Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
24. Act Before Ability: The First Cause as Pure Act and the Sophistical Objection (Metaphysics IX)
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[0:00] there, simply speaking, is coming before, right? If you go back to where before you have natural understanding, well, then you have the act of understanding, actualizing the passive or undergoing understanding using the images as what instruments or tools. Okay, that's why we invoke the angels' strings in the light of our mind, but also to order images. So it's always something actual from which what is able to be is going from ability to what act.

[0:34] It seems like a different act. Well, it's a different example than from the music, you know, the teacher, right? But the teacher we take as an example first because it's more clear what we're saying there, right? Because the the teacher is a different individual than the student, and we'll see this later on when Aristotle talks about the.

[0:58] Act being before ability in perfection, your first reason from the act and ability in the same individual, same thing, and then he'll reason in the ninth reading from act and ability in different things, right? And you say this is more clear, huh? It's a little bit like like the great Socrates in the famous work, the Republic. He develops arguments in the first book, and

[1:32] he seems to conclude the matter, everything, and arguments are pretty good, son. And then begin the second book. There, somebody says, "No, Socrates, do you want to just seem to have convinced us, or do you really want to convince us?" And Socrates says, "Well, I really want to convince you, you know. Well, you know the arguments are a little bit hard to see, you know, in their smallness."

[1:54] And Socrates says, "Well, I'm going to blow this up so you can see it, huh? And then he makes his proportion. We're talking about the importance of proportion, right? Well, he makes a proportion between the parts of the soul and the parts of the city, huh? And so you have the reason and the irascible appetite and the concupiscible appetite, which are all inside me, and kind of hard to see the distinction between.

[2:18] And then the rulers of the city and the soldiers and the the commoners and so on, huh? And so you can kind of see the order better in the city because it's blown up big, huh? Just like Aristotle, you know, will say sometimes should reason rule the emotions like a master rules a slave, or should reason rule the emotions like a father rules a son. What's easier to see the rule of a father over a son because they're two different people, right?

[2:50] Or a master over a slave because they're two different people, than the rule of reason over the emotions. So it's more clear that way, right? So it's easier for us to see that when I'm able to know, but I come to know actually, the teacher already actually knows that act is simply speaking coming before ability. But if I'm you know discovering something by myself, it's more difficult.

[3:17] It's because what I actually know already, I'm able to move myself to know something I don't actually know. So in that way, act is also before ability. But you don't want to Is this point only that there's some act before any ability? But it seems like when he says man generates man, he wants to say the same act is present before there's any ability for that same act.

[3:42] Yeah, yeah, no, no. That's as an example of before the man who before the the material is made a man, right? Who becomes a man? There's something that's already actually a man that does this, right? Okay. And likewise, if the air is. Not hot or not warm, but is able to be right. But the air goes from being able to be warm or hot to being actually hot to the fire or something that is already actually hot.

[4:10] So he's saying, simply speaking, we could say that act is before what ability in time and in a way in causality, because it's because of something already an act that the thing goes from ability to act. Then would your knowledge have to say that this, the knowledge of the same thing is in act before the ability to know that thing? Well, it wouldn't have to be. You could have something enact in the same way, or something in a higher kind of act in the way it causes.

[4:42] So all. Discovery is an example of all the hard case, right? Yeah, because it's all the act and the ability are in the the one himself, right? The one individual, right? So it's a little harder to see than the example I gave there. But but furthermore, you said that he already so someone who discovers does through through what he already does now. Yeah, actually, no, yeah, yeah. So act is coming before, and is the cause of his going from being able to know the conclusion to his actually knowing it.

[5:18] As to his actually knowing already, the premise is that he goes from the ability to know the conclusion to actually knowing it. Well, I was just thinking in terms of this discovery you see in physical sciences, and sometimes it's kind of almost surprising to those who, yeah. But maybe that's still if you probably could land. But again, again, I mean, you talk about the senses. You know, sometimes when they're doing an experiment, they'll see something they didn't expect, right?

[5:44] You know, and it's revelation to them. But still, they're being acted upon by something that is actually out there. The prepared mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're being acted upon by the sensible there.

[6:02] So let's look at Aristotle a little bit more here, and then this first part here. There has been said in tois peri tes ousias that's the way Aristotle often refers to some other part, right? In those books, as were those in those things about substance, right? In those logois and those reasons about our thoughts or speeches about substance, as referring back to Book Seven and Eight, but probably Book Seven here in particular, that everything that comes to be comes to be from something, meaning matter, and by something, right?

