Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
44. Metaphysics Book 8, Reading 4: How Matter Relates to Its Products, to the Other Causes, and to Coming to Be (with Wine and Vinegar and Socrates' Argument from Contraries)
Class of 2005-10-20
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/044-metaphysics-book-8-reading-4-how-matter-relates-to-its-products/

[0:00] Everybody has book eight? The page five here, at, the bottom of page five. Four. Ready, ready. Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, ordains them in our images, and arouses us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand all the truth that you have written within. In the name of.

[0:44] The Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. So, having in the first two readings shown that matter and form pertain to sensible substance, in readings three and four he's taking up form and matter, and in the third reading last time we saw him speaking about form. Now, in the fourth reading, he's going to talk about matter and about their union of course, in the. Fifth reading.

[1:23] Now, Thomas, when he's commenting on the fourth reading, there he says that Aristotle compares matter to the things that come to be from matter, and then he compares matter to the other causes that are involved, interact with it, and then he speaks of matter with reference to the change of coming to be and ceasing to be.

[1:53] So, in the beginning of the fourth reading, he's going to point out that although there might be one matter behind all things, in a remote way, the proximate matter will be different. It should not remain hidden about the material substance that even if all things come from the same first cause or the same first causes, and the same matter is as beginning for the things coming to be, yet there is its own for each.

[2:31] For example, a phlegm the sweet or the fat and the bile the bitter or something else. Though perhaps these come from the same. Consequently, you can say that there are many what matters of the same thing in a certain order, when one is the matter of the other. For example, phlegm comes from fat and sweet. If the fat is from the sweet, now. So, but it's a little bit like if you say, you know, our sentences made out of words or letters, right?

[3:09] Well, it's made out of words, but the words are made out of letters. So, in some sense, you'd say the sentence is made out of what? Letters, but letters is like the remote matter, right? And the proximate matter is the the words, huh?

[3:26] Now, at the end of this first complete paragraph in page six, he's kind of obscurely touching upon the fact that although we usually say that the

[3:42] thing made out of matter comes to be from the matter, right? Sometimes we use the word "from" in the reverse direction. So, I might say that a brick wall comes to be from bricks, and bricks being the matter which the brick wall is made. But in another sense of "from," you could say that from the brick wall there comes to be what bricks, right? Or, if you follow modern chemistry, you might say from hydrogen and oxygen comes to be water, right?

[4:15] And that's what hydrogen gets its name, hydrogen that generates water. But from water comes what hydrogen and oxygen, but that's a different sense of from, right? Okay, and we're more apt to say, or more fundamentally, that the whole comes to be from the what parts? Yeah, yeah. The word "from" is also used in talking about the the mover or the what maker, right? Just looking at the article and the Summa, there he's talking about the appropriation of things to the Trinity and so on, and that Saint Paul says from him and through him and in him, and Thomas is saying, well, from him could be appropriated to the Father, right?

[5:02] Through him to the Son, in him to the Holy Spirit. But then he starts to explain what it means or why from him is said to be from the Father. It's not from a matter, but from the what maker, right? Okay.

[5:19] So, but it comes from bile when bile is broken down into the first matter. Okay, that's the reverse process we're talking about, right? Okay. For this comes from that in two ways or in two senses, either because it'll be further along the way, and then you're going from the matter right towards the final product, or because it is taken apart into its beginning, and that's like getting the bricks from the brick wall, right?

[5:50] Okay, no big big deal there. Now, in the second complete paragraph in page six, he's beginning that second part of the fourth reading. Where he's going to compare

[6:06] matter to the other what causes right? Okay. Of course, the first thing you might come to your mind is that if many things come to be from the same matter, why are they different, right? And that could very well be because of the what mover or maker, right, imposing a different form upon the matter.

[6:33] And so he gives a simple example of that. It is possible for other things, things that are other in kind, to be generated when the matter is one because of the moving cause, the mover or the maker. So, a chest and a bed might both be made from the same what wood, right? But the difference between them comes from the mover or the maker.

[7:03] But as Thomas says, unless you unless you misunderstand that and say, well, then he can make just anything from matter, right? Then he says, well, but if you go back, especially to the proximate matter, it can't make it from just any matter. You've got to have one that's appropriate to it. But necessarily, the matter of some different things is other, such as a saw could not come to be from wood, nor is this in the ability of the moving cause, for it could not make a saw of wool or of wood or of paper or something like that, right?

