Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
36. Metaphysics VI, Reading 2: Accidental Being and Why No Reasoned-Out Knowledge Is About It
Class of 2005-09-22
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/036-metaphysics-vi-reading-2-accidental-being-and-why-no-reasoned/

[0:04] You're on the air So in the first reading, Aristotle has finished. You might say distinguishing wisdom or first philosophy from all the other parts of philosophy, right? All the other forms of reasoned out knowledge.

[0:25] And we know already, even before that, from the fourth book, beginning the fourth book, that's about being as being. But in the fifth book, he divided being into many different senses, right, or you might say groups of senses.

[0:43] And so, in the first paragraph of the second reading, he recalls all those senses that he talked about. But since being simply said is said in many ways, of which one was that by what happening, right?

[1:06] So being per accidens it's said in Latin, right? kata sumbebekos in Greek, huh? Being by happening or by accident or accidental being. Now Thomas, you know, when he lectures on, say, Book Four here, he always careful to point out that accident here doesn't mean accident as distinguished from substance, huh? Because the division of being according to the figures of predication, substance, quantity, quality, relation, and so on, is a division of being per se, being as such, okay.

[1:46] So if you call quantity and quality and relation accidents, you don't mean accidental being in this sense here. What this means here, to take the most accidental kind of accidental being, is when what two things happen to the same subject, right? Okay, so it happens to me to be white and to be what a magician, right? But the color white and the art of logic being, they don't come together to form one thing.

[2:22] Okay, so to be white is one thing. To be what a magician is another thing, right? But because to be white and to be a logician happen to the same person, namely me, then I can be said to be a white logician, right? And that's the most accidental kind of what being, right? Okay, but again, if you say that I am a white man, that's also accidental being.

[2:56] Not as accidental, maybe as white logician or white geometer, but. Still, one thing happening to another, right? And the color white and my human nature don't come together to form one thing.

[3:11] But in some sense, you could say there are white men and black men, and so on. Okay. Or you could have the reverse and put the subject as the adjective, right? I am a human white thing. Okay. Okay. Or I am a human logician, or something of this sort, right? Okay. Again, involves one thing happening to another thing, right? Or in the most accidental kind, two things happening to a what third thing, right?

[3:45] Okay. But affirmative action people like that are concerned with accidental being, right? And you are asking me, are going to hire a Catholic or something, right? So, for the Christian Academy, we might want to hire a Christian geometer to teach geometry to our children. Okay. And there are Christian geometers out there, right? In some sense, they are. But this is a kind of being that will not be the main concern of the wise man, as Aristotle explained.

[4:17] But he doesn't neglect or overlook that kind of being, huh? Because he's very complete. Now, the other three kinds of being, which you'll mention here, if you recall Book Five, they were all divided against accidental being, being by happening. And all kinds of being as such are being per se, kath' hauto, the Greek, right? Okay. And there are three different groups, you might say.

[4:51] Another where being is understood as true and non-being as the false. As I explained in the fourth reading, true and false are found primarily in the mind. And so, this kind of being can involve things that are what. I have no being outside the mind. So, is it true to say that nothing is nothing? Yeah. But nothing is is nothing, right? But you use the word "is" there, right?

[5:26] Yeah. Okay. But even something like blindness, it seems more real maybe than nothing, huh? But blindness is that outside the mind is blindness a kind of being, really? Well, it's a non-being, something with a lack of something. Yeah, it's a kind of non-being. a subject able to have it able to have it and should have it, doesn't it? But we could say truly that somebody is blind, right?

[5:57] Okay. So, what does to be mean there? That means it's true. He's blind, right? But doesn't mean that to be blind is to be in things, right? Okay.

[6:16] And being as true and non-being as false, you'll talk about briefly in the fourth reading here in the sixth book. But again, he's going to say that's not the main concern of the what wise madam. But for a different reason, then he'll give why being by accident or being by happening is not the main concern.

