Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
53. Metaphysics IX, Reading 9: Eternal and Corruptible Things, Necessary and Impossible, Pure Act, and What Is More Knowable to Us
Class of 2005-11-23
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/053-metaphysics-ix-reading-9-eternal-and-corruptible-things-necessary/

[0:00] So in the eighth reading, Aristotle has been showing that act is more perfect than what ability. There's before ability and perfection or in goodness, you could say, right?

[0:16] And you could say that there's a connection between that and and the different senses of perfect in the fifth book. But those three senses could be distinguished into basically two whole, in some sense, right? In the end, and as I said before, the form is to matter like whole is to part. So just as the whole is more perfect than the part, so the form is more perfect than the matter.

[0:47] But the form is act, and the matter is what ability to be formed. And then the end, right, is obviously better than what is for the sake of the end.

[1:00] And remember the kind of the argument I gave there from the principle that we saw back in book two of wisdom, when the same belongs to two things, right? But to one of them because of the other, it belongs more to the cause. So good or desirable is said the end, and that which is for the sake of the end. But of what is for the sake of the end because of the end, like good is said, let's say, of health and of medicine, but of medicine because of health, then the end is what is better, right?

[1:39] Okay, being the cause. So because we have the ability to see for the sake of seeing, we don't have seeing for the sake of the ability to see, and so on. Because act is the end of ability, then it's better and more perfect than the ability.

[1:57] Now in reading nine, he's going to show the same thing, but he says more masterly, right? But in a sense, more obviously, because he's going to take act and ability not in the same thing like he did in the eighth reading, but in different things, okay? Now that reminds me a little bit of what Plato or Socrates shows us in the Republic. I don't know if you know Republic at all, but

[2:32] Socrates is trying to argue the Republic that the the just soul, the ordered soul, right, is better off than the unjust and disordered soul. And so he develops this in the first book of the Republic. And he thinks he's got his finished his job, and then somebody says in the beginning of the second book, Socrates, do you want really to have convinced us, or just to seem to have convinced us?

[3:01] Because his arguments are good in the first book, but they're not seen so well, right? And Socrates says, "Well, I want to really convince you, right?" And then he says, "Well,

[3:19] I got to do something that really convinced us. And so then he's going to blow the soul up big so you can see it. And the way he blows up the soul big so you can see it is to take what

[3:32] take the parts of the city right and see a likeness of ratios of three parts of the city to three parts of the what soul, yeah. Okay. Now sometimes we do that more simply, right? Taking just two things, and I was giving you know all these examples of this, but sometimes we say reason is to the emotions like the man is to the horse, right? Okay. We can see the distinction in the man and the horse, and the man should rule the horse, not the horse the man.

[4:10] You know, the man shouldn't be you know his foot caught in the stirrups and the horse running across the ground like that. But the man has to get up on the horse a number of times until the horse obeys the man, and then he can command the horse. We can see the distinction in the man and the horse more easily than between the reason and emotions, because the reason and emotions are inside of us and they're more hidden.

[4:34] So it's kind of blowing up, right? Or in Aristotle, you know, raises that famous question: Should reason rule the emotions like the master rules his slave, or like a father rules his son? Right. And eventually, concludes that reason should rule the emotions as a father rules a son, but it's easier to see the difference between the relation of the father to the son and the master to the slave, where the father rules the son for the good of the son, right, and with the son having some say about what he he's he's going to do.

[5:11] As opposed to the master who rules the slave for the good of the master, and not for the good of the slave at all, and where the slave has nothing to say about what he's going to do, huh? And it's easier to see those things than it is to see how reason and emotions are in people sometimes, huh?

[5:34] Well, so Aristotle is going to take different things here, right? Where one is to the other, somewhat as ability is to what act, okay?

[5:48] Sometimes I'll take. When I'm talking about the different goods of man, I'll say that the the goods of the soul are better than the goods of the body. I'd say, right? Okay. But the goods of the soul and the goods of the body kind of mixed up together inside of us. It's kind of hard to distinguish them. And I might say, well, the goods of the soul are the goods of the body.

[6:14] Something like man is to the beast. And so, if it's easier to see that man is better than a beast, then it's easier to see what that the goods of the soul are better than the goods of the body, right? Or Thomas, you know, he's talking about the certain vices. You know, he calls them childish, right? Child, and

[6:38] what does he mean by saying this? Well, he explains. If you let the child have his own way all the time and never discipline him, right, eventually he becomes unruly, and you can't control him. All right. Okay, so people don't discipline their children, right? Correct them from time to time, and so on. They always let the child have his own way. Eventually, the child grows up to be unruly.

