as artificial.

[37:36] The wooden bench burns, and the stone statue doesn't burn up. Not because the one is a bench and the other is a statue, which is by art, right? But because of the natural material they're made of, that the wooden bench will burn up and the stone bench will not.

[37:59] So he says because nature is about things that have within themselves a cause of their own motion or change, either active, as in the growing of the tree, or passive in the sense of the burning of the tree. That's why the great Heraclitus said that nature loves to hide.

[38:20] And the first reason to say that nature loves to hide is because it's within, and what's within is hidden. Okay. I was down in the bookshop there and looking at the books, science books, and there's a book entitled "Nature Loves to Hide." I looked in to see if he'd acknowledge that he had taken this line from Heraclitus, but I guess it's become such common coin that he didn't acknowledge this.

[38:50] But so be it. Now you contrast that with the beginning here. Is art inside the is the art of the carpenter inside the chairs and the tables and the doors and the things he made, huh? No, it's an extensive cause, huh? And is the choices I make inside of the actions I do? No. So nature is a different cause from choice, huh? And from what art, huh?

[39:27] Now you see, choice is the basic cause of the things studied in ethics and domestic and in political philosophy. Election, for example, is from the Latin word for choice, right? Okay. And I define marriage, I say, as the stable union of a man and woman by mutual choice for the sake of children. I'm defining a word choice, huh? And when Aristotle defines moral virtue in the ethics, huh?

[39:58] It's a habit with choice, right? In the middle, towards us, as determined by right reason. So it's a habit of what? Choosing, right? And vice is a habit of choosing too. Okay. So if I have the the the virtue of temperance, I habitually choose to eat moderately, right? And what's appropriate to eat in the circumstances, huh? Okay.

[40:31] So you could say practical philosophy, philosophy of doing, is about things that are by choice. You could say by custom too, but the customs arise as a result of choices, although they have a kind of life of their own. But basically, the basic cause here is choice. Okay. So if I choose to eat moderately many times, then I acquire the habit of choosing to be temperate in my eating, huh And I am something of the virtue of temperance or moderation.

[41:10] Now, art is something different from choice, huh? And art has definite rules, huh? And you can teach them to everybody, right? Okay. Now, now

[41:32] Aristotle is going to go on now and subdivide the three kinds of looking philosophy, the three kinds of looking sciences: natural philosophy or natural science, mathematical philosophy, right? And then first philosophy, as he calls it, or wisdom. He doesn't subdivide the doing sciences here because it's not relevant to his purpose, right? He's already separated the looking sciences from the doing and the making, so now he really has to subdivide the looking sciences to separate wisdom from everything else.

[42:13] Okay. But sometimes I think it's helpful to recall how you would distinguish each of these three kinds of sciences, huh? And I mentioned how Thomas Aquinas, in his proemium to the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, beginning his commentary, he distinguishes the three doing sciences. Okay. He actually doesn't call them ethics, domestics, and politics. He calls them monastic domestics and politics. But monastic doesn't mean the the the what

[43:00] we might think of monastic, right? Monastic means monas from one, right? So, but we usually call that first part ethics. Although ethics is taken more from the word for custom, right? You know. So, what we call ethics, he calls monastic, because they're concerned with what is good for me to do, or what is better for me to do, considered as an individual human being, right? Okay.

[43:27] And then in domestics, what is good for me to do considered as a father or a mother or something of this sort, a part of the family, and then what is good for me to do as a citizen or as a lawgiver or a judge or something, right? Huh? And this political philosophy. Um. Now, it's kind of a subtle thing, but the way in which you would divide or subdivide each of these three would be quite different.

[43:58] Okay. Let's take the most concrete one: the making sciences, right? What Thomas Aquinas sometimes calls the mechanical arts, the servile arts, right? How do you first distinguish the servile mechanical arts, the making arts? You distinguish them by what they make, or do you distinguish them in some other way? What? Because of

[44:31] what they make. Materially. Yeah, you see, this is very subtle. Take example. Here you got two chairs, right? But is it the same art that would make these two? No.