[6:44] Now, besides this, there's being according to the figures of predication, as the what, the how, the how much, the where, the when, and something other signifies in this way. Now, as you know, the wise man there, he uses logic as a stepping stone to wisdom in talking about that kind of being. If you know the teaching there of the ten categories, substance, quantity, quality, and so on, the way they are distinguished is by the way that something can be said of individual substances like you and me or the dog walking around out there, the sheep there that came in today, something sheep.

[7:35] Yeah, look at me. Who's this guy? So some things are said of you and I as regards what we are, like we're a man or we're generally an animal, right? We're generally a living body. We're generally a body. Most generally, we're a substance, right? Other things are said of us by reason of how we are. You're healthy, or you're wise, or you're good, or you're bad, or something, right?

[8:03] Some by how much you are, huh? And then where and when and so on, but doesn't distinguish all of them like he does in the categories here, right? So this is a a group of meanings you might say of being, but distinguishing being according to the figures of predication, the way that something can be said of individual substances. And that's why when he first distinguishes them in the categories, he doesn't use the abstract words quantity and quality, or relation, say, but he'll use how much, how

[8:38] towards what, right? He's the the concrete one, right? Okay. Because quality is not said of substance, but qualified, then he said it right. How this, huh?

[8:57] And then the other division was that of being in ability and in what an actor. Now, in books seven and eight, we talk about being according to figures of predication, but mainly about what or about substance. In book seven and eight, we'll probably look at one of those books, like book eight. In book nine, it talks about being as act and ability, right? So, books seven, eight, and nine are the main consideration of being as being.

[9:36] But he will, in this book, right, talk about accidental being, and being as true, briefly, right, say some things about them. They're very important, but he won't make them the chief consideration, right?

[9:56] Now, in this second paragraph he's going on. To being by happening or being by accident, accidental being, and he's going to in a way give a reason why it doesn't seem to be a main concern of wisdom, right? But the first reason he'll give is that, in general, no reasoned out knowledge is about the accidental. Okay, Reasoned out knowledge is only about what belongs to things as such.

[10:32] This is something you learn in the Posterior Analytics in your study of the nature of science. Okay, so the geometer will talk about what belongs to the triangle through itself or as such, and what does that mean? What belongs to the triangle through being a triangle? It belongs to triangle through being a triangle to have three sides, or belongs to triangle through being a triangle to be a plane figure, right?

[11:06] Or to be a rectilinear plane figure. Anything that pertains the definition of triangle belongs to it through what it is, through itself as as triangle as such. Use that phrase too.

[11:23] But also, the geometer talked about the properties that belong to triangle to being a triangle. So the famous one, Proposition thirty-two of Book One, that the interior angles of a triangle are always equal to what? Two right angles, then. And if you know the the

[11:44] parallel theorems, right? One of the parallel theorems you studied before you get to that is that when a straight line falls upon parallel lines, it makes the what? Alternate interior angles equal. Yeah, the alternate angles equal, there. So once you know that, you could always draw a line to one vertex parallel to the other base, and with the parallel theorem, you know that these two are equal, and likewise these two are equal.

[12:20] So these two equal those two, and the third one makes up two right angles, huh? So that, in a different sense of as such or through itself, not part of the definition of triangle, but it's a property which you know from Porphyry is the name of something outside the nature, but that follows upon the nature, right? So it belongs to triangle as such. And this is actually reason out.

[12:47] This is. But now, if something happens to the triangle, like it happens to the triangle for it to be green, let's say, right? Okay, but does it belong to a triangle? Through being a triangle to be green, see, it's not part of the nature of it, like to have three lines or to be a plane figure. It's not part of what defines triangle, nor is it something that's followed upon the nature of triangle what it is.

[13:17] So it's something that happens to the triangle, and does the geometry talk at all about that? No, you don't talk about accidental. So that's kind of a general reason Aristotle's giving, right? Why in wisdom, right, which is one kind of reasoned out knowledge. huh? Um. We're not going to talk about accidental being, right? There's no science does that, right? Kind of a generic reason, huh? And you can see that although I can reason out that the triangle has its interior angles equal to right angles using things I know belong to the triangle

[13:58] by its definition, right? I could never reason out, knowing what a triangle is, that it would be green. It might happen to be green, but you know that would be a matter of sensation. But sensation is not reasoned out knowledge, right? Okay, so the senses might notice something accidental that this triangle is green and this one is blue, but that could not be the object of any reasoned out knowledge, okay?