[7:41] Okay. But if the same thing can be made from a different matter, it is clear that the art in the beginning as mover is the same. So, if I'm making a what wooden chair and a what maybe a metal chair, right? The form I have in mind may be the same, right? I'm going to realize in this particular matter or in that particular what matter.

[8:14] Um. For if both the matter and the mover were different, so also what comes to be would be different, huh? Okay. Now the next paragraph here is partly because he has in mind something we saw back in the third book, huh? But something you see in the history of the Greek natural philosophers, I guess we looked at the fragments sometime, didn't we? A little bit. And of course, the first people looked for only one what cause.

[8:46] Just matter's going to explain everything, right? Sure. And so, in order to get everything out of the matter, they got to have what some kind of accidental collisions of matter and so on and.

[9:01] Aristotle is saying, well, no, you should state all the causes that are involved. But you wonder, you know, with the some of the evolutionary humanists, you know, some of them are atheists and so on.

[9:16] Which came first, the idea of evolution, or the idea that matter is the beginning of everything? Everything comes to be from matter. If matter is the only cause, really, then how do you get all this formal difference in the world, right? Well, evolution is trying to explain how this could happen, right? Even though it might not be sufficient to explain

[9:44] that. So, when one seeks the cause, one should state all the causes that happened to be. He says it happened to be because, although he distinguishes, as you know, four kinds of causes. Matter that from which something comes to be existing in it, and form, which completes the definition of the thing, and then the mover or maker, and then the end. You don't look for all four causes everywhere, okay?

[10:20] Like in geometry, say you look only for the four, right? So, in 1. 6, the cause, it says one should state all the causes that happen to be, since the causes are said in many ways. As I said more than once, I think

[10:41] Aristotle distinguishes four kinds of causes that are found in the natural world, in the real world. But at the same time, this is a distinction of four meanings of the word "what cause." Okay,

[10:59] you can see that, right? You know, if I said, "What's the cause of the chair?" Well, you probably jump and say, "Was the carpenter right?" Okay, and maybe you wouldn't think of sitting as being a cause of the chair, but in some way, sitting is responsible for the chair because it's for the sake of sitting that he made the chair in the shape that he did make it.

[11:25] And some way, wood is responsible for a wooden chair. Wouldn't be a wooden chair without wood, and in another way, right? The shape of the chair is responsible for its being a chair, but you might think of the mover or maker right away, which is a kind of sign that the word "cause" here is not being used in just one sense. If the word "cause" was said equally of the wood and the shape of the wood and the carpenter and the sitting, you wouldn't know which one to say first, right?

[12:00] Say, like I'd say, I'm thinking of an animal, right? Well, animals said equally of dog, cat, horse, elephant, horse. So, if I'm thinking of an animal, what animal particular am I thinking of? You'd have no more reason to think that I'm thinking a dog than cat or horse than dog or cat or elephant or something else, right? Is it? And so, sometimes you have somebody just seizing upon one kind of cause as if that were the only kind of cause, but you wouldn't do that with animal and think what dog is the only only animal.

[12:38] And when, when say, David Hume discusses causality, he kind of jumps to the mover or maker right away as if that were the only kind of cause to be what considered. And actually, as you see in the history of Greek natural philosophy, there the material cause is the kind of cause that is most what known and most undeniable, and everybody. Seems to admit that kind of cause, and the questions then are: Is there other kinds of causes besides that, right?

[13:10] And so he kind of begins with the most known here, and so exemplifies with man, huh? What is the cause of man? Is matter? Is it the menstrual fluid, huh? I don't know if that's good biology. I suppose the you know, you know how blood feeds the whole what body. It seems to be too, right? Yeah. Okay. What then is the mover? Is it not the seed, huh?

[13:38] What as the form, the what was to be? What as that the sake of which, or the end, the purpose of man, huh? And he says, but perhaps both of these are the same. He's hinting at the fact that sometimes the form and the end are the same. When we say the form is the end of the what generation, okay. But then you may have an end beyond what you are, and then the end is not the same as the form.

[14:12] Okay. And then he says it is necessary to say the proximate causes. What is the matter? Well, of course, in the older natural philosophy, the first kinds of matter were earth, air, fire, and water. But you would not be giving the matter of man if you went back to that remote cause and didn't talk about flesh and blood and bones or whatever the proximate cause. But the thing's own matter, meaning its proximate matter.

