Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
13. Shakespeare's Definition of Reason, the Exhortation to Use Reason, and Wisdom
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[0:00] The fifth reading, because that's the beginning of the second part, right? And the fifth and the sixth readings now are the second part, second main part here of the ninth book, right? We're going to talk about act and talk in a much more way, universal way. Okay. Let

[0:26] me talk about a couple things. Come back a little bit here. Let's come back to Shakespeare's definition of reason, huh? And just the first part of the definition of reason—that reason is the ability for discourse, right? And we spelled it out a little bit what he's actually saying there. He's saying reason is the ability to know one thing through knowing another thing. Okay. Now, that's the way he begins to define reason.

[1:06] He doesn't define reason by saying reason is the ability to know something through itself. But reason also has that what ability, right? Okay. Now,

[1:28] is that a defect in Shakespeare's definition? That's one question, right? The other question is, and these are connected, obviously. Is there a reason to define reason, which is an ability, after all, right? Is there a reason for defining it by the ability to know one thing through another, rather than by the ability to know something through itself?

[2:00] Those two connected questions are connected, and I'm not saying which one maybe should be answered first, right? But they're so connected. Is Shakespeare's definition deficient, huh? And is there a reason for it Or not, because it doesn't talk about the ability reason to know something through itself. Reason is a nature, as we said before. And the other question is,

[2:31] is there a reason for defining reason by the ability to know one thing through another, rather than by this ability to know something through itself?

[2:42] What do you say about those two questions? I'd say on the second question, the reason to name it that way is because the third act implies the first two acts. In the third act, you only know one thing

[2:58] through another. Okay. Could you say, in other words, that? If reason is able to know one thing through another, it must be able to know something through itself,

[3:15] because you can't know one thing through another ad nauseum. You wouldn't be able to know anything through another thing, right? Unless you knew something through itself.

[3:37] What question is that answering? The question that says, "Why did you define it by one rather than the other? " The one that says, "Is there a reason? " Yeah. To define it in terms of knowing one thing through another, Yeah, yeah. It's more proper to it, too. Because if I defined it, yeah. Well, the third act is more proper to it. Yeah, yeah. Reason. I mean, the first two are coming with the angels.

[4:02] Now, if you define reason as ability to know something through itself, huh? Would that tell you the reason to know one thing through another?

[4:14] What? Refer to I don't know, defining abilities through their utmost. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, you can say the senses to some extent know something, right? But do the senses, know one thing through another.

[4:35] They seem to know more what a thing through itself, right? Okay. You don't see one thing through seeing another, do you? Sometimes you imitate that a bit, like the example I gave, where you say to somebody, "Do you see that dog out there? " "I don't see any dog out there? " "Do you see that tree out there? " "Yeah. " "Well, look to the right of it.

[5:01] " "Oh, yeah. There's a dog, right? " "Huh. " But the point is, once your eyes fall upon the dog, you're not seeing the dog through seeing the tree, are you? You're coming to see the dog through maybe seeing the tree, but you're not really seeing one through the other, right? There's a little something like you know that goes on in reason, huh? But strictly speaking, it seems that the senses know something more through itself, and they're not capable of taking what they know and knowing something further through what they already do know, huh?

[5:39] Is that true? In fact, doesn't you see the dog through a medium? Is that a medium? No, you don't. see the medium. So. If I see you through the mirror, you know, it's not really, but it's some similarity, right?

[5:58] So if if Shakespeare had defined reason as the ability to know something to itself, for one, thing you would not so clearly see its difference from the senses, right? But you would not maybe be seeing the full power, as we're saying, right, of the reason, and that's not the way to define a what, an ability, right? Okay.

[6:28] So although I sometimes describe Shakespeare's definition as a definition of reason as reason, right, you could say that implied or presupposed to the ability to know one thing to another is to know something to itself, huh? So in a way, that's included, just like in the ability to lift a hundred pounds is the ability to lift fifty pounds, huh? And so if I define your weightlifting ability by its maximum that you're able to lift a hundred pounds, can you say that why did I define it by a hundred rather than fifty?

[7:08] Well, it's kind of obvious, right? And but have I really left out your ability to lift fifty pounds when I say you were able to lift a hundred pounds? No, you should be able to see, in other words, looking before and after, saying that if a man is able to lift a hundred pounds, then he could lift fifty pounds and maybe even easier than he lifted the hundred pounds, huh?

[7:29] Right? Okay. And if reason is capable of knowing one thing to another, then reason even more so must be capable of knowing something to itself, and that's why we speak of that knowing as almost what inborn, huh? Like it's almost we naturally know these things. Thomas sometimes speaks that way, although maybe it's more precise to say we naturally come to know these things, right? But so you can say that in defense, right?