[14:28] So he begins the second paragraph. Then, since then, being is said in many ways, but not to speak first about that by happening that there's no consideration about it. in reasoned out knowledge. A sign, huh? No science pays attention to this, neither the doing nor the making nor the what looking. For the one making a house, that's the distinction we saw of the three groups of sciences in the first reading, right?

[15:00] For the one making a house does not make whatever happens to the house made, right? For they are endless, right? So it might have Katrina there, right? Thing flooding your house, huh? But doesn't take that for count, okay? For they are endless, right? For nothing prevents the thing made from being pleasant for some, harmful to others, right? Now, the fact you're happy or sad being in that house that's no concern to him at all, right?

[15:30] That's accidental to the house he's made, right? Or that robbers break in there and take your things or hurt you or something, right? Doesn't take that into account.

[15:44] But the art of the house builder is productive of none of these. In the same way, neither does the geometer consider what happens thus to figures.

[15:54] Okay, not of triangle and triangle having two right angles or other. That's a little different thing there. A little bit of what accidental being, right? He doesn't ask that kind of question.

[16:12] And this takes place reasonably, but now he's going to kind of make a transition here to a second reason, and that is that accidental being hardly is. So if you are interested in being as being, we don't have much of that at all. For the accidental is, as it were, only some name. and he gives a little sign from Plato. Now Plato sometimes, and this is kind of

[16:43] Plato's idea, you find Plato sometimes speaking of being, becoming, and non-being. Corresponding to being, you have knowledge, right? Corresponding to becoming, opinion. And corresponding to non-being, sophistry and error, deception, right? Okay. Now Aristotle entirely mute that because you could have an opinion about being, and you could know something about becoming, but Plato kind of thinks that the way we know is got to be the way things are, right?

[17:32] So there is some, you know, there is some about this. And Aristotle now referring to that and saying well, Plato, in a way what's wrong in saying that sophistry is about non-being because the sophist is especially about the accident, and that's in a way nothing. So he's talking about nothing. Hence, in a way, Plato did not badly put sophistry about non-being. For the arguments of sophists are about the accidental most of all, as to whether the musical and the grammatic are the same or other, and musical Coriscus and Coriscus huh, and so on.

[18:16] Aristotle talks about the fallacy of the accident, which is the first kind of fallacy he talks about outside of those that come from words. He says it deceives even the what wise.

[18:41] Can the healthy become sick? Can the sick become healthy? But just a minute now, see. If the sick become healthy, what are you saying? The sick is healthy. Yeah, because becomes means comes to be, right? So if the sick could become healthy, then the sick. Could come to be healthy, right? And the sick would be healthy, which is a contradiction, right? So the sick cannot become healthy, right?

[19:11] So Heraclitus says, day and night are the same thing because day becomes night, night becomes day, right? And sometimes we say love turns into hate, hate turns into love. Now, if love turned into hate, then love would be hate, right?

[19:30] Well, strictly speaking, is it the healthy as such that becomes sick, or is sick as such that becomes healthy? Subject. But the body becomes healthy, right? But because to be sick is something that happens to the body, right? Before it becomes healthy, that's why we speak as if the sick become what? Oh, healthy, yeah.

[19:56] Do the sick want to be healthy? Oh, yeah, yeah. Do The ugly want to be beautiful, yeah, yeah. Do The weak want to be strong, yeah, yeah. But as such, no, because when the sick become healthy, then the sickness is eliminated, right? So it be wanting its own elimination, okay? So the ugly, as such, won't be beautiful. It's the body that wants to be beautiful, right? Okay, but the body is not the same as its own ugliness, right, or its own sickness or weakness.

[20:38] So now he gives kind of a sign here in this paragraph of how this is hardly something real. It is clear also from these reasons there is generation and corruption of what is another way, but there is not of the what accidental, right? Okay. So I was taking the example the other day. Do you recall a Christian geometer, right? Huh? I was not born a Christian geometer.