[14:55] So he says about natural and generable substances, which are the ones like man or the dog or the tree, it is necessary to search thus. If one is going to search rightly, the causes are such and so many. It is necessary to know the causes.

[15:15] But then he has his position about the sun and the moon and the stars, right? And as far as he could see, or remember, the sun, the moon, and the stars seem seem to go on forever, right? They don't seem to be generable and what corruptible.

[15:33] Now, of course, the fact that we have not seen them really change is not a necessary reason to say they don't change, but it's a probable reason, huh? Okay. But Thomas sometimes, when he comments on this, he'll say, "Well, maybe it takes longer than the lives of many men, right? Okay.

[15:59] Um. Aristotle and Thomas thought that light takes no time to illuminate the room, and we can't perceive any time that light takes with ordinary senses.

[16:17] You would say the same thing that Thomas says about the heavenly bodies. Maybe light is so fast you can't see, and it takes very ingenious what instruments, huh, and apparatus to detect the speed of light. But it's so fast compared to anything that we what can observe, right? That seems kind of incredible, right?

[16:51] So Aristotle thought that the sun and the stars have an ability to be in different places, subject to change of place, but they're not subject to change of quality or substance or something of this sort.

[17:09] And Jager said the sun is a stone on fire." And they say perhaps he got the idea from these meteors which are rocky in character, and occasionally there's a meteor that hits the Earth still burning because it's so big, and we know that there was in his part of Greece some meteors that came out of the sky and what still burning when they hit the Earth. There was one down the southwest United States that the Indians used to tell the white men about, and you know it was an Indian tale or something like that.

[17:44] Well, now they guess they can see the evidence for this burning rock, so that makes an impression upon you, right? And you know how there are what we call falling stars. They don't think they're any stars, but they're really meteors, but they look like a star falling, don't they? So maybe those stars are just what rocks on fire. Aristotle said, "Well, if they're rocks on fire, they would have burned out long ago."

[18:09] And of course, it is simply amazing how much energy the sun gives off. I mean, they say we're about what 93 million miles from the sun, and all these plants growing out here depend upon the sun and so on. But you know, if you you know figure out geometrically,

[18:30] you know, if you draw an imaginary sphere, 93 million miles at the diameter or radius, 93 million miles, right? We're getting a very small part of what the sun is what emitting, right? Yeah, just imagine how how can it do that? I've been told that Heisenberg's pupil there, Weizsäcker, right in the twentieth century, there gave an explanation of why the sun can go on so long, right?

[18:57] I mean, maybe it is gradually dying, huh? But it is a kind of amazing thing to see that it goes on and on and on, and certainly not fire in the ordinary sense, because that, you know, even the great fire of London is not going to last for a century or something, right? The forest fires in California—I mean, they talk about controlling them, but they're going to, you know, eventually burn out, right?

[19:19] By nature, if not by man, put out. So Aristotle, I think, was correct in saying, I mean, the sun is something quite different from, you know, ordinary fire. It's a rock of the fire, huh?

[19:40] Okay. So he's saying that there would be another account of natural and eternal substances, as he thought the sun, the moon, and the stars were, huh? Or perhaps the sun had no matter in the kind of matter we see down here, or not such as we have down here. which. Is corruptible, but only matter that is movable according to what place.

[20:14] He then finally compares it to accidents. Huh? Nor does matter belong to those things which exist by nature, but are not substances. Their subject is the what substance? Huh? Notice there is a difference here between the accident and the substance which exists in matter and form, the genus of substance. Huh? Because the matter of the genus of substance, considered by itself, would have no actuality at all.

[20:42] It's pure ability. Right, the substance in which an accident exists is an actual substance. Huh? Kind of funny. I was reading in Thomas today. He was talking about how, given the simplicity of God, right,

[21:08] there is no distinction in God of matter and form, no real distinction of matter and form, and there is no real distinction of substance and what accident, right? Okay.

[21:24] So if you say Socrates is wise, let's say, or Socrates is just, right? Socrates' wisdom or his virtue of justice is an accident existing in Socrates,

[21:41] but it's not the same thing as Socrates. Huh? There is a real distinction between Socrates and his wisdom, or Socrates and his what justice, right? But when we say that God is what wise or God is just, huh? The multiplicity is in our thinking, in our thoughts, but not what we think about God, right? Because God and his justice are not two different things, huh? Or God and his what wisdom are two different things, huh?