[7:07] You can't rule at all. Well, that's the way your emotions are right now. You're always giving into your emotions, never saying no to them, or you've had enough, or whatever it is, right? Well, then eventually emotions get what like that moody child, huh? But it's easier to see that, right? Okay. Okay. Or vice versa, you know, in in a good family situation, the children are happier with the discipline they get, right?

[7:37] They want to be disciplined. They need it because they can't discipline themselves, right? They need a certain discipline imposed upon them by the parents that doesn't crush them like that, but but they're emotionally more happy, right? Okay. And and these other unhappy I'm happy family situations where the children are not disciplined by the parents and so on, and they run wild and so on. They're even emotionally speaking, the children are what are ragged and they're unhappy.

[8:06] You see. So you can see better sometimes when it's what blowing up right now. Okay. I was thinking it's kind of a a whole image, but it's kind of good, you know. You go into a fast order place like McDonald's and like that, right? And sometimes you know at noontime there's a million one guys at the counter there demanding their hamburger, their this, their that, you know, and driving the poor person behind the counter there.

[8:32] You feel kind of sorry for them sometimes. Right there, they're really getting harassed. But a little bit the way you are when your concupiscible appetite is out of order, right? Huh? It's taking demands, demands, demands, demands, and your reason is running around trying to see how you can satisfy drugs or alcohol or candy or woman or whatever, right? And that you can never satisfy it, because there's something infinite about the thing.

[8:57] And but that's my comparison, right? You see, the man man comes like reason, and all the people, you know, the man, you know, they're they're they're French fries and that, you know. And now, you know, right? It's like your emotions, and you're trying to keep these these crazy guys satisfied, and they're really harassing you. You see, you see what I mean? So Aristotle is going to do something like that here in the ninth reading.

[9:26] He's going to say that eternal things are incorruptible things. What's the bit around here? An act is to ability, possibility. Something like the eternal or incorruptible things are. To the corruptible things, okay,

[9:56] because the eternal and incorruptible things don't have this ability to not be, right? Okay, but in the corruptible things, there's the ability to be something other than you are. Therefore, the ability for you to not be, right? So, in a way, eternal or incorruptible things, which are clearly better than the corruptible things, right? You could say act is, in a way, to ability. like the eternal or incorruptible, is the corruptible.

[10:24] So it's easy to see these being different things: the corruptible and the incorruptible. But the incorruptible is better than the corruptible, right? Well, the proportion is, as we indicate here, with an act being better than what ability, right?

[10:44] But also more masterly, he means, like Socrates was saying, right? Now you want to really convince us, Aristotle. Okay, for eternal things are before corruptible things in substance, meaning in perfection, right? Okay, but no eternal thing is in what ability to not be, right?

[11:08] And he's coming back here upon the idea of what this ability, which is the ability of matter, and that's an ability of what contradiction at the same time. Okay, so the clay is able to be a what

[11:31] sphere and a cube. It doesn't mean it can be both of them at the same time, right? But the ability to be both at the same time, okay, right? The ability to be sitting or to be standing. Now, right? Neither one could be actualized.

[11:49] For what is not able to belong will never belong to anything. But everything which is able may not act. Therefore, what is able to be may both be and not be. Well, this is the real ability of matter, right? The same, therefore, is able to be and not be. But what is able not to be may not be, and what may not be is corruptible, either simply or at least in the way in which is said that it cannot be, right?

[12:18] According to place, or according to how or how, that's touching upon the famous distinction of the three kinds of change: according to place, change of place; how much growth, or how alteration, right?

[12:40] But simply according to substance, huh? That's how natural science was originally divided by Aristotle: physics, chemistry, and biology. Because physics originally was studying what change of place, and then chemistry was change of what quality that could lead to change of substance, and then came the study of what living things, which all grow, right? So, change of quantity, the sense of growth. So, we still have that division: physics, chemistry, and biology, right?

[13:12] But we don't understand the reason for that division, right? And that's why it became kind of sloppy after a while. I mean, does atomic physics belong with mechanics, so with chemistry? You call it physics, right? Atomic physics. But has it got more to do with Galileo and Kepler and Newton? They're talking about change of place, or does it have more to do with the chemistry? Most chemistry, right?