[6:39] uh in this, in species in univocal generation, anyway. is the same in species. So dogs give rise to dogs, and cats to cats, and statements give rise to statements, and so on. Now, just make the remark there for a moment, because that's what breaks to the second part where he talks about those other strange kinds of abilities where the act seems to come before. You play the piano.

[7:05] through playing the piano, you acquire the ability to play the piano. That's another way in which special way, kind of which act is before what ability, right? Okay. But now coming back to this here. This is kind of the key thing here to arrive at the first cause, and you have to see that act is before ability simply. Although in some way secundum quid ability is before act,

[7:42] and since ability is before act simply, then the first cause must be most in act. And if the first cause had some passive ability, there had to be something before it. So this is one way of reasoning to the beginning of all things as being pure act, and this is the way Thomas reasons in the sixteenth chapter, say, of the first book of the Summa Contra Gentiles where he's showing that God is pure act.

[8:18] And in the, I guess the third argument, he he takes what he had shown back in the thirteenth chapter that God is the first mover, the first what maker, and therefore he's before everything else. And then once you see that simply speaking act is before ability, you put those two together, and God must be what pure act without any passive ability. And then after a couple other arguments, he comes back and without, you might say, the premise that God is the first mover and the first maker and so on, first cause, he gives, you might say, another argument or a new argument for God's existence or for the first cause, merely saying, hey, there are things in this world that go from ability to act.

[9:14] And if they go from ability to act, they do so by reason of something already in act, and then bringing in the thing that's been talked about a lot before. There's not this infinite what regress, yeah. Then there must be something which is pure act and this we call God. So, interesting, huh? In one of these six arguments of that book, he he reasons. Second argument, it is, yeah.

[9:41] The second argument, he reasons from God being what is first, because we've shown in the thirteenth chapter he's the first mover, the first maker, and so on, the first being. And what is shown right here, right, that act is simply before ability, and then concluding that he's pure act, right? And then in the sixth argument, a separate argument, he reasons from act being before ability simply, but then what comes first before everything else must be nothing but pure act.

[10:16] And then he's using it without the arguments in the 13th chapter. That God is the first mover, so it's like another proof for the existence of God. And although in the argument, as you know, for for motion, you one of the middle terms is in terms of act and ability, right? But it's kind of concretely in in the phenomenon of motion and so on. But this is kind of argument standing by itself.

[10:44] It's kind of beautiful the way he does that. And then he has, we'll go to all the arguments of that chapter, but he also has in that same chapter the argument for God from contingency and necessity, which is the third argument in the Summa Theologiae. But it's not one of the five arguments in the Summa Contra Gentiles And in the Summa Contra Gentiles, you have two arguments from motion, then the then the then the maker argument, the efficient cause argument, which is now the third argument or in this Summa Theologiae.

[11:24] it's the second argument; there's only one argument from motion. And then the third argument in the Summa Theologiae is the one from, you know, there are some things that are able to be and not be. Well, then why are they not to themselves? Because they could be one or the other. And then you go back to something necessary and finally something necessary through itself. And so he gives that argument for the existence of God in the 16th chapter.

[11:50] And then he uses that conclusion that God is necessary through himself, that God can't be what having this passive ability, because that's able to be and not be, and what is necessary to be through itself cannot not be, so there can't be any passive ability, you know, So he not only gives the argument that he makes a separate argument in the question or article on the existence of God and the proof of that in the Summa Theologiae, but he uses that also to conclude that he's what pure act.

[12:21] Now, what strikes me, I'm always looking for errors, you know. Strikes me is that the second kind of mistake in the Sophistical refutations, the second kind of mistake outside of speech, that there, as you may know, 13 kinds of mistakes there in the Sophistical refutations that are common to all matters and so on. And seven of them are from words, like the mistake from mixing up the senses of a word is the most common one, and then there's six outside of of speech.

[12:58] And the first one, as I mentioned before, is the fallacy of the accident, the mistake from mixing up what is so as such and what is so by happening, right? And the second kind of mistake is mistake from mixing up what is so simply with what is so in what some way, right? I mentioned, you know, the beautiful example there last class of the Meno, right? Where Mino makes that kind of mistake, and then Socrates, in trying to respond to Mino's attack, really upon the possibility of investigating what you don't know, he makes the same kind of mistake, in some a different matter.