[22:17] But then we talk about say God and divine nature. Well, the divine nature would be said to be in God, right? But is there again a real distinction between God and his divine nature? Like there is in the things that have matter and form, no. So we'd say that God is his godhead, right? His divine nature. Okay.

[22:51] But it's interesting that we can't escape this way of talking that we have of material things when we talk about even God in theology. But in general, I mean, apart from the particular difficulties of talking about God, why does this run through our language? The what they sometimes call the abstract word, the concrete word, like justice and just, health and healthy, right? What's What's the reason why we have that in our language?

[23:35] Was because our mind is naturally turned towards these material things, which are composite of matter and form, and so we sometimes distinguish, right? The composite and its form. Talk about the form by itself, and so I take the abstract health. I'm thinking of the form by which the healthy is healthy, and so you have

[24:02] these two words, health and healthy, and they correspond to real distinction of material things. But then, when you talk about God, we can say God is good, but we can say God is His own what goodness, huh? because there's no distinction of matter and form with God, in the abstract in God. But nevertheless, we have two thoughts, right?

[24:32] And they can both, to some extent, be applied to God, right? Because if you merely said that God is goodness, then you wouldn't be saying that God is good, because goodness signifies that by which the good is good. So we want to signify that God is really good. So we say God is good, but good signifies is what signifying is what has goodness, right? And that might seem to imply a distinction between the have and what he has, and so to avoid that composition in God, we say, but God is His own goodness.

[25:15] Okay, but in that sense, we never have a name that is adequate to God, right? And we can't really transcend those two ways of speaking about God, because this is connection, you might say, to our mind, Inborn from the fact that,

[25:36] as you saw in the third book about the soul, that our reason's own object is the what it is of something sensed or imagined, and so it can't,

[25:50] and all those things are composites of matter and form, something like that, so that we have to understand other things in the way we understand material things, but then we have to negate. In order to what not attribute our way of knowing to the thing itself, so we can't get a word that's really adequate to God.

[26:24] So it's interesting we have here the distinction of matter and form, and also substance and accident, and how that comes up even in the consideration of the Trinity. huh Let me get to that Trinitarianity someday. Thomas was answering an objection, you know, about the divine persons being these subsisting relations,

[26:49] and if it's if if it's the relation that constitutes that person, like fatherhood, right? Fatherhood and the father are the same, because in God the abstract and concrete don't really differ, right? Although fatherhood signifies as that by which the father is the father, okay? But the father and his fatherhood are the same thing, and that's denying you know the distinction of matter and form. But then you have something else out of the father, like he's the what

[27:20] common breather of the Holy Spirit, right? Or that's like accident the subject, right? But in God there is no real distinction, so between the father and the common breather or breather, there is no real what distinction. You see, it goes back to those two kinds of composition in the in the creature. When you get to the question on the simplicity of God, which is the first question on the simplicity on the substance of God, right after his existence, right?

[27:54] In the Summa Theologiae, there'll be one article that shows there is not a composition of matter and form in God, right? And another article that there is not a composition of subject and accident, right? Okay, so there is two different kinds of composition in creatures that have to be what denied, yeah, yeah. But because our mind is adapted to thinking about such things,

[28:22] we speak in those ways about God, but we have to negate the real distinction that there is in the creature between the form of what has the form and the subject and the accidents, huh? So kind of subtle, right? But here you see in the text here already that there is a difference here between the way in which a substance has matter and form, and then the way you have this other composition of the substance with the accidents, huh?

[28:54] Because the accident is not really made out of matter in the way that the substance is, but the subject is a little bit like matter because it's. Able to receive the accidents, a little bit like matter is able to receive what form.

[29:11] So he says, nor does matter belong to those things which exist by nature, but are not substances. The accidents, their subject is a substance. And he talks about the eclipse, cause the eclipse. For example, what is the cause of the eclipse? What is its matter? There is none. But the moon, the substance, is what undergoes this eclipse, right? What is the cause as mover in producing the light?