[13:46] Yeah. So, if you look at Heisenberg's Gifford lectures, right? Look at Heisenberg's Gifford lectures. When he divides the physical sciences, right, he'll put atomic physics with chemistry, not with the rest of physics of God, right? So, it's because you've lost sight of what the original meaning for the word was, right? And then you start to use the words in ways not appropriate, huh? But that was the first way of doing it.

[14:13] That was the first basic thing. Physics is about change of place, huh? And Galileo was talking about the fall, bodies to the ground, and Kepler the planets moving around the sun, and so on. And Newton was unifying these two, right? So, originally, physics was studying change of place, right? And

[14:35] chemistry was something different. There, you did the qualitative change, and so on. But atomic physics was really explaining the periodic table of elements and so on.

[14:48] Nothing incorruptible, simply, then he says, is an ability, simply, but nothing prevents it from being so in some ways, how or where, all therefore an act. He's thinking of the heavenly bodies, which he thought did not change substantially, but they change their what place, right? Maybe changed from light to dark, and to.

[15:13] Nor are any of the necessary beings, huh? And these are the first things. For if these were not, nothing would be. And on this, what is Thomas' third argument? he says, of God? That's the third argument. He says some things are able to be and not be, right? They can be the one. So why are they one rather than the other, right? Well, then, because it's something that necessarily is, and then something is necessary is necessary through itself or through another, and you can't go on forever.

[15:57] Therefore, there is something necessary through itself. That's first cause. That's the third argument of the Summa Theologiae, right? But Aristotle's already touching upon it here, right? The first things are necessary things.

[16:12] Sometimes, even in logic, now we talk about these things. To be say, we'll say the necessary is not able, not to be. Okay, and then over here you got the impossible, which is what not able to be. Not able to be Yeah.

[16:59] Then what do you have in the middle? The possible, right? Possible in the sense of what is able to be and not be. Okay. So, which things are furthest apart Which things are furthest apart Necessary and impossible What? Necessary and impossible. Yeah, yeah. But notice,

[17:47] the thing in the middle is said it's able to be and it's able. This is here. It's able to not be, right? Okay. It's got two abilities, right? It's able to be, and it's able to not be. Okay. The necessary is denying one of those abilities, right? It's not able not to be, and impossible. It's not able to be, right? Okay. Now, let's come back a little bit to the idea of ability now.

[18:42] Aristotle has this beautiful statement there in the Proemium to the Wisdom. He says, "The Philomythos is the philosopher's pos Okay. Now pos is the Greek word of saying, or Thomas is saying Latin. He couldn't quit—not simply speaking, but he couldn't quite right? It doesn't sound in the perfect way. So he's saying the Philomythos is the philosopher, right? But not fully or simply a philosopher, right? Okay. And he says he makes use of that there because the Philomythos is wonderous in a way, and wonderous is the beginning of philosophy, right?

[19:28] And Aristotle and the Cranium wants to show that wonderous is the beginning of philosophy, and a sign of this is that the philomuthos, who wonders is

[19:41] something of philosophy, right? Okay. See. Now that—that means you got to have great stuff like Shakespeare, right? Okay. Okay. Or Homer, right man Okay. And kind of the wonder of the philomuthos, the wonder of the man who reads Homer or reads Shakespeare, is a stepping stone to the wonder of the philosopher. So I think myself when I look back upon myself as a freshman in college, I was in a special English course, and he said we're going to read some plays of Shakespeare.

[20:10] You probably didn't read in high school, right? And so I read those plays, but that was an occasion for me to get a complete edition of Shakespeare and read all the plays of Shakespeare freshman year. And I think that disposed me to be a philosopher, right? Okay, because the wonder of the philomuthos is a stepping stone to the wonder of the philosopher.

[20:31] But this word philomuthos in Greek means what myth, and then it takes on a little broader meaning, which is story, right? And then in the Book of the Poetic Art, Aristotle uses the word Muthos for the plot, what we call a plot in English. And you can say the lover of plots is a philosopher in a way, right? Okay. Now Aristotle divides the plot. He gives in the Book of the Poetic Art two ways to divide the plot: one into two and one into three.

[21:12] You know, we always divide into two or three. And he divides the plot into two, saying it consists of tying the knot or knots and untying the knot or knots, right? We saw that books what three through fourteen can be divided that way, because in book three he ties all the chief knots of wisdom, and then in books four through fourteen he unties those knots, right? So the lover of plots is a lover of something which is a tying of knot and untying knots, right?