[13:38] And of course, if you look at the beginning of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle will be referring back to the Meno and clearing up that same difficulty. As I mentioned before, this is a very common mistake in

[13:57] Aristotle talking there in the Politics. Is it, you know, I'm richer than you guys, you know, so altogether better than you guys. Well, in some way better than you, but not simply better because of that, right? Or because you know we're all equal in a democracy in some way, right? Therefore, simply speaking, equal, you know, and so on. But more generally speaking, the fact that people will do something bad because, in some way, it's good.

[14:28] You know the famous bank robber. There he was asked by the judge one time when he was appeared to him several times because he'd been caught. You know, you know, why do you rob these banks? You know, and that's where the money is. He said.

[14:46] Well, robbing a bank, you know, my little boy or girl asks me, "Is robbing a bank good or bad?" I'd say it's bad. It's not. It's bad to do. But why do people rob a bank? In some way, it is good, right? Or I ask the students, they say, you know, if you annoy me, would it be good for me to murder you? Oh no, no, no, no, no, no!

[15:07] It'd be bad for me to murder you. Yeah, but it would remove an annoyance from my life. So even something as bad as robbing the bank, or even worse, as murdering somebody, can be seen as good in some way, right? And something good, like studying, right? When you should study anyway, prevents you from going to the party, right? Prevents you from going to the movies, right? Going to mass on Sunday prevents you from sleeping another couple of hours, right?

[15:38] So, what is good simply can be bad in some way. There's nothing so good that doesn't prevent you from doing something else that's good, right? What prevents you from doing something that is good is bad in some way, isn't it? You see, and so every time we do something good, I mean something bad, it's because it's good in some way, and every time we don't do the good we should do, it's because it's bad in some way.

[16:09] So we're making this mistake all the time through our life. So it's a very common mistake. Well, now as regards the first cause, the main alternative to this, which you find in the early Greek philosophers, and you find in the modern natural scientists and the modern materialists, is that matter is the beginning of all things, right? Okay.

[16:38] Now, if ability came before act, simply speaking, then the beginning of all things would be most in ability, and then the beginning of all things would be matter, because matter is able to be what formed and built up more and more. So the the first matter is what is most in what potency, most in this passive ability. So if ability came before act, simply, then the first cause would have to be matter.

[17:10] But if act comes before ability, simply, as Aristotle is showing here, then the first cause must be pure act, and therefore it's a big mistake to think that matter is the first cause. But now you say, what kind of a mistake are all these people making? And there may be one and one kind of mistake here, but they're mixing up what is so simply with what is so in some way, because in some way ability is before act.

[17:45] They're saying, simply speaking, it's before, and therefore matter must be the first thing. Now, one thing that strikes me in reading my favorite book there, the Summa Contra Gentiles, because of the size of the printers, they make. a difference. And then, you know, I don't. Before that's what drew me irresistibly to that book. Compared to the Marietti editions, which you have kind of a you know tiny little print, you know.

[18:14] But this is a beautiful one that was taken from the Leonine, you know. But anyway, the sixteenth chapter, as I mentioned before, is the one that shows that God is pure act. And then the seventeenth chapter, following that right away, is that God is not matter, or matter is not God. It kind of strikes me kind of funny at first because I think I read the Summa Theologiae first, and when you take up you know is there matter in God or matter and form in God is he composed of matter and form?

[18:53] That's one of the questions under the simplicity of God, right? And the simplicity of God in the Summa Contra Gentiles begins in question eighteen, okay? So before the consideration of simplicity, you have in the seventeenth chapter a chapter dedicated to showing that God is not matter. And I think I mentioned in my edition there. I think the the the title probably is not Thomas's, you know, whether there's matter in God, right?

[19:28] But the when you read the actual words of Thomas in the text there, he's he's saying that God is not matter, right? Now, now, why should those two? And it kind of surprised me that that chapter was there where it was because it doesn't that belong with the articles or the chapters on the simplicity of God, huh? And actually, you don't really have to have in the Summa Contra Gentiles so much another chapter on this.

[19:57] God is not composed of matter and form. You pretty well get rid of that from the seventeenth chapter, right? But it kind of struck me that it's not in the treatise on the on the simplicity where you'd expect it if you are a student of the Summa Theologiae, right? But it's it's it's staying by itself right after the sixteenth chapter, right? But if you come back to this, and and when Thomas gives the argument for God being pure act and so on, he's always pointing out that ability is before act, is passability, in some way, right?