[29:36] Well, the earth, right? Okay, the earth has come between the sun, I guess, and the moon, right? Okay. What's the cause? in the sense of end or purpose, that for the sake of which. Well, he says probably there is no that for the sake of which. What's the purpose of the sun coming between the earth and the moon, right? That's very good. My my friend uh Warren Murray was telling me he was. studying at the University of Minnesota.

[30:02] That this Aristotelian scholar there, you know, was saying Aristotle has this theory of there being four kinds of causes, and he applies it everywhere. You know, like you look for four causes and everything, right? Well, Aristotle's saying there didn't seem to be the cause in the sense of it, you know? Now he said, probably Thomas says because it's very difficult to study the sun and the moon and the stars, right?

[30:26] But it seems to Aristotle that there probably is no, you know, inner purpose of this sort of thing. Okay, the definition is as a form. But this is obscure if you account or not with the cause. This is a famous example of Posterior Analytics. That a full definition of eclipse would say it's not only the lack of light, but the lack of light because of the what?

[30:51] Sun or the moon? The earth coming between the sun and the moon. Okay. Or he gives another example there. huh? Aristotle is quite interested apparently in sleep. There's this crazy story told about Aristotle having a a metal basin, you know, and holding another ball like this, so that if he started to fall asleep, the ball would fall into his hand and wake him up, you know. I don't think he did that.

[31:21] It's kind of anybody's, you know, all kinds of stories are floating around, you know, that have no no basis, huh? And some of them are kind of funny, you know, and so on. But I know someone like Charles DeConick, especially who's younger, you know, he goes on for a day or two without sleep, right? Just thinking about something, you know. So, I'm kidding, he'd be any good in the second day, but So there is something, you know, something that people can really

[31:49] get along and less sleep than most of us require, you know. I've known people, you know, get along four hours sleep at night, huh? I don't maybe some people can. some people can't I don't know anybody.

[32:02] There's another kind of apocryphal story told about Aristotle. He'd been warning Alexander the Great about this beautiful young woman, and she's a little bit annoyed at Aristotle doing this. So she decided to tame him, right? And she tamed to the point that she could get him down on all fours and ride him around the room like a horse, right? So one day she's riding around him on the horse, in comes Alexander the Great, and what's this?

[32:29] You know, you've been warning me about this woman, you know. And so Aristotle's kind of you know, brushes himself off and says, "Look," she says, "If she can do this to me, who am old and wise, look what she can do to you, who are young and foolish." There are these stories floating around, I don't believe them, you know. But they they kind of you know make a good story to tell.

[32:50] It's just like a little bit frustrating reading Aristotle, you know, and make him a little more human. Another story about him being kind of a floppy dresser, you know, like some kind of. Okay.

[33:14] So he gives the other example here of sleep, right? And of course, he's saying it's not so clear now. What it is, it's undergoing what sleep. It has something to do with the senses, huh? But there was even a disagreement among the Greeks as to whether the the heart or the brain was the what kind of center of these senses. Yeah.

[33:41] Now, in the last three paragraphs here on page seven, the last three paragraphs of the fourth reading. Now he's going to make his third consideration of matter. In comparison to coming to be and passing away, and so on, and a point that we saw somewhat earlier in the book here.

[34:08] It's kind of subtly saying here, since some things are and are not. Without coming to be and ceasing to be, such as points that they can be said to be. And in general, forms, huh? Okay. So when I put the soft butter in the refrigerator, what comes to be? Hard butter

[34:42] comes to be. Does hardness come to be? No way. You could say hardness didn't exist before, right? And now it exists. But did the hardness as such come to be? No, it was a hard butter. The composite becomes to be, right? So the forms as such don't come to be.

[35:11] There is many examples of this where, let's say, I am taller than my what? Son, right? And then he grows till he's taller than me. So now there is a change in me from what. Taller or shorter? Yeah, yeah, but is that really rechanging as such? No, something else changing, right? Okay. So forms, if you want to say forms come to be, as Aristotle says, they're not coming to be because they don't come to be as such, right?

[35:48] But if you want to say in some sense that the form comes to be, it comes to be when something else comes to be. And therefore, it's said to come to be by accident or by happening, because it, as such, is not coming to be, huh? Okay.

[36:07] So we we felt the problem before that the form came to be. Then you'd be making the form out of what matter, right? And therefore, since you can have different forms in the same matter, you'd have to have a form of a form, right, to distinguish one form from another form made out of the same matter. Then you have the same problem about that form, right? Because you have two different forms, then you have to have a form of the form of the form, and so on forever, right?