[8:07] Shakespeare's defining it by the ability for discourse rather than the ability for axioms or something of that sort, and and secondly that in the Shakespeare's definition then is not what defective, right? Okay.

[8:26] Now the same way when when Shakespeare goes on and and says that reason is the ability, what we already explained, that means just the ability for large, and you can say that at the same point, huh? That that includes the ability for what small discourse. But if you define it as ability for small discourse, you would not have understood the full ability of reason, and that would not be included in the ability for small discourse, huh?

[8:54] But now looking at the last part of the definition, that its reason is capable of looking before and after. Was he right in saying that rather than reason was capable of seeing the distinction between ability and act? Other distinctions of that matter.

[9:18] Yeah, yeah. Whereas if you're capable of seeing the distinction between two things, that doesn't mean you're able to see which is better or which is older or something, right? I don't know which of you guys. I can distinguish you guys somewhat, but. I don't know who's older. But he's probably older by some some amount of time, huh? But but if I know that one of you guys is older than the other, I must know the two different guys, right?

[9:46] I must be able to distinguish you. I couldn't really say that I'm older than you are, rather, right? I couldn't distinguish between you and and me. I couldn't know that, right? So if I'm capable of looking before and after, I must be capable of looking for what distinctions. So Shakespeare is not defective in saying it's the ability to look before and after, And it's the reason why he does it rather than in terms of the other.

[10:16] But part of understanding, you know, fully the definition is to see that it involves that, huh? What convinced me, you know, that Shakespeare's definition was as good as it is, huh? The main witness was Book Nine wisdom, And there's not so much seeing, you know, that Aristotle's talking about distinguishing act and ability, although that fits into the picture too. But when you get to the third part of the ninth book, and Aristotle's showing the before and after of act and ability, and there's many senses of before and after, and there's many different senses, and then you begin to see the universal importance of seeing each one of those before and afters, and you realize how Shakespeare kind of hit the nail on the head, huh?

[11:19] And when Thomas comes back, like in the proemium to the his own proemium* to the *Nicomachean Ethics* and to practical philosophy, and he makes that point, huh? That he quotes Aristotle in the *Premium* to *Metaphysics*, where Aristotle says it belongs to the wise man to order, right? Nobody else orders him, huh? He orders everybody else around, and and but Thomas gives a reason why, huh? And the reason why is that wisdom is the highest or greatest perfection of reason, huh?

[11:56] And reason. He could have said, "Looks before and after," if you had read Shakespeare, but he never got around to doing that, you know. But he sees as characteristic, most characteristic, of reason to look for what order, right? And if that's what characterizes reason, then the highest or greatest perfection of reason must, most of all, be a knowledge of of order, and maybe in in more than one of these senses of order, more than one of the senses of before and after.

[12:34] You want a definition to be proper to the specific thing being defined. I'm just wondering what exactly in there sets Exactly, in their sense, the understanding of reason apart from angelic understanding, or something like that—is it the large aspect? Well, the first thing that separates us from the angel is that his knowledge is not discursive, right? Can't you know something through another No, he doesn't really. he sees it more like we see things with that understanding.

[13:09] We're all open. He doesn't. He doesn't reason from one thing to another. Doesn't have a yeah reasoning, but doesn't he? Isn't there seeing through? No, he doesn't really. Even when he knows God through himself, right? He sees God as it were in the mirror. It's like you know, I see you in the mirror, right? It's kind of seeing you in the mirror, not reasoning from one to the other.

[13:43] It's difficult to understand that, but when Thomas, when he talks, you read the treatise on the angels or the treatise on God. Knowledge and so on, and both of them will say that God's knowledge is not discursive.

[14:00] Now, when you say that that reason is capable of discourse, that is capable of knowing one thing to another, that is not limited to reasoning. Reasoning, you could say, is is the most characteristic discourse of reason. There's a tendency, as I mentioned in Cajetan and I guess the other medieval logicians, to use discursus almost as a synonym for reasoning, huh? But actually, it's a little bit broader, even in the sense in which Shakespeare intends it.