[20:30] But secundum quid loquendo, right? Secundum quid, simply, act is before ability. Well, if you don't see the distinction between those two, if you think that what is before in some ways before simply, then you're going to say matter is beginning of all things, and then you're going to be very seriously mistaken about the first cause. So maybe Thomas, in his own mind, right? When he sees that the reason for saying that God is pure act is that act is before ability simply, then he sees the other side of the coin that the mistake that people are making is because they're being deceived into thinking that because ability is in some way before, that therefore simply it is before.

[21:28] So you might say that the materialists are making the mistake of what simply and not simply the second kind of mistake, the mistake for mixing up what is so simply not simply. But that is a long history, you know, starting with the Anaximander and and before that.

[21:50] Okay, just like Anaxagoras, when Anaxagoras is trying to understand matter, and he realizes you can't get something out of nothing, and therefore everything that comes out of matter must be in there, right?

[22:14] But is it in there simply and in act? That's what he concludes, right? And then he gets into difficulties and Aristotle gets into two. So this is a a very common kind of mistake. But here, here it enters into the what the fundamental dichotomy of opinion, you might say, is the first act most perfect and most in act, or is the first cause matter, but is most potential, what is most imperfect?

[22:45] Therefore, right? Okay. Now, as we'll see. When you go on to the eighth, the ninth reading, he's going to show that act is before ability in substance, that is to say, in perfection, right?

[23:14] So if the first cause is pure act, then the first cause is most what? Perfect, huh? Okay. But if mistakenly, if you thought that matter is the beginning of all things, then the first cause would be the least perfect of all, okay? Now, what's interesting about that is that in the Proemium to Wisdom here at the beginning of the first book of Wisdom, Aristotle shows that the end and goal of our knowledge is to know the first cause, and we naturally, of course, seek to know the cause of the things that we see, and wonder does lead us to do this.

[24:03] If the cause has a cause, we seek the cause of the cause, and all the way to the first cause. So he develops, you know, very beautifully in the Proemium that the goal of our knowledge is the knowledge of the first cause. Okay, keep that in mind now. Okay, then you go to the De Anima, for example, and in the beginning of the De Anima Aristotle is saying that all knowledge is good, but one knowledge is better than another, either because it's about a better thing, or because it is more, it knows its object better, it's more certain, and so on.

[24:42] And of course, in the Parts of Animals, he explains that of those two criteria, the better one is what? It's about a better thing, okay? And again, distinction between simply and in some way, huh? Which is better, huh? Geometry, say, or or the knowledge of the soul, right? Okay, which is better, the knowledge of how to make a square equal to given oblong, or the knowledge of the soul?

[25:17] Well, as regards the thing being known, the knowledge of the soul is better than the knowledge of the square, right? But as far as how I know it, right? How certainly and how clearly I know it, I know better what a square is than I know what the the soul is. So in that way, knowledge of the square is better than knowledge of the soul, but simply, which is better?

[25:47] So. Yeah. It's so the criterion is better. You can say to know a better thing imperfectly than to know a lesser thing perfectly, huh? It's more essential to what knowing is, okay? And Aristotle, in the parts of animals, uses that simple example: a glimpse of those we love is better than a lot leisurely view of those we don't care about. So I say, you know, you you can see the boss all day there, you know, but then at noontime, you know, you can get a glimpse of your girlfriend over there.

[26:20] That little glimpse of your girlfriend is more than this long, complete view of the boss there, you know. So, so if knowledge of a better thing is better, right? Then what knowledge is the best? The knowledge of the best thing, right? Okay. And since the end is always better than what is for the sake of the end, you could reason that the end of our knowledge must be a knowledge of the best thing.

[26:59] Okay. So, by one very good line of argument in the proemium to wisdom, we conclude that the end of our knowledge is a knowledge of the first cause. By another line of argument, we reason that the end of our knowledge must be a knowledge of the best thing, and both arguments are good. Now, if the first cause is the best thing, everything harmonizes, as Aristotle says. With the truth, all things harmonize.

[27:36] And so, when Aristotle argues from act being before ability, simply speaking in time, to the first cause being pure act, and then he argues, as we'll see in the eighth and ninth readings, that act is more perfect in ability, he shows that the first cause will also be the most what? Perfect. And so everything fits together. But if you say that matter is the beginning of all things, then it's not the most perfect thing.