[21:49] Of course, Thomas would be in the Summa all the time, right? He'll tie into a knot in a disputed question, he'll tie into a knot, right, and then he'll untie it. Um, but the other division he gives of plot, he says that Homer taught the other Greeks that a plot should have a beginning, middle, and end. It's not just about one man or anything happened to this man, right?

[22:14] But it's about a course of action that has beginning and end. Okay. Now, how do you define beginning and end? Well, by before and after, right? Of course, the philosopher is a lover of before and after, as you know. His reason looks before and after, and wisdom is the highest perfection of reason and so on. But notice, son, in a way, you have to define the beginning and the end negatively, don't you?

[22:47] Correct. Because you'd say that the the middle is before something, right? And it's after something. The beginning is what? Also before something, but not after. But not after. And the end is what? After is not before. Yeah. Okay. So in a way, the middle is before in the beginning and end in knowledge, in so far as the affirmative is before the what? Negative in knowledge, right? Okay.

[23:28] Before is before, not before. And after is before what? Not after, right? Right. Just like sight is before blindness, right? Okay. That's interesting, right? That the middle, in a way, is before the beginning and end. Okay. Now, yeah, the example we're here, right? Because in a way, able to be is before not able to be. In knowledge, isn't it? The affirmative is before the negative, right? Okay.

[24:09] And and able not to be is before not able not to be in knowledge, right? Okay. So it's like we're the middle thing, right? Okay.

[24:26] Just like with time, right? We're kind of what is beginning, what is before and after, in it, right? Okay. But is there a beginning of time? We ask sometimes, right? And and the populace talks about the end of time, right? Okay. So the beginning of time is before the rest of time, but it's not after anything. And the end of time is after everything, but not before anything, right?

[24:51] But you describe the beginning and the end negatively, yeah. Okay. Now, Aristotle in the theory book about the soul, he teaches us what the our reasons' own object is, right? And you may recall that reasons' own object is that what it is of something sensed or imagined. Okay. Our reasons' own object

[25:29] is the what it is of something sensed or imagined. That's why he takes the example from a natural thing, right, and from a mathematical thing—a natural thing and a mathematical thing. Now, as you've seen Aristotle touch upon other places, a natural thing is composed of what matter and form. Okay. And although you don't have matter in a strict sense in mathematics, you have this kind of imaginary matter extension, and then you have form, right?

[26:18] So you have you know surfaces, you can cut out circles and spheres and triangles and so on, right? And so you have something like matter and form, okay? And that's why in both natural and mathematical things, you can have many individuals of the same kind because you have matter and form.

[26:37] Now, in Book Eight, we talked about the matter and form under genus and substance, you remember? But in Book Nine, you extend to ability and act, which are more general than matter and form, right? But in a way, ability and act are kind of proportional to matter and form.

[26:57] Um. Now, there's going to be something called pure act. Because act is before, what? ability simply. So the first thing is going to be what? Act simple. Act simply, yeah. Okay. But if somebody says, "What do you mean by saying the first cause is pure act? " What does pure, although it's grammatically affirmative, in meaning what is it? What? Negative. It means not. No ability. Yeah. So it's act without any.

[27:45] You take ability here in the sense of passive ability, right? Okay. That's it. So there's negation there, right? Okay. Now, when you talk about the first matter, the first matter is pure what?

[28:03] Yeah. And pure again, grammatically is affirmative, but meaning it means without any act. Try to consider the first matter by itself. This is the first matter.

[28:18] This is actually God here, acting. So pure ability means without any act. So what's in the middle? Everything else. Everything else. Has some ability and some act, right? And more so in material things, you got matter and form. But even the angels, you've got the substance and existence right? And the substance is the existence, his ability is to act. So these things in the middle are, you might say, composed

[29:01] of ability and act, right? So now you got the beginning, the middle, the end. It looks like in a plot, right? Okay. But just as you define beginning, middle, and end in the plot, you define the middle by two affirmatives: it's before something and after something. But you have to define the beginning and the end by one affirmative and one what? Negative, because the beginning is before something but not after anything.

[29:32] The end is after something but not before something. So you do the same thing here, don't you? Okay. So we kind of know the beginning and the end by. The middle. That's the nature of our mind, okay.

[29:56] And here the difficulty in knowing this is that he's too knowable. And here the difficulty is in the thing itself, right? But for different reasons, these are difficult, right?