[14:35] So, defining is also knowing one thing to another, right? And in the definition itself of reason here, we're knowing reason through discourse and through before and after, etc. Right? So, reasoning and defining are the ones we usually single out at first as the greatest examples or the greatest kinds of knowing one thing to another, right? But when you say even in the axioms that you know that a whole is more than a part through knowing what a whole and what a part is, or you know that no odd number is even and no square is a circle through knowing what a square is, what a circle is,

[15:22] then you're knowing one thing in a way, you know, to knowing another, right? It's not as spectacular or something as defining as or reasoning is, but it is still a kind of discourse. And

[15:38] when you have these names equivocal by reason, and you have a likeness of ratios, and you kind of know one meaning to another, and as Monléon and Dionne would point out, the order in the meanings corresponds to order in our knowing, and so there's a kind of knowing one to another, even there, but it's not as full-blown as which is defining or reasoning. So, so, and then then there are the ones like counting and calculating, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and these are again acts of reason, right?

[16:21] And in adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, you're knowing a number you didn't know through at least two numbers that you did know, of. and Thomas often, you know, compares the syllogism to adding or subtracting, insofar as you need just two numbers to get a third number when you add or subtract or multiply or divide, and in order to get a statement you don't know, you need just two statements in the syllogism.

[16:51] And so that idea getting one to two, right? And for the amusement of students, I compare it to sex, you know, and so on.

[17:01] But you know, when Thomas says that reason imitates nature, there or art imitates nature, and he's in the proemium to logic. I say when you put two dogs together, you can get a cat or a dog. You get a dog, right? You put two cats together, what do you get? A dog or a cat? You get a cat. If you put two statements together, what do you get?

[17:25] Statement, right? But you put two numbers together, what do you get? A number, right? So you can see that reason is imitating nature, right? Just as in nature, two dogs produce a dog. Well, two statements don't produce a number; they produce a statement. Two numbers produce a number, and so reason is imitating what nature does, and and reproducing. So, is the reason the angel doesn't do that is because his knowledge starts out perfect?

[17:57] It doesn't go from potency. Yeah, in the sense he's filled with forms, or by understands his mind in terms of his natural knowledge, right? His mind is full, right? Right. So, whereas we start out. Yeah. Yeah. Empty, and the discourse is what gets us to. My son Marcus was a little boy. He said, "Why can't we be born knowing everything we we want to know or need to know?"

[18:20] Right? I said, "You want to be an angel." I said, "You don't have to be a human being. That's where the angel is, right? What a magnificent creature that would be, though! Be born, you know, studying geometry and all the other sciences.

[18:37] But aren't there more things the angel doesn't know? Everything? Aren't there things that he doesn't know that might be implied and present and more he knows? Well, there is a way in which one angel illuminates another one, or

[18:57] divides things for him. But it's again, it's a more direct illumination than it's you know. Okay, now think about this, and then and then it's not like when when we teach somebody, when Euclid says teaches us something, he says, "Now think about this and think about this." And then, oh yeah, oh nice, Euclid. Now think about this, think about this. Ah, yes, nice, Euclid. I said, "That's not what he's doing."

[19:25] So it's something where the. uh, it's more like giving a glass of wine? Yeah, but but you know, I get the flavor of the wine. You know, not by putting two things together, but just by tasting it, right? You know, I say I taste chocolate. Oh yeah, okay, it's kind of an immediate thing, huh? Yeah, but not really discursive. And in particulars are a different case, right?

[19:53] Because they come to know them as they come to be in the universal. Yeah, but they they know them through the forms they already have, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. But and they're not reasoning from the form they have, right? Right. But through the form they have, they know the singular when it is. Yeah, marvelous creatures, you know. As De Koninck would say, you know, you take all the human intellects and rub them together, make one tremendous intellect, and that's still inferior to an angelic mind.

[20:23] De Koninck used to say, when when your soul leaves your body and you're in the company there of your guardian angel, and God, this is God! Wow.

[20:35] And he'll say, No, no, no, you're mistaken again. That's what happened with St. John, right? In in his visions, yeah. And he falls down. The angel tells him to get back up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[20:52] I have a question about this for three years. What? I just have a question about this for three years. Yeah, yeah. Most of these distinctions he's making here through incompatibilities are about living things. I would expect that we're. We had ones that are without the soul too, though he speaks of you know. So he gives ones from doing things first, Is that because they're more known More known, yeah.

[21:19] I was saying with our friend at the center there, Thomas, reporting him, that the word ability is probably taken from what a power from powerful men or men of ability. And I think you know if you're thinking your own use the word ability, which I've chosen here as being the word to translate. Would you think of human beings as having abilities more than the trees or fire?

[21:44] It's a very capable fire, I'd say. Wouldn't you? It kept us warm, you know, or something like that. You would tend to think of it as capable, would you? You know. And that seed has got a lot of ability. You know, you think of human beings, huh? You know, able to do things, you know, able to, you know, run or able to do something, right? And then you might carry the word ability over, right?