[28:07] It's unformed and so on. Well, now you've got a split personality, right? You got two last ends. One's there. One's down there. Nothing you do, right? You can see why Marx, you know, say, "Well, we got to transform matter then, right? " But

[28:32] if your goal there is to what is it to know, right? Is to know the best thing, know the first cause. You've got an insoluble problem. But with the understanding that Aristotle gives us here of act, it turns out that, and very reasonably, that the first cause must be also the best thing, and therefore. Everything fits together. With the truth, all things harmonize.

[29:07] You see how important this is. And I was saying, you know, this is what really kind of the witness that convinced me, you know, that Shakespeare was hitting the nail on the head, right? When he's saying that reason looks before and after, and therefore wisdom, being the highest perfection of reason, that most of all looks before and after. And you start to see the importance of Aristotle looking before and after with act and ability.

[29:31] After he's distinguished them, and you say, "Wow." Okay. Now, the next part of this. scene,Seventh reading, he reasons from the active powers that we talked about before, where it seems you got to do the act first, right, before you have the ability. So he takes example again of the what housebuilder and the guy playing the what cithara or the the musical instrument, right? But if you're taking a musical instrument, you wanted to.

[30:06] It's only by playing the piano you learn how to you acquire the ability to play the piano, right? It's only by speaking French that you acquire the ability to speak French, right? And that's a special way in which in those kinds of abilities, act is before ability, right?

[30:24] But then he mentions the what sophistical objection, huh? In line 34 there, ho sophistikos elenchos, huh? And this is a no sophistikos elenchos. What does that mean? elenchos means refutation, right? But sophistikos means an apparent reputation, right? So the thing the sophist wants to do most of all gets you in a contradiction or make you appear you're in a contradiction, huh? But it's a sophistical refutation because you're not really in a contradiction, but you don't see the way out, huh?

[30:59] The young lady who says she doesn't know my brother Mark is not really contradictory herself, right? When you say you don't know who's knocking at the door, uh, uh, in some way you don't know who's knocking at the door, right? But simply speaking, you do know your mother. My example I gave earlier today, huh? Okay. So the sophistical objection is how can one not having the episteme do that of which the essence episteme is, huh?

[31:35] And the same way you you have the same difficulty or objection there that Aristotle raises in the Nicomachean Ethics, right? How do you become a courageous man or a moderate man or a gentle man? Was by doing courageous things or gentle things, right? Moderate things that you acquire the virtue, right? Well, how can it be true that you become courageous by doing courageous things? If you do courageous things, you are courageous, right?

[32:01] Okay. Now what what kind of sophistical mistake is that being made, huh? Because you don't do it the same way after you have the virtue as you did before, right? It was difficult to stop eating the candy, right? Before you acquire the virtue of moderation, huh? And you might you know give in and stuff yourself someday, right, huh? You see. So there's a difficulty and a what instability in your doing.

[32:36] The act of virtue before you had the virtue, right? But after you acquired the act of virtue, it becomes easier and also more pleasant, right? And more stable. Why before it was maybe unpleasant, at least to begin with, okay? So you're not really doing courageous things before you have courage in the way you do them afterwards, huh? You're not really affirming and denying the same thing or the same, are you?

[33:09] No. Before I was doing it with difficulty, with discomfort, in a wobbly way. Now I'm doing it firmly and with a agreeable way and and some ease and so on. So this is, I suppose, the third kind of mistake, huh? Okay. No kind of knowledge is completely created. Yeah. What? No kind of knowledge is created completely. No. It's all it's all in you. It just has to be perfected.

[33:49] Well, what do you mean by it's all in you? Now you sound like Socrates there. You know. So all intellectual virtues are in you. The fact that you can speak words or something like that. Yeah, yeah. You can go back, and that's another thing that Thomas points out, right? I mean, the the seed and seeds, right? Like a natural understanding of the virtues, huh? There's the seeds.

[34:13] So that that's another thing to be said, But I was addressing the immediate objection to the Sophist, right? Saying how can you learn how to build houses by building houses if you if you're already building houses? You already know how to build houses. Well, no, you make some mistakes. You have to tear something out and do it over again or something, right? So you're you're you're not doing it as in the same way, right?

[34:38] Well, maybe this is the third kind of sophistical fallacy or mistake. There were ignorance refutations called, huh? Where uh, a refutation is what Where you contradict yourself, huh? But to say that I can't do this thing in this way, but I can do in that way, is not a contradiction, right? The contradiction would be if I could do it and not do it in the same way, right?