[21:14] So, is there a way of becoming a Christian geometer? Really? Say, you've got to become two things. Yeah, there is a way of becoming a geometer, and there is a way of becoming a Christian, but there is no way of becoming a Christian geometer. Unless you could learn Christian geometry, but there ain't no such a thing, right? Okay. And there is something by which you are a Christian, and there is something by which you are a geometer.

[21:46] But is there something by which you are a Christian geometer? Well, there is no such thing as Christian geometry, so nothing by which you can be a Christian geometer. So you are not a Christian geometer, Mister Burris. There is

[22:04] nothing by which you can be a Christian geometer, and where you could become one. So, so it hardly seems to be, right? Hardly seems to be. And yet, if the Christian Academy wants to hire a Christian geometer, here I am. Right. In some sense, there are Christian geometers out there. If the affirmative action committee, want you to hire a black magician? I suppose there is such a someone like that in the world, right?

[22:38] So, in some sense, they exist, right? Now, if it's not appropriate for the man of reasoned out knowledge to talk about accidental being, is there a reasoned out knowledge that talks about

[23:00] Christian geometers? There is a knowledge that's about what a Christian is, right? What it takes one to be a Christian. I suppose it would be a knowledge like the Posterior Analytics about what a reasoned out knowledge is, like geometry, right? Okay. But there's no real reasoned out knowledge about Christian geometers. We don't have anything we really say about them, right?

[23:35] But who's interested in accidental being? Huh? Kind of much more so than the philosopher. I mean, he does talk about a bit, right? Who's interested in historians? Yeah, historians and biographers, right? Because you might get the job because you're a black magician or a Christian geometer, right? And the guy who's not a Christian geometer will get the job, right? You see? So your life can be influenced by accidental being, huh?

[24:10] Giving you my favorite example there from the life of Senator Styles Bridges. There, he was a senator when I knew the man. He was a senator from New Hampshire. He's dead now, but I met him one time. Very impressive senator. He became a sort of leader of Republicans. But he's a very impressive man. I heard him speak one time. I had him autograph my menu. I was just a kid, but I was impressed with the guy.

[24:39] I heard the story that he was being considered as a vice presidential candidate back in 1936, huh? But the Republican nominee for president was Alf Landon in Kansas, I think it was. They said we can't nominate Bridges because the Democrats have put together the name of our presidential candidate, Landon and Bridges, and everybody knows the sign: Landon Bridges falling down, falling down, falling down. They make a mockery of us, right?

[25:09] So they denied him the vice presidential nomination on those grounds. You can say this influences your life a lot. Accidental being, huh? That's the way it works, huh?

[25:22] Okay. And then again, I suppose the poet, right? The poet likes to show the terrible consequences of something that happens, right? Huh? Okay. And you know, take the example of Romeo and Juliet there, where Friar Lawrence has given Juliet this medicine that will make her appear to be dead, right? Huh? So she can avoid being forced into this marriage with the County Paris. And then he sends one of his fellow brothers, right, Franciscans, out to tell Romeo what he's done, right.

[25:59] And he has to go through a town where there is a plague, and he stops and attends to somebody in one of the plague houses, and he gets boarded up because of orthopalosis, and so he doesn't get to deliver the the message to Romeo or not in time, right? And so Romeo thinks that Juliet has really died, and then all the tragedy comes from that, right? Because he goes to the apothecary and gets his poison right, and takes the poison right, and then she wakes up and finds him there, and then she, you know, stabs herself and so on.

[26:33] But you see, all this what horrible thing, right? But the poet likes to hint also that in these things that just seem to happen, right? Maybe there is some deeper purpose to them. So in the last scene there in Romeo and Juliet, where the two fathers are now reconciled, right, and they're going to put up a, you know, to your daughter and your son, you know, statues and so on, but but the leader of the city, the Duke, I guess, is Prince is saying, you know, heaven has found means to punish you, right?