[36:43] So the forms as such don't come to be, right? And thus, that does tell us something about about forms in the sense of the angels, if they're just forms, right, and and have no matter. Then they can't come to be or cease to be even accidentally. They're eternal things, huh? Once they're created, huh? They always will be.

[37:12] Strange, huh? But you kind of see something about that, right? Just as Plato thought of the forms, right, that he had as being eternal, right, you are seeing some of the truth about not exactly what the nature of these, you know, separate substances are, but if they're form only, then they are what? Ingenerable and incorruptible.

[37:47] That's quite a creature, huh? Okay. For the white does not come to be, but the white wood, right? And the hard as such doesn't come to be, but the hard butter something. If everything that comes to be from something and comes to be something, if everything that comes to be comes from something, comes to be something.

[38:18] Now looking back to natural philosophy, not all contraries in some sense can come from one another, but is in other ways that a white man comes to be from a black man. That's kind of a strange example. I know I don't know if that happens, but you might say as as hard butter would come to be from soft butter, right? But does the hard come to be from the soft?

[38:42] Well, the soft as such cannot become hard. huh? Now, there's a apparent contradiction and change that the great Heraclitus said, right? Day and night are the same thing because we say day becomes night and night becomes day, right? Well, it's really the what the air that can can have light or dark, yeah. Nor is there a matter of everything. But of those, there is coming to be.

[39:13] But of those, where there is coming to be, in changing to each other, whatever things are, are not without changing, have no matter. Remember that was a question back in the third book. You know, is everything that comes to be comes to be by some kind of what motion? Right? In the material world, this might be so, right? But Aristotle was kind of hinting at the idea that there's something that what we call creation, right?

[39:51] Now, Avicenna's opinion there about the human soul, because he didn't think the human soul came to be by the transformation of matter. He didn't. think. the Human soul existed before the body, so it had to come into existence, right, by creation rather than by transformation of some kind of matter. So Aristotle seems to have some idea of creation.

[40:34] Okay, now in the last two paragraphs, he's talking about a little problem here. There is difficulty about how the matter reaches towards the contraries. For example, if the body is healthy, the ability and disease is contrary to health. Is it therefore both an ability? And is water, wine, and vinegar an ability, or is it the matter of one by having and by form, and of the other by lack and corruption besides its nature?

[41:10] Well, notice an example of the body to being healthy or being sick. The body, you might say, is immediately as an ability for both, just like the butter has an ability to be hard or soft, right? Okay, but does the water have the ability to become either wine or vinegar, or does it have to become wine first, and then through the corruption of wine, you get what vinegar, right?

[41:44] Okay, or is a body able to be what either alive or dead, and can become either one, right? Or must it first become alive, and then through the corruption of its being alive, it becomes dead? See, or you could say the butter could be what immediately either hard or soft, or the body could be immediately either healthy or sick, right? So there's a little difference here between how the body is to being healthy or sick, and how the water is to being wine and what vinegar, or the body is to being alive and being dead, right?

[42:27] Okay. So continues that in the next paragraph. Further, there is a doubt why wine is not the matter of vinegar or vinegar in ability, even though vinegar comes to be from it, and why the living is not in ability to be the dead, right?

[42:56] And he talks about the corruptions of these things, right? Now, you know this probably looks back to the famous dialogue, dear the Phaedo, right? And I don't know if you read the Phaedo, but Socrates is asking the question whether the human soul is immortal or not, and so his first argument is very interesting because he begins with an induction. An induction is the changes between contraries, okay?

[43:34] And so it's the hard that is what softened, and it's the soft that is hardened, and it's the wet that dries out, and it's the dry that is moistened, and it's the hot that becomes cold, and the cold becomes hot. It goes through, you know, induction. So it seems that change is always between what contraries. Okay. Then Socrates says, "Now, since things are always changing, if there was changing from one contrary to the other, but not the reverse, would you continue to have both contraries in the world?

[44:15] " No. You can see, for example, that every year it goes from hot to cold, right? So that's a common change. When the sun goes down, it goes from hot to cold.