[22:13] Mommy and Daddy are capable of all kinds of things, right? And you don't think of the natural things as being capable things like Mommy and Daddy are. So you start kind of with human beings, because you're trying to name these things anyway.

[22:31] And you know, your first accomplishments, like walking or something, huh? Why is he talking? Is he able to walk yet? He's talking about human.

[22:50] But just for the sake of completeness, go back over to Shakespeare. Exhortation, huh? And we said that the exhortation to use reason is useful, first of all, to know what reason is, because it has the elements in the definition of reason. and it's a very good definition of reason. Secondly, it tells you what it is to use reason, which it does by the definition, because you define an ability by by the act for which it is an ability, and that act is in fact the use of that ability.

[23:24] So Shakespeare, in defining reason, teaches us both what reason is and how to use reason. Okay. And then the third thing he does is touch upon five most powerful reasons why we should use our reason or use it more than we do.

[23:51] So he begins, you know, the first lines the first three lines, and he says, "What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed a beast no more?"

[24:09] Now it shows how he understands the connection between good and end. What is a man if his chief good and the market of his time? Well, his chief good and the market of his time are the same thing. But the chief good, calling it good, right, and market of his time, well, mark is the what, the end, the goal, the thing you aim at, and time, of course, is a metonym for his life.

[24:42] So he's saying that the end of human life, the end of man, is also his chief good. as Aristotle teaches us, huh? But now looking at the the whole of that first part, there, what is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed a beast no more?

[25:04] Shakespeare, in a way, has got almost an argument there, but the the whole thing there is based upon a proportion. That is to say, a likeness of ratios. What is the likeness of ratios that is based upon? What are the four terms? What? As an animal is to sleeping and feeding, so man is to use reason. He doesn't bring reason in yet, huh? To his chief good, huh?

[25:39] You can say the four terms are man and beast, right? And the chief good of man, right? And if you want to be pedantic, you could say the chief good of the beast, but instead he says to sleep and to feed, right? Which fit my cat pretty good, right? Now she had her feed, and when she what slept, huh? So, he had the proportion that the chief good of man is to man, as the chief good of the beast that is to sleep and feed is to the beast, right?

[26:10] Okay. Then you, Euclideans know you could alternate the the proportion, right? So, as the chief good of man is to the chief good of the beast, so is man to beast, huh? And then you can syllogize, right? If the chief good of man is no more than the chief good of the beast, then man is no more than a beast, huh? And I like to point out to the students, in that Shakespeare's rigor of thinking there, and some of the rigor you have in math, where sometimes you set up a proportion, math like x as to y as a is to b, huh?

[26:52] And once you see that proportion, then if you admit that x is more than y, you're forced to admit that a is more than b, or if x is equal to y, then you're forced to say that a is equal to b, and if less, then less, right? So once you see that the chief good of man is the chief good of the beast as man is to the beast, right?

[27:16] Then if the chief good of man is no more than the chief good of the beast, then man is no more than a beast, huh? But it's very well known to us that man is more than a beast, huh? And if someone says I don't know that, huh? We'll put him in a cage with the other beasts and he will, you know, rave and rant and so on, huh?

[27:40] So a man really doesn't admit that he's no more than a beast, even though he often pursues no good better than the beast, huh? So here you're bringing out that the chief good of man then must be more than the chief good of the beast. If you wanted to, you could, you know, syllogize the other way and say if man is more than a beast, then the chief good of man is more than the chief good of the beast.

[28:13] But man is more than a beast, right? Therefore, the chief good of man is more than a beast, huh? But Shakespeare argues more in the other way, right? Saying that if the chief good of man is no more than the chief good of a beast, then man is no more than a beast. But man is more than a beast, right? Therefore, it can't be true the antecedent that the chief good of man is no more than the chief good of the beast.

[28:38] So then, in the next part of the of the exhortation, Shakespeare is going to say, well, now if the chief good of man is more than the chief good of the beast, what does man or what does his chief good have more than that, right? And that's obviously going to be reason is being brought out later on, right? Now once you see that, then you have one very powerful reason why you should use your reason.

[29:04] Or a couple of powerful reasons, right? One is if you don't, you're going to fall down to the level of beast. You're going to be less than a man. And the other reason is that you can't get your chief good and market of your time, purpose of your life, right, without using your what? Reason, right? What what are powerful reasons could you give than that, huh?

[29:30] And he goes on. He says, "Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to fust in us unused, huh? " And now he's given two more reasons why you should use your reason. which are what?