[27:11] We hate you, right? And it seems something, you know, appropriate that these two families have been feuding, blood feuding for for years and years and years, right? And hate each other, right? That they should be punished by the love of their own only daughter and only son, right? There seems to be some, and so the Duke says, heaven has found means to punish you, you know. You see, of course, divine providence, and you study divine providence as we will eventually in the Summa.

[27:40] Divine providence extends all the way down to what happens, huh? Okay. Aristotle, you know, in the book about the poetic art, says that the poet likes to

[27:55] make it appear, right, that there is some deeper meaning in these chance events, huh? And the example he gives there is for a man has killed somebody, right? Murdered him, and has not been discovered to be the murderer, right? But the man is such a great man, they put up a statue to his memory, right, in the center of the marketplace, huh? And one day on the on the t here is a festival in the marketplace and so on, huge crowds and so on, and the crowds are packed tight, and they go against the statue, the statue falls off its thing, and falls on the man and kills him.

[28:36] Guess who the man is? The murderer, right? You know, they have they have a way chance, right? Yeah, there seems to be some some what purpose to this, right? Poetic justice. Yeah.

[28:56] So. But I said, when you do study divine providence, we come to realize that divine providence extends down to those things. Why did Saint Alfonso do that, right? And when this important case overlooked the document, right, and kind of read falsely, and he said, "Oh gosh, it's just the opposite of what I've been arguing." And he's not embarrassed by his loss of pace, but the fact that he might think that he was trying to falsify what the things really were, right, and his you know reputation, integrity, and so on, he feels threatened, right?

[29:39] Someone said he went didn't eat food for three days. They said you know just just crashed. You know, but nothing was significant, you know. But he told the story of I was at Saint Ignatius of Loyola that he was in love with a beautiful woman, and she died, and he didn't return the bodies to her in those days, and so he sees the. Body, you know, after a few days being carried off you know with all the, you know, rock and so on, you realize how superficial this is, right?

[30:07] And so on. Enough to. As Kierkegaard says, men have become saints. to woman, because woman, they didn't get. That's not. there's some truth, to that right? And so you say, well, if this hadn't happened, maybe he would have, you know, gone on, or Alfonso would have gone on if this hadn't happened, right? Something that that happens that suddenly shakes you up, huh?

[30:40] An accident, huh? So empires can be changed by some leader suddenly dying or something, right? Something happening like that. This assassination, this is that guy, and it's that guy, and so on. This happens, all kinds of things like that. And and nations are influenced as well as individual lives. So the historian will talk about these things. The biographer will talk about these things, but they're concerned with the singular.

[31:16] Even the poet is more concerned with the universal than the historian. He finds this an interesting thing to do, right? You think of the great tragedies, of Sophocles, like Oedipus, you know. Oedipus, what? Leaves home, fleeing his father and mother because the oracle or something has said that he's going to kill his own father and marry his mother. Oh, what a horrible thing, right? And he flees there, and not knowing that what that's not really his father and mother.

[31:51] And then he, what, meets on the road there his real father, and kills him. in a fracas there and then marries his mother, right? So he didn't intend this, right? It's a horrible thing.

[32:16] You see, John Paul the first, he made that wonderful. You see, some of the Illustrissimi here he writes to famous men, and about something that would be appropriate to talk to them about. Well, he has one letter which is written to Goethe, the German poet, and it's about the moral responsibility of the artist. It's appropriate because Goethe wrote this story, The Sorrows of Young Werther, which is a tragic love story, and apparently became very popular over Europe with young lovers who were in difficult situations, started, you know.

[32:56] ending their lives and so on, so he realized he had some responsibility for this, right? And so, it's a beautiful letter, but but John Paul the first says, you know, that you can't just tack on a moral it's got to be intrinsic to the thing, right? And as my old teacher, Kasurik, used to say, you know, you can tell a man's understanding by the examples he chooses, right?

[33:21] And to be clear, and his example, he takes from Oedipus, right? He says after reading in Oedipus the King, right, he says one is anything but enthusiastic, he says, about incest.

[33:46] And so, if, you read these great Greek tragedies, and you do have certain events happening, right? And a man suffers more than he seems to deserve, right? But it's because of the unfortunate coincidence of things.