[44:29] If there was never the reverse change, all things now would be what? Yeah. And it's always going from light to dark every time the sun goes down, or anytime you turn the lights off, it goes from light to dark, right? This is happening all the time. Things go from light to dark. So if things never went from dark to light, what would the world be like? Be all dark, right?

[44:53] Okay. And Socrates gets everybody to admit that, right? Okay. And then he says, "Now, living and dead are contraries. " And he says there is a change from the living to the dead, right? Okay. Now,

[45:13] if there was not the reverse change in the dead to the living, then everything would be dead now, and nothing would be alive. Now the students are a little bit bothered just by that argument, but I say, doesn't it follow from everything you admitted? You admitted changes between contraries, right? And that one of the contraries would no longer exist in the world if there was change only in one direction, right?

[45:40] And then we applied it to living the dead are contraries. Clearly, there's change in the living to the dead, right? And therefore, there ought to be what? If there's not the reverse change, the dead back to living, then now everything should be dead, right? Okay. So what's wrong with the argument? Well, you know, sometimes students will object, saying, "Well, I see people dying; I don't see the dead coming back to life, right?"

[46:06] I say, "Well, that's why we had a reason to it. If you saw it, we could just, you know, accept it, right? So it's a conclusion, right? And then, you know, I give these little simple comparisons. You know, if you saw people leaving houses all day long, as they are,

[46:26] and if nobody, you never saw anybody going into houses, you saw people leaving houses all day long. What would be the houses by now? They'd be empty, yeah. So if walking around the neighborhood, looking in the windows, you see there continues to be houses with people in them, what would you conclude? People didn't go away. yeah, maybe in the back door or trap door or something. Or you see, you know, you go to a parking lot, people getting out of cars, and the supermarket all all day long getting out of cars, right?

[46:58] Okay. Now, suppose you never saw anybody getting into cars; just people getting out of cars all day long. Well, if the reverse change didn't take place, where some people were also getting into cars, what would be the condition now of cars? Now they'd all be empty, right? So you must conclude then that although I don't see it, there must be people getting into cars as well as leaving them.

[47:22] So Socrates is saying then, death is the separation of the soul from the body, but souls must not only be separated from bodies, but must then be what joined to them again, right? And therefore, they must continue to exist after they separate from the body, so they can be joined again.

[47:43] Well, is the is the situation of wine and vinegar vinegar or living and dead either one of these examples of Aristotle? Is that the same as let's see the dishcloth being wet and the dishcloth being dry? The dishcloth gets wet during the day and then it dries out, right? And the next day, next time it's used, gets wet again, right? And dries out, you know, goes back and forth, right?

[48:12] Well, are they like? Is vinegar and wine like that? Is that no? Vinegar seems to be really a corruption of wine, and so you have a change from wine to vinegar. Sometimes my father-in-law would bring me one of his friend's wines, you know, they taste like vinegar, some of them are not too good, but once the wine changes to vinegar, you can't change back from vinegar to wine.

[48:45] Aristotle says the only way you could you could do this is to break it down and then start over again. So you have to break it down to like some first matter, right? And that's because these things can only come to be in a certain what order.

[49:10] I was applying that one day to modern philosophy, right? Modern philosophy is to philosophy like what vinegar is to wine, or the dead is to living, right? It's a corruption of it, huh? Okay. So can you go from modern philosophy back to good philosophy from vinegar back to what? Why? Yeah, you do that directly. No, no. You have to go back to the very fundamentals again, huh?

[49:45] And build up to philosophy again. You have to go back to the pre-Socratics, right? And and gradually start to see things then build up to Aristotle. you can't really go from modern philosophy. Back to Plato, or Aristotle Okay so you have to go back to the first matter in philosophy, and gradually build up to this high point. So it's quite a process to do that, but you really can't go from the corruption of philosophy back to philosophy.

[50:29] That'd be like getting wine from vinegar. Can't do it. There are other criticisms you might make of Plato's argument there, but or Socrates' argument, but

[50:52] you could argue that there is, in some sense, a change from the what non-living to the living, right? And that's seen every time we eat, huh? Because the chicken we eat, the chicken is not alive, right? But eventually, it becomes some living flesh, huh? Blood or bone or something. So there must be somewhat change in both directions, right? But how exactly from the dead back to living, right?

[51:22] Strictly speaking, or from vinegar back to wine. I should take a little break now because this is right between the fourth and fifth reading, and that's.