[29:57] God made you to do that. Yeah, sure. He that made us with such large discourses, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to fust in us unused. And to make us like God Yeah, And the reason is in some way godlike, right? And therefore, using reason, you become like God, huh? There I say now. Well,

[30:22] interesting. If you don't use reason, you fall to the level of a beast. If you do, who's obviously lower than you, right? And that's a good reason to use reason. If you do use your reason, you become in some way like God, who's better than you, right, huh? Okay. And you also obey his what his plan for you, huh? But you should look not only at the beast or at what God, at what is better than man, or what is less than man, but also look at man himself, right?

[30:55] And we already saw one reason there that your chief good, right, and market of your time involves the use of reason. Well, that's an awfully good reason to use reason, huh? And I suppose the other reason, but not quite as explicit, would be that I'll often bring in the other words from Hamlet: "This above all to thine own self be true," right? So you kind of can gather from this that man is, when he's said to be no more than a beast if he doesn't use his reason, that he has what the beast has, but he has an addition that he's an animal that has reason, right?

[31:34] And therefore, you see that in using reason, you're being true to yourself. So altogether, there's five reasons that Shakespeare touches upon, huh? And two in comparison to what is better than man. That's looking before man in the sense of better, right? One, looking after man, the beast, right? And two, looking at man himself, right? In regard to God, you're obeying His plan for you, and you're becoming like Him.

[32:04] Two good reasons to use your reason. Regard to the beast, if you don't, you fall to his level, right? And then looking at man himself, your chief good and market of your time, you can't acquire without using a

[32:19] reason, and you can't be true to yourself without using reason. Five, is five. one of those reasons is compelling, it seems to me. huh? And all, five of them together are overwhelming. It's almost how much Shakespeare did in 49 words.

[32:39] It tells you what reason is, what it is to use reason, and gives you five most powerful reasons in general, right, why you should use reason, use it more than. So I regard this as the the best short exhortation to use reason to compare to that, huh? and I have a standing challenge that I present to semi-academic audiences, academic audiences, you know, anybody to find in you know 50 words um, equal exhortation, right, To use reason to compare it to that, or even I say a hundred words of us, right?

[33:18] But Shakespeare does it in exactly forty nine words. huh And maybe part of the accomplishment is he says elsewhere in the thing, brevity is a soul of wit. huh? And wit there means wisdom. huh? Shakespeare has a very interesting understanding of wisdom too. You know. One of these prayers that I say very often is the Adorote Devote. You probably know that, and I learned it years ago, and my brother Mark bought me the Salterium Romanum.

[33:54] and that was one of the prayers in there, and so on. And in my own parish, of when I was a child, Nativity Parish, was kind of a baldachino. We called it over the altar, and one time when the brickmen were kind of restoring, you know, some of the church, and they got up there and said, "Hey, there's some letters up here. We have to restore them.

[34:15] " And you know, the old lettering saw, and they were Adorote Devote. Yeah. But anyway, you may know how that prayer is constructed out of seven what quatrains, right? But in the fifth quatrain, it says, "O memoriale mortis Domini, panis vivus vitam praestans homini, praesta meae menti de te vivere et te illi semper dulce sapere. " Remember that? Dulce sapere. Now translate dulce sapere into English. It means to sweetly what savor, okay?

[34:56] So he's talking about how he wants, in receiving the bread of life here, to sweetly savor Christ, who is what wisdom itself, right? So it's interesting that Thomas uses those two words, dulce sapere, right? Now, you've heard of magnus dux, huh? By the contrary, of, the opposite, huh? And I mentioned before that when Romeo was thinking of taking his, or he was going to take his life, right?

[35:26] And he's using that kind of a simile of a ship captain who's going to run his ship on the rocks, and this is a what foolish ship captain, huh, to run his ship on the thing? And he says, "Come, bitter conduct, " and of course the notes to talk conducter means conductor, right? Come, bitter conductor, come, unsavory guide. And he talks about rushing his ship on the what rocks, huh?

[35:59] So he calls the foolish, which is the opposite of the wise, bitter and what unsavory, right? Just exactly the opposite of what you have with the wise, dulce sapere, you know. And I was struck by you know the way Shakespeare does things, huh? What what a mind, huh? What a mind that can do that.