[44:49] But if the table here is wooden, right, and the chair is wooden, huh? The complete carpenter might make both, right, and even a wooden house, right. But the metal worker, or some sort, huh, would make this chair here, which is a metal chair, and sometimes you have these metal desks, you know. I was in an office at school one time where we had a wooden desk on one side and a metal desk on the other side, so it was a very nice setup to exemplify when I had a student in the office, huh?

[45:24] So, the first distinction of the making sciences, the making arts, the servile arts, is by the matter out of which or in which they make, huh? Okay. And what they make is something under the what that art, huh? Okay. But still, part of the art of carpentry to make a wooden chair, a wooden table, and even a wooden what bed or a wooden house, right? Okay.

[46:01] And not every difference of matter. Will result in a different art. The carpenter, for example, might make things out of different kinds of wood, right?

[46:19] But where you have a difference in matter that require a different tools, right, and a different way of working that matter, then you clearly have a different making science, huh? Okay. So if my brother-in-law makes something as a carpenter, sometimes, um, he can use a hammer and a saw and other more subtle things than that, but you know, but my wife or my daughter is making a dress.

[46:49] They don't use a hammer and a saw. They use a scissors and a and a needle, right? But you don't find my brother-in-law trying to cut the wood with the scissors and sew it together, and you don't find my wife nailing together the parts of the dress, right? I see. So the art of the tailor, huh, which my wife is practicing there, right, or my daughter, and the art of the carpenter, which my brother-in-law is practicing, are different arts, right?

[47:19] Because cloth and wood are materials that require different tools to be worked and different ways of working. My father's company there, you know, sometimes worked in the wood shop and sometimes in the forge shop. In the forge shop, they may take a piece of metal and heat it and bend it, right? How did they do that in the wood shop? They took a piece of wood and heated and bend it.

[47:44] So these are different arts, right? And there are different men practicing the arts, you know, welding and so on, right? And then, you know, usually weld one piece of wood to another, right? You might glue it, but you don't weld it. And but you might screw it together, right, or nail it together, and so on. Does a glass blower use the same tools as a carpenter? A hammer out there and this, you know, can work with the matter differently, huh?

[48:15] And that's also, I think, the way in which we distinguish at first the fine arts, huh? So a painter can paint a happy face or a sad face, right? And Shakespeare can write tragedy and comedy, right? But it's not one art that writes comedies and makes happy faces, huh? And another art that makes tragedies and sad faces, right? No, but it's one art that works in line and color, and make do sometimes both sad and.

[48:55] Sure, I believe there's a little subdivision there, right? And the art of fiction, which writes in words and. If perfect can do both tragedy and what comedy, right? Okay. So the first distinction is by that in which they what make. Look at the beginning of the book of the poetic art, where Aristotle is distinguishing the imitative arts. He distinguishes them first by that in which they imitate.

[49:25] So the painter and the musician, that in which they imitate is not the same. The painter imitates in line and color, and the musician doesn't do that, as in sound and so on, right? And so, and then a more particular difference is is what they imitate, right? But generically speaking, you know, the first distinction is by that in which they what imitate, huh? Do you see that?

[49:56] And this is true of all the what more servile arts, huh? Mechanical. arts carpentry and so on So the art of cooking, right? I'd be working with dough, right? And I've seen people use this, you know, roll they roll the dough out, you know, to make something. Sometimes I do do that with wood, you know, you roll the wood out. A steel bar, you roll it out. It ain't going to work, I tell ya,

[50:25] "Now, that's the way we distinguish the what making sciences, right? By the matter in which or out of which they make. When that matter has its own what tools, right, and way of being worked, huh? Okay. And when you have a matter that requires different tools and a different way of being worked, then you really have a different what part of science, right? You see how that's appropriate?

[50:56] Because what you're trying to do in making science is get some idea out of your mind into matter, right? Okay. Now, when you look at the looking sciences, it's just the reverse. Because the looking sciences are not trying to get something out of your mind into matter. If anything, you're trying to get something out of matter into your mind, right? It's going to be just the what reverse, huh?

[51:20] The sense, huh? But now, how are the doing sciences distinguished, huh? This is about things now that are by by choice. When you choose, you're choosing. As you learned in the great book Nicomachean Ethics, you're choosing the means to some end, right? Okay. I

[52:08] go to the restaurant, and I go there to get what to eat, to get fed, right? Huh? And then they give me a menu. I got to make a choice. Okay. But this is a choice with reference to the end I already had in mind going to the restaurant. Okay.