[34:13] Remember the story in the newspaper one time years ago. Husband's going to take a little joke on his wife, right? So he pretended to leave town, you know, and he just went back and scared the wits out of her you know in the house. Apparently, she had access to a gun. she found somebody breaking in. She shot her. shot the husband. right? So...

[34:34] kind of a stupid thing to be doing anyway. in the first place, But it doesn't quite deserve death, you know, for maybe a bawling out or something, you know, for such a stupid uh, practical joke. But these things can happen,

[34:53] right? Being in the wrong place, huh? Says nevertheless, he says at the bottom of page three. Nevertheless, one should speak further about the accidental what happens as far as it is possible, right? And we can say something about it in general, but it doesn't belong to the philosopher to talk about it in particular. That's going to belong maybe to the historian or the biographer, or the poet, to some extent.

[35:30] What is the nature of it, and through what cause it is? At the same time, it will probably become clear also why there is no science, or in my translation, science, there are reasoned out knowledge of it, right?

[35:47] But now the way he proceeds on page four here is to. is to, uh, start the division, right? And between the things, you want to take a break? Okay, now on page four here, he's going to be giving the reason why there is no art or science, you might say, about the accidental. He starts off with a division of things. Since then, among the things that are, some are always in the same way by necessity.

[36:37] And of course, he's referring to one sense of necessity as opposed to another sense of necessity, as distinguished in the fifth book of wisdom, right? He distinguishes four senses necessary there, and four is one sense that sense he means, but the sense in which necessaries cannot be otherwise. Okay, and t here is other two other senses necessary in terms of the the end. Like it's necessary to eat.

[37:08] You may not eat, but it's necessary to eat if you are going to live, right? Or something that is necessary not to be, but to be well, right? Like a horse for a journey tells us. He says You. Can journey on foot, but can't journey well without the horse. Okay.

[37:30] So, can you philosophize without logic? Yeah. So, is logic necessary? No. Was necessary to philosophize? Well, without logic, yeah. Okay. So, since then, among the things that are, some are always in the same way by necessity. While others are not by necessity nor always, but for the most part. So, for the most part, men have five fingers. You say Anne Boleyn had six fingers. Why are you so interested here?

[38:06] I don't know. I hope it wasn't because she had six fingers. I mean, the ultimate to destroy your country for a six-fingered woman. Well, others are not by necessity nor always, but for the most part. huh? So for the most part men have five fingers, huh? You say Anne Bolan had six fingers. Why was so interested? I don't know. I hope it wasn't because she had six fingers.

[38:11] That'd be the ultimate to destroy your country for a a six-fingered woman. Well others are not by necessity, there are always, um, but for the most part, huh?

[38:31] The latter is the beginning and cause that the accidental is. Now, why does he say that? Well, because what is for the most part, will sometimes produce something that is what not for the most part, right? Was an exception.

[38:50] Of course, that's what the accidental is about. It's not about what happens always or for the most part, but what happens what rarely. For we call what is neither always nor for the most part an accident. And here is an example from the Greek weather there, right? As when storm and cold come to be in the dog days, right? It happened to snow in August that year, okay?

[39:18] They wouldn't say it happened to snow in in January that year, right? But it happened to snow, right, in August, huh? That doesn't happen most of the time. It's rare, right?

[39:32] And man happens to be white, but this is neither always nor for the most part. But he is not an animal by accident, huh?

[39:43] And the housebuilder restores to health by accident because the housebuilder is not apt to do this, huh? But the doctor is such, and because the housebuilder happens to be a what, a doctor, right?

[40:01] And the cook aiming at pleasure would make something healthful, but not by cookery. Aristotle often uses the example that the medical art aims at health, right? And so the medical art talks about what food is healthy for you. He doesn't care whether it's tasty or not, right? I mean, his art doesn't talk about it, and the cook aims at making the food tasty, and as such, he doesn't care whether it's what?

[40:31] or his art doesn't take into account whether it's what, Healthier or not. Healthier or not, huh? Okay. There's two different arts there.