[30:20] Kind of strange the way Aristotle sees sometimes, I mean, he may be defined beginning and end before he defines middle, right? I think he does so because he wants to distinguish between before and after, right? That's really before you can understand any of this at all. Before you can understand the beginning the end, you can't understand what before and after, means, huh? And so, since the beginning has before without having after, and the end has after without having before, you see that before and after are two different things.

[30:54] And then he defines the middle, right? Just like in the categories, he defines individual substance, individual accident, and universal substance first, and then universal accident that has both the affirmatives, and then last of all, what individual substance. So he defines what exists in something, was not said of something, what is said of something doesn't exist in something. And then, what both exists in something and is said of something, and last of all, what is neither said of another nor does exist in another, right?

[31:32] You know, but two negatives, right? At last, huh? But notice, in a way, God and the first matter are simple, right? But the simple is known by the composed, right? So when you get to study God, you're going to find this, right? Reflected in all our knowledge of God, that we know God after the manner of what we what our own object, right?

[32:13] So God knows composed things in a simple way, and we know simple things in a composed way, right? So the way pure act is kind of composed, right? It's as if we know a composed thing, but it's not really composed. But the composition is in our house, not in the thing, right? And if we understand this, we realize that the thing itself is not composed. Could have a whole question about God's not composed.

[32:40] God is simple, right? But there'd be all kinds of negations in it, huh? So theology. We know him not as he is, huh? But as he is not. But there is something like that in the thing about necessary, right, and impossible, right? Not the same threesome, right? But you could say that what we seem to know first is what is able to be and not be, and then we get the idea that there is something which is what not able, not to be.

[33:28] Of course, it can't be anything that's able, not able to be. But we do talk about it, don't we? We had to talk about the square circle, right? That's something impossible, right? A square circle. No, not even God can make a square circle, right? A square circle is something impossible to be, right? It's something not able to be. And God can't change the past, right?

[34:15] Kind of strange reality, impossible. We can talk about it, huh? We can define it, right? It's being in our mind, huh? Just like the Greeks can say, "You can't get something from nothing," so they can talk about nothing, right? Yeah.

[34:59] So, in the third paragraph here on page eleven, huh? He says nothing incorruptible. He said in the previous paragraph is an ability, simply right? The incorruptible is what is not able what? Not to be? Not to be, yeah, yeah. Nor any of the necessary beings, he says, in the third paragraph, right? Because the necessary is what is

[35:28] not able or, not to be, yeah, yeah. That's kind of funny how the modern philosophers, the modern thinkers in general, you have the determinists, whom everything is necessary, right? And then you have the kind of the existentialist, right, which everything is what contingent, right, huh? Okay. It's kind of interesting how the. Just in the philosophy of nature, they're talking about whether end is a cause in the natural world, right?

[35:59] Huh? And so on. And come interesting to read Einstein because he's kind of puzzled by these things a bit, huh? Because Einstein says in one place there that all scientific work of a higher order, you know, is based on a belief like that of religion, right? And you can see this in Einstein. Einstein devoted his life to trying to understand the universe. Okay. And so even you know the so many popular books, you know, the universe of Dr.

[36:33] Einstein, are not a bad title book, right? Because that's what he was devoting his life to. Huh? He said the details don't matter to me, right? He wants to understand the universe as a whole. And so Einstein, in 1905, you know, proposed the special theory of relativity. Huh. But then 1915, he proposed the what general theory of relativity, and that really belongs to cosmologists, to the universe as a whole.

[37:00] And after they confirmed it, they didn't confirm it right away because the war was going on. But after the First World War was over, that horrible war, then they they tested the observations that he had predicted, right? And you know, he had to observe it during an eclipse of the sun, right? And what he predicted was seen to be so, and they'd tell a phone line and say, You've been confirmed."

[37:25] I knew it would be. He said, "I didn't know confirmed." It was so beautiful I had to confirm. So he's devoted himself to understand the universe, right? But why would a man devote his whole life to trying to understand the universe unless he believes that the universe is understandable? Okay. Well, Einstein sees an affinity between believing that the universe is understandable and the original believer who thinks it's the product of a of a great mind, right?

[37:52] Okay. Then you have another thing of Einstein where he says the the most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it should be comprehensible. Okay. Okay. Which in a way is saying the most ununderstandable thing about the world for him, right? Is it should be understandable, right? But but coming back to to that statement, which is maybe more easy to see, if the man is devoting his whole life to trying to understand the universe, he's acting on the belief that the universe is in fact understandable, right?