[52:29] So how are ethics and domestics and political philosophy distinguished? It's not by different kind of matter, is it? No. But to distinguish, basically, by the what the end, huh?

[52:49] Okay. So when I go home this evening, huh? I may make a choice after dinner, right? To watch the Red Sox. or. To read some book or something, right? Huh? But I'm probably making that choice with a view to the good of Duane Burquist. Would it be better for Duane Burquist to watch the Red Sox tonight or to read the Golden Chain of the Gospel St. John?

[53:20] Which would be better for Duane Burquist, right? Does Duane Burquist really need the relaxation of the Red Sox, or would be better, right? So, I'm making a choice with respect to the good of Duane Burquist. Now, my children are kind of grown up now. I'm in the grandfatherly stage of of life. But when you had little children around the house and so on, then I was making a lot of choices as a what father, right?

[53:52] So I chose to not have a TV set in the house, right? Kind of funny people always offering us a TV set that we couldn't afford, but you know, I'd tell them, "Come sit down, throw it down the stairs." And the only guy's

[54:10] recognized the TV set. You must be kidding! It's like seeing running water or the toilet or something in that TV set. Okay. Well, now,

[54:23] what do I read after dinner, huh? Well, it's the Roly Poly Pudding, right? Peter Rabbit Potter. Now, is that better for Berquist to read the Roly Poly Pudding than to read Shakespeare's say or Golden Chain of St. John? No, but maybe this is appropriate for my children at this age, and it's very important that the father read to the children, huh? Okay. So I'm now making a choice, not with the good of Duane Burquist in mind now, huh?

[55:01] But the good of the family, which is basically the children, okay, the chief good of the family. You see, okay. But now, when election time comes up, huh? I go in there and I can vote. The pro-life candidate or the pro-death candidate, and I vote for the pro-life candidate. But there, I should be making a choice not with a view to what's going to benefit Duane Burquist the most.

[55:30] Would it be better for Duane Burquist? Then vote for my uncle or something. Um, what would be even you know better for my family, right? But I really should be considering what's better for the country, right? Wouldn't be the better man for the country or for the city or the state or whatever it is, right? You see.

[55:56] So you could say that the three kinds of practical philosophy, the three doing sciences. Are distinguished ultimately by the what? Who's good, right? Again, right? The good of the individual, or the good of the family, or the good of the city or nation, huh? Is it? So it's a quite different way that this is what distinguished, right? Okay. And Thomas points out that not everything that you do, even if you're a man and a father and a citizen, right?

[56:33] Not every choice you make is as a citizen, right? And I'm thinking now we're going to buy a house or what part of town should we live in or what town should we live in, right? And we have certain you know possibilities there, right? I'm going to consider what part of town or what town would be better to live in, right? You see what I mean? Okay.

[56:52] And that I'm thinking the good of my country, am I? I'm thinking simply the good. What would be the best town or the best part of town that I can afford for my family to live in, right? You see? Okay. But when I go in the restaurant and they give you a menu? I'm probably thinking just of the good of going to breakfast, right? Maybe happier with the steak or chicken or something else, right?

[57:17] Okay. Do you see the idea? Okay. Because we don't have a family in a fortiori city or nation doesn't have the unity that individual has, right?

[57:32] Put my arm does in a sense I do, right? But what I do as an individual I don't always do as a father, right? Or as a citizen, right? You see that? So it's a quite different way that the doing sciences are distinguished to the making sciences. It's the same person here, right? That is choosing for his own good, right? Or making a choice for the good of his family, or making a choice for the good of his city or nation, right?

[58:08] That's more by the end. Okay. Now, as we mentioned before, the looking sciences, in a sense, are just the reverse of the making sciences, in that the making sciences may have an idea of what you want the chair to be or the house to be or the table to be, right? But the trick is to get that into matter, right? And in the looking sciences, the idea is not to get something out of your mind, but something into your mind, huh?

[58:38] And therefore, since the the mind and the reason is immaterial, as you know from the third book about the soul, in a way it's to get it out of matter, right? Okay.