[35:06] You see, so you're leaving out one of the conditions there of what a real contradiction is. It's like in the great dialogue, the the Protagoras, huh? Where Protagoras tries to get Socrates in a contradiction because Socrates says at one point that it's difficult to become good, right? Another time he says it's not difficult to be good. Well, it appears he's contradicting himself, right? Right. But the point is.

[35:36] That in the one case he said is difficult to become good, in the other case he said is not difficult to be good. Now, are being and becoming the same thing? See, you might say it's difficult to get to the top of that mountain out there. Let's say, huh? See, is it difficult to be on top of the mountain?

[36:01] I can just stand there right now. No difficulty to stand there. You see, so Socrates is not really contradicting himself, okay? Of course, you know, Alcibiades likes to kill two birds with one stone, right? So this forces him to touch upon the distinction between being and becoming, huh? Okay. Sometimes I take the example with with your parents, and I say, do you depend upon your parents for being?

[36:39] And so he says, no. He says, well, you wouldn't even be without your parents, and you seem to contradict yourself, right? See, well, you really depend upon your parents for coming to be. You would not have come to be, but once you come to be, you can be without them, right? So your being doesn't depend upon them, but the becoming. And the same way, when I was reasoning with Descartes, there Descartes says you can't come to know from probable opinions.

[37:12] And because if you base yourself on the probable, it isn't certain and therefore it isn't knowledge, right? And I said, well, you can come to know from the probable, but you can't know from the probable. And and I I think I mentioned the kind of a sensible example I used where you might have a hard time seeing something or noticing something out in the hill, and somebody points it out to you and saying, you see the tree out there, that stands out, right?

[37:43] Well, look to the right of the tree, and there's a bush, right? And now just to the left of the bush, oh, now I see it. But once my eyes fall upon it, I see it not by seeing the tree and other thing, by seeing the tree and by seeing the bush had a role to play in my coming to see that little boy that's lost out there or something, right?

[38:03] But I don't see my little that little boy there through seeing the bush and the thing. I came to see it, right? You see, and and coming to know and knowing are not the same thing. So dialectic, like I just did an example there,

[38:26] one thing it does is help you to notice something you wouldn't notice otherwise. You come to notice something you wouldn't notice otherwise. But it's not the cause of you noticing of you knowing that thing that you, you see, you see that? It's very important. But but that's you know I'm imitating my master there, Socrates, right? Who says, well, I said it was difficult to become good. I didn't say, you know, it it was difficult to be good.

[38:55] And it's the same thing. It's also an occasion for him to, you know, to distinguish between becoming and being, right? Of course, Aristotle points out that there is before already some kind of what actuality, even motion. When you are moving, you have moved, right? Okay. Why isn't that in some respect simply, and in some respect, the act that by which you acquire the act? Well, I mean, maybe here's something that you know.

[39:31] I mean, you could say, does Berkeley speak French, right? Well, simply speaking, no. So my friend Warren Murray would say, well, I don't learn how to speak French, or I don't learn French. But I could, in some way, speak French. Get some French words out and make myself understood a little bit, you know. So in some imperfect way. Right. You could, yeah. You know. But but here the guy is trying to see you as contradicting yourself, right?

[39:56] And he's not distinguishing between the way in which you do courageous things before and afterwards, right? It's not the same way, so it's not really the same thing you're able to do and not able to do, right? You're able to to do courageous things by by screwing up to courage, right? You see, and that's why when they want to see if you have virtue or not, they like to what?

[40:21] Um, spontaneous, huh? Right. See what you do, right? Because sometimes you can do something like an act of virtue by really, you know, preparing yourself for it, huh? Um, I know a guy used to drink too much at weddings and other such functions, right? And so when there was a wedding coming up, the wife and others were, you know, pressing him, you know, to drink moderately this time.

[40:54] And sometimes they'd succeed, right, And screwing him up to that the act of moderate drinking, huh, opposed to. So I mean, but spontaneity, the man would would you know go off the deep end, and naturally don't have the the stability that would come from possessing the habit of moderation, huh? Okay. So you don't drink moderately in the same way before you have moderation and afterwards, right? It's all kinds of differences, huh?

[41:28] You know, in terms of stability and the ease and the you know. Pleasure or pain that you have in in doing this act now.