[38:32] Now that some of these are existentialists, the universe is something crazy. Yeah, does it make sense. Maybe true of the human world. It's the way we live, We don't make any sense, right? Most of us. I suppose all of us. to some extent we don't make any sense, but

[38:55] but if you believe. Universe is understandable, then maybe eventually the question would obviously rise: Well, why is it understandable? And if you say that it's a,

[39:06] was made by an understanding, then it's it's not incomprehensible that the universe should be understandable because it's made by an understanding, right? And you know, like the British astrophysicist Sir James Jeans says: Well, God is a supreme mathematician, right? But in general he's the supreme mind, right? Okay, but Einstein just doesn't know what to make of this, right? Doesn't quite go all the way, but he, but. But this is partly the reason why Aristotle will say that what is more knowable

[39:59] is not more knowable to us. See, he he sees the distinction there, right? Aristotle distinguishes between what is more knowable and what is more knowable to us. Okay. Now, what kind of a distinction is that? Huh? Partly, I'm trying to understand this particular distinction. What kind of distinction is that?

[40:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it corresponds to the second kind of mistake outside of words, right? The mistake for mixing up what is so simply and not simply, right? But in some very imperfect, qualified way, huh? Okay. Now, what's more knowable, simply? Well, you see a little bit of it already. We come back to it again. But if act is before ability and definition, right? And ability is knowable only through act.

[41:15] Something is knowable because it's an act. So what's most knowable? What's pure act? So God is most knowable, but not to us, he says. As far as he sees that, right? See, because our mind goes from what ability to act, and then the thing that goes with ability to act, it's an ability of what's in act. huh? So what is most in act, in that sense, is least knowable to us, right?

[41:46] Acts, but it's most knowable, right? So he sees that distinction, right? It's really kind of marvelous that he saw that, and he's almost the only thinker, you know, sort of first first thinker to see it. I don't know anybody else who really sees it clearly except those who learned it from Aristotle. Okay.

[42:08] But students and Descartes and so on are always mixing up those two senses, making this mistake here, huh? Okay. Um. No, in the dialogues of Plato, there, when Socrates asks somebody what something is, like he asks Meno what virtue is, or he asks Euthyphro what piety is, they give examples, huh? Okay. If he

[42:35] asks a little child what is a nose, he'd say, "What's a nose? " It's a nose. He'd point out the noses on their faces. Um.

[42:43] Now, which is more knowable, the examples or the definition of virtue? To us, yeah, yeah, okay. But which is really more knowable? Now the definition really makes more known exactly, right? Now, when people hear a definition, they often don't understand it, right? And you have to give them examples so they can understand a bit, right? Huh? Okay. But since the student wants to say that the examples are more knowable than the definition, well, it's more knowable to you, but not the other way around, right?

[43:28] Okay? And it's kind of funny that you know I always make a joke about the way the students speak. You know, they when they have a hard time understanding distinction, right? They they invariably call it confusing. And I said, "Well, the distinction is how you get out of confusion, right? "

[43:49] So the distinction is distinguishing; it's not confusing the vision. But it's revealing the confusion in your mind. So you shouldn't say the distinction is confusing. And say, "Oh my gosh, I'm confused and I can't understand this distinction, right? " You know, but this this is a hard kind of distinction to get a hold of, right? You see, but it keeps on showing up again and again, huh?

[44:26] You know, Descartes wants to proceed in every science like you proceed in geometry because that's the most rigorous and the most certain, right? You know, that's the best way of proceeding, so let's proceed that way everywhere. And Aristotle will say, "Well, the best way of proceeding is not the best way of proceeding everywhere, right? "

[45:02] Geometry, you know, proceeds to some extent from the cause to the effect, right? That's a better way of proceeding than from the effect to the cause. But it's not a better way of proceeding than natural philosophy, is it? So in a way, Descartes is making the mistake of what? Saying that what is better simply is better here, right? Okay. Or, um, it's a bad mistake in political philosophy, right?

[45:27] Huh? Where where the the best government is not the best government for these people. Okay. Um. or or like in like in in the church or in in the city, the best life is not the best life for everybody, right? Um.

[45:57] So that's a very common mistake, huh? I tell the students that that make the mistake in your life all the time, right? When you do what is bad because it's good in some way, or you don't do what is good, like study when you should, because in some way it's bad. It prevents you from partying or doing something. You know, some ways bad. You know, so we make the mistake all the time in our daily life.

[46:31] So it's not an uncommon thing. So we have to stop here on four thirty here, huh? We just.