[36:26] Exactly what Thomas has, you know, proportion right He's talking about folly now. Come, bitter conduct. Come, unsavory guide. But it also brings out beautifully what wisdom is—that it's sweet and savory knowledge. I was talking about sapientia, you know. Thomas usually etymologically he says sapida scientia, savory knowledge. That's as far as I can push that, and you know, very tart. Because wine is the most savory of things, you know, and

[37:10] wisdom is the most savory of knowledge. Wisdom is chiefly about truth, so get the truth into the wine. Now, let's come back to the beginning that I took before. When I first brought in Shakespeare's definition, what was the reason for bringing in Shakespeare's definition of reason in a course on the ninth book of wisdom? huh

[37:40] The most notability What? The most notability Well, that's true. That's true. But there's a lot of other. I know it's the most nobility, but

[37:56] is there some reason for talking about? It has the additional stuff. Yeah. The perfection of reason acquired by the use. Yes. Yeah. But there's a a double connection between wisdom and reason, right? Notice how how are wisdom and reason connected? If someone asks that question out of the blue, you say, "Is there a connection between wisdom and reason? " And you say, "Well, yeah, there is. " But what is the connection between wisdom and reason?

[38:29] Use reason to get wisdom. Yeah. Use reason to find reason. Yeah. That's kind of interesting in terms of the first thing Aristotle is talking about in the fourth reading, because you're saying here now that wisdom is a perfection of reason, and indeed the highest or the greatest perfection of reason. But it's also acquired by the what use of reason? Okay.

[39:00] Now to understand both of those, and to kill both of those stones, to understand what is the highest or the greatest perfection of reason, and to understand the use of reason you must make to get there, you can kill both of those stones with the brevity of wisdom by one what?

[39:29] Yeah, by one definition of reason, huh? Because the definition, and you have to say, why does the definition of reason tell you both what reason is, huh? And you have to know what reason is before you can know what is the highest or greatest perfection of reason. But why does it also tell you what it is to use reason?

[39:51] Well, as we'll see in the third part here, and you know already anyway, an ability has to be defined by what it's an ability for, and so an ability to do something, an ability with some activity, has to be defined by the act which it is an ability. And if that activity

[40:11] will also be the what what it is to use that ability, right? So you kill two birds with one stone, huh? Which is which is something Aristotle likes to do, as we mentioned before, but Shakespeare likes to do it too, huh? And so we go back to Shakespeare's definition,

[40:35] and that will tell us about wisdom itself, as Thomas, you know, did in that proemium to *Nicomachean Ethics*, will bring out to us that wisdom must be a knowledge of before and after, most of all. And then, as you start to go into the senses of before and after, as we're taught there in the twelfth chapter of the Categories, then you can start to fill out exactly what that is.

[41:13] But also, large discourse enables you to see something about wisdom because the discourse of the wise man is the the largest discourse, huh? In maybe five of those six senses, huh? It's the most universal, covers the largest area, right, of any discourse.

[41:38] It's a discourse, ultimately, about God, huh? So it's about the very best things, right? It's the largest discourse in that sense. The very universal things that he gets, you have to come to them from a long induction, etc. In fact, he's going to talk about induction here, beginning the fifth reading, right? You have to come to a knowledge of act by induction, and the things you discover, like we were discovering in the ninth book here, have all kinds of applications throughout the whole human thought, and so this discourse is perhaps the largest from its limits, its beginning and its end.

[42:25] And then the last two, it's not necessarily the longest in the sense it has the most steps, but that's not really a perfection, is it? The more steps you have to go through to know something, that's not, you know, making this very great. But when you go from the lowest things like the act we've been talking about up to this point, motion, you go from that all the way to God.

[42:53] That is going almost a what is you could say going an infinite distance, right? So this is the longest discourse in that sense, huh? So you can say that wisdom, the discourse of the wise man, is the largest discourse there is, right? But discourse, of course, is not the end. Knowledge is the end, right? And he, most of all, has a knowledge of the before and and after, especially in the crowning sense of before and after, which is the sense which causes before the effect.

[43:29] This is the guy who knows. Not only the cause, of, the cause, but the first cause. So, he most of all has looked before him. With other senses of before and after enter into his thinking, and you'll see that when you get to the third part of the ninth book.

[43:54] So I don't know if if our friends Aristotle and Thomas have given us a better definition of reason than Shakespeare has. Certainly, you know, I couldn't understand the definition of Shakespeare and see how good it is, right? Without Aristotle and Thomas as teachers, and suddenly

[44:20] parts of definition they see and talk about at certain times, right? They obviously see that, huh? You know, but do you know a place where Aristotle or Thomas puts together the definition of reason as well as Shakespeare does? huh? Of course, he may have the benefit of those two guys. and. Who knows? Whom he read. This is an exhortation too, right? Yeah, it's not only that. Yeah, of course, talking about killing two pieces of one stone.

[44:53] This exhortation to use reason is also a very good introduction to ethics, huh? Because it teaches you a lot in a beginning way about the chief good of man, what it is, right? And also, what's fundamental to ethics is that you're going to live by reason, huh? And so, Aristotle says, you know, if you're not going to live by reason, if you live by your passions, you're a useless sphere of ethics, huh?