[41:40] You see that? Yeah. So, so he answers that objection there. So he says, also at the conclusion, end of the seventh reading. So also in this way, it is clear that act is thus before what? Yeah, kata genesin kai chronon Now kata genesin means what? Before in generation, and sometimes that's taken as a what? A part of before in time, because generation things are before in time, but

[42:33] but it's in the same process, right? Okay, but before in time is broader. I before you in time, right? Because I was born before you, and so on, right? I'm not before you in generation, even not a latter part of my generative process. Okay,

[42:55] so we go on to the eighth reading, or? Yes. Yeah. I'm still not seeing how. Seems like when someone acquires a virtue or new knowledge, that they're simply speaking better and more in act than they were before. Yeah. And that act does come from some previous act, but it seems like there's just simply more act there at that point. Yeah, but what he's saying is that he's talking about that kind of ability, which is more an active ability, you know, the ability to know something or to do something, right?

[43:28] but he says even that kind of ability that we have to to build houses or ability to play the piano, even that seems to come from the act of playing the piano or the act of building the house, right? So in that sense, you have another kind of area where you see how act is before ability, but it's kind of a special one. The more important one, at least from the point of view of the first cause, is this passive ability, right?

[43:56] The ability to be acted upon, the ability to undergo, and such an ability can't give itself the act it doesn't have, because then you'd have a contradiction, right? You have to have the act it's going to give itself, so it have to have the act it doesn't have, and that's a real contradiction. So now you know the meaning of it's more divine to give than to receive, because act is what enables you to give, right?

[44:26] Why it's this passive potency in some sense that is responsible for your being able to receive. So since God is pure act, it must be more divine to give than to what? Receive. If God can't receive anything. That that's the thing that Socrates is kind of pointing out a little bit in the Euthyphro right? where Euthyphro is trying to understand piety as kind of a quid pro quo.

[44:54] I give you this God, and you give me this back, and so on, right? But can you really give God something, right? You know, can God really receive something from us? You know, and Saint Paul talks about that too for us. And so it's a little puzzling, you know. How can we give God thanks? You know, I used to compare it to parents giving a little child an allowance, and the child out of the allowance, you know, buy something for mommy or daddy for Christmas, you know, and it's kind of, you know, using what he's we've given them to buy us, you know, and well, we we like that, we appreciate that, and and we we think it's good on their part, but have they

[45:38] really given us something, you know? It's it's out of what we've given them, right? But it's even more of a problem with with God with with your parents. How how can you give God something?

[45:53] You know Thanksgiving, you know, you know, but is is our giving God thanks? Does God really get something out of this? I get the kick out of our thanking him. You can give us our ability to give thanks, So. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why the praise of the law. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and it's me who's going to suffer if I don't give God thanks, then I'm ungrateful.

[46:14] on him, You know, this is something bad of me, right? So my giving God thanks for things I received from Him is in some sense more my good than His. So you're not adding anything to His, right? You see, so I mean, it really is a problem, you know. The the old thing at Christmas time when you give the guy he's got everything, you know, that was the old thing, you know, and advertisements for this guy's really got everything, right?

[46:37] So what the heck do you give him? You can't give him anything. Do you have other questions about this? But you can see how important this is, you know, for knowing the first cause. That's why usually when I teach, you know, courses on this, you can't obviously do all these books in a semester and and but in these books on being in one books seven especially in eight in nine and ten if I have time to do just one of the books I'll try to do book nine right the reason why I try to do it is precisely because it seems to me you can see most clearly in the ninth book how the consideration of being as being will enable you to eventually arrive

[47:30] at the first cause. It it also fits in a lot if you had students in in philosophy of nature who met the idea of ability and act and and motion so on and you that's where you start here right with motion so on so there's a kind of Continuity. I mean, I end the philosophy of nature class with the you know definition of motion and maybe a little bit the definition of time.

[47:56] So here you can pick up from there, right? So there's kind of a continuity. But the main reason is you know going to the first cause is how this aims you to go there.

[48:11] So you see the order of the metaphysics better. You know, I try to stick in now the eighth book at least to make this is chief subject of wisdom substance. I have these are the two books on substance. I do each one of them. You know, book seven of course would be impossible with undergraduates. It was impossible with all of us, but but book eight of course would tie in nicely with natural philosophy because they met matter and form in the first book of natural hearing.

[48:38] And book eight is is investigating substance through starting from natural philosophy. Book seven is starting you know more from logic and a little more abstract.

[48:53] Okay, should we stop there? We were on a digression. Can you ask that question? Okay.