[45:24] And this is a very good exhortation now to I mean introduction to practical philosophy. I would I would add two two things to that though, when I introduce good ethics to Shakespeare, and one is where he says what ethics is. You know, he says that in the

[45:52] taming of the shrew. Where somebody is studying that part of philosophy, huh? That treats of happiness by virtue, especially to be achieved. Not a bad nutshell view of what ethics is, huh? Nicomachean Ethics is about happiness by virtue, especially to be achieved. Did you say it more briefly and wisely than that? What's Nicomachean Ethics about? It's about happiness,

[46:37] By virtue. chiefly fire. And then, the third passage is the famous one from the Two Gentlemen of Verona, right? Where she says, "They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. Therefore, it is no mean happiness to be constituted in the mean. "

[47:13] Well, there with the beautiful pun obviously, right? It's extremely good to be in the mean. But there he shows the connection that that other passage I said between happiness, right, and virtue, right. There are as sick that surfeit with too much, right, as they that starve with nothing. Therefore, it is no mean happiness. It's not little, insignificant happiness to be constituted in the mean.

[47:48] So you could add those two passages to the exhortation to use reason, but call it now an introduction to ethics, right? Let's put them together. huh?

[48:00] but for looking philosophy and for the whole philosophy, I just say it's an exhortation to use reason. And unless someone has the exhortation to use reason and and is exhorted by it, what the hell is he pursuing wisdom for? He doesn't even want to use his own reason. What? Any sense, right? So I say to my colleagues, you know, what are you using as an exhortation to use reason?

[48:30] Oh. You mean you're you're introducing them to wisdom? You're trying to exhort them to pursue wisdom. You don't even want to use their reason. Well, don't pursue wisdom. Summa Contra Gentiles uh, Thomas. That's an exhortation to use reason. Really? Yeah, because he talks about the of all human pursuits. Oh yeah, beautiful. That's beautiful. Yeah.

[49:04] It's more. I guess he gives more reason. Aristotle is saying, "Why of all studies, wisdom is the best, right? " Yes. Yeah. So he gives more. That's not really an exhortation to use reason. You see, that's the reason why it's desirable to pursue wisdom. That's the chief thing. Yeah, yeah. So Saint Thomas is one of these colleagues that you're upbraiding What? So Saint Thomas is one of these colleagues that you're upbraiding No, Thomas there is urging you to pursue wisdom, right?

[49:38] He wants you to use reason. You see, okay. But you don't think Thomas would look before and see he's got a. He wrote a commentary on ethics. Yeah. I mean, to me, growing up in Nicomachean Ethics, the old English translation, the Great Books, was served as a kind of exhortation to use reason or to live by reason. But you know, it's kind of drawn out, you know, It doesn't have the conciseness that Shakespeare's exhortation has.

[50:16] But Aristotle does a pretty good job there of exhorting you, especially the time he gets in that book. You know, if you go through the whole thing, but it's a long thing, right? I'm going to

[50:26] try and memorize those words in English in the English translation. We must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things and being mortal, mortal things. He goes on, you know, think as far as we can, make ourselves immortal. So, he goes on, you know, talking about although reason is small it's very small, right, with power it surpasses everything else. I memorized when I was sitting on the on the back steps, and my father said, "What are you doing?

[50:53] " It's very exciting. Oh, okay. Father's a businessman. Never had the opportunity to go to college, but I think he got impressed at his son sitting there memorizing this passage, you know, from the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics.

[51:13] Sometimes you called Shakespeare's definition the first definition. What's the second? Well, I think there are things that you can bring out about what reason is that Shakespeare's definition doesn't bring out, right? In other words,

[51:40] what is reason's own object, right? Because Shakespeare doesn't bring out there that reason's object is that what it is is something sensed or imagined, which Aristotle brings out in the third book about the soul, right? Now, the what it is is something universal, and you see, a large that that's that's brought in there. But

[52:04] a more a later thing, right, is to see, right, that that's reason's own object, the what it is, of a thing sensed or imagined. If you go back to the the great thinkers before Aristotle, and even Plato, and you have obviously Anaxagoras, right, the great fragment about the mind, and where he says every mind is similar, the greater and the lesser, but he begins the great fragment on the mind, DK twelve, there, by saying the mind is what unlimited, right, which fits in with this idea of the large discourse, right, there's something infinite about the mind.

[52:45] And before the great Anaxagoras, you have the great Heraclitus, who says that you never find the end of the soul, even if you travel in every direction. So deep, he says, is its reason, huh? So what they see about reason, it seems, is there's something unlimited about reason, something infinite about reason, and that's perhaps easier to see or discover than that the proper object of reason is the what it is, of the thing sensed or imagined.

[53:18] Doesn't it seem so to you? But certainly you have the example there, of, the great Heraclitus and the great Anaxagoras who are two of the greatest of the philosophers, but they both see that first, right, about reason, that it's something unlimited about it, huh?

[53:43] But also the the fact that discourse, you know, even etymologically is taken from from the word to run, now. Of course, sometimes even in speech you say now. Let me run through that with you once more, and

[54:02] things in motion, right, sooner catch the eye than what not stirs, so it's a movement of reason that we say it, right? I mean, part of the movement, right? You know, it's a movement of reason that first catches the attention of us, right?

[54:19] So, discourse rather than understanding, right? And because he's begun with the word discourse, he uses the word looking because looking doesn't imply necessarily that you've arrived at seeing it, right? And it fits more with the fact that there's a discourse going on there.

[54:45] But you know, then you go more deeply there into the reason there in the De Anima, you discover that reason is not a body, right? It has no body, and Shakespeare's exhortation doesn't bring that out, does it? But that's very essential to a deep knowledge of reason to realize it's immaterial and so on. So that's probably what I have in mind when I think of

[55:21] Shakespeare's exhortation and then in the third book of the De Anima Aristotle's obviously going deeper in things. It's interesting, huh? But Aristotle begins and he talks about the acts of reason too in the De Anima And when Thomas gives his proemium to logic, the major proemium the minor proemium too, but the major proemium especially, he takes the two acts of reason that Aristotle talks about very explicitly there in the De Anima, and then he adds a third one, which is reasoning, right?

[56:05] Okay. And I was talking about that when I was giving the course on the De Anima. Why does Aristotle in the De Anima, He talks about understanding what something is, right? And then composition or division, understanding the true or the false. He doesn't talk explicitly in that chapter about reasoning, right? And and why does he do that? Why doesn't he talk about reasoning there?

[56:42] I suppose for one thing, it's less natural, right? Than understanding, huh? Basic, huh? But the reason I gave was man's understanding is so bad. Excuse me, man's reasoning is so bad. He he he he usually reasons himself into a mistake most of the time. It's so defective, right? Who the heck would want to study that for its own sake? Something as ugly as human reasoning. I was quoting my one of my colleagues years ago.

[57:20] Used to quote this passage from Plato, where Plato says, "An opinion without a reason is an ugly thing. " Don't pine your uglies off on me. Tell us this in class. I thought it was a good thing you did, huh? But how many of these uglies are around? Opinions without reasons. So something is ugly and defective and full of mistakes. Something as disgusting as that is not something you want to study out of wonder.

[57:57] Ugly thing like that. The reason why you'd ever bother to study such a thing is, can I do something about it? You know, straighten it out a bit, eliminate some of the mistakes and errors, right? That's logic, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't know. The study of the soul, you know, Aristotle says in the beginning, it's you know one of the most, in the first place, of the studies you can make, right?

[58:25] And certainly in natural philosophy, it's almost the highest part of natural philosophy, if not the highest part. such wonderful things that we're going to be studying, you know, the one knowledge is better than another because it's about more wonderful things. you know. Nothing wonderful about human reasoning, just in its present condition.

[58:50] Of course, Aristotle says in there, you know, to be mistaken is the usual state of the human mind, and so. It's kind of strange, right, that the soul is the most part; its activity is the most. But the soul is here.

[59:17] So, now tomorrow we have to meet in the. Morning in a new place, right? You can eat here, meet here for breakfast and lunch, but not for dinner. But for morning, you have to meet. Is it attached to the convent, or is it a separate building, or where is it? The building where you're staying. Oh, is it? Middle part. Is it the middle part between the two wings?

[59:46] We're in one wing and the women on the other wing. The middle part is that where? There's a eating area or refectory and. Next to that is a conference room. It's away in the building where you're staying. Oh, we could go look at it now or sometime or what? We could probably find it. Do we need to? So the mattock of Noah, I mean. Middle entrance, right?

[1:00:08] The one in the middle entrance. Does the middle door go into the eating room or to the conference room? It goes. If you turn left, you go to the eating room. If you turn right, this is conference room. Okay, I don't even know the woman's coordinates. I'm being concerned. They're concerned about suffering. Yeah. It's

[1:00:33] the last door that they're supposed to avoid, right? Yeah. Okay. Well One. There's also an interior connection.