Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
27. Good, Bad and Privation: Why Act Is Better than Ability
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7b-wisdom-2006-colorado/027-good-bad-and-privation-why-act-is-better-than-ability/

[0:00] That's the end of the first of the three parts of the third part, right? Ninth book. Just like the angels, huh? Now, the first part of the third part was the before and after of act and ability, right? And that was divided into three, right? It's before in definition or knowledge. It's before in

[0:28] time, simply, but in some way, ability is before in time. And now it's before imperfection right? And he showed that both in the same thing, where the what's later the generation of the same thing is more perfect and more actual, right? And where the end of the thing is to act like act is to ability.

[0:55] Now, the second thing is to talk about good and perhaps bad too, but mainly good and what's better, right? And this is in a way a what? Another sense of before, isn't it? Because the fourth sense of before is what? Gooder, better.

[1:26] So, in some ways, it is a continuation of before and after, but also continuation of act being more perfect. You may know that in the Summa Theologia, for example, that when Thomas takes up the substance of God, it's divided into five attributes, basic. But to some of these attributes, there's another attribute that what follows upon it, huh? So, following upon God being unchangeable is God being eternal, right?

[1:59] Following upon His being infinite is being everywhere in some sense. And following upon His being perfect is his what? Goodness. Goodness, yeah, yeah. Okay.

[2:14] Now, if I was going to add to Thomas, right? What would follow upon God being one? Doesn't have any attribute following upon that, but what would follow upon His being one?

[2:31] He's the measure of all things. The one is the measure, right? So, I wanted to add to Thomas in some serious way because he often points out this connection, and Aristotle does in the book of wisdom here. You know, a question on the unity of God, and then God is the measure of all things. That's like the fourth way a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you want to do something for one, like you do for the good, and so on.

[3:02] So I mentioned this connection there in the Suma simply because there's a connection between the perfection of God, the perfection of act, and its being gooder or more good or better. It's better to say it that way, I guess. The ability.

[3:22] Now, how does he show this? That act is what better beltion and more honorable than spoudaias dunameos, a good ability, right? Is clear from these. Now, what he's going to do is make use of what we saw a little bit in the last reading. That what is able to be is able what not to be, right? And what in me is able to be healthy is also able to be sick, as you can perhaps infer, right?

[4:09] Okay. And then he makes kind of a line, you might say, huh? To be healthy, right? To be able to be healthy. To be able to be sick, and then to be sick. And the ability to be healthy and the ability to be sick, although defined by different things, huh? In the thing, it's really the same thing. Is he able to be both, huh? Okay. Now,

[4:42] obviously, the two extremes: one is what good to be healthy, and the other is bad to be sick, right? But the ability to be healthy or sick is in the middle, right?

[4:59] Now, can the ability to be healthy be as good as being healthy? When it's also in reality the ability to be sick, which is something bad. Well, therefore, the ability to be healthy can't be as good as to be healthy, right? Because in some way it's a little mixed up with being sick. Because it is in fact the same ability of contradictories. Okay. Just like in me, huh?

[5:33] There's not one ability that I have to be healthy, another ability I have to be sick. Like having the ability to talk and the ability to walk. And believe it or not, I can walk and talk at the same time. But I can't what be healthy and be sick at the same time, because it's really the same ability, and you can only actualize one at a time, huh?

[6:02] So if the ability to be healthy is also in a way the ability to be sick and to be sick is something bad, right? Can the ability be as good as actually being healthy? No, no. So that's very nicely he has it showing you, huh?

[6:20] Okay. So that takes you through just part of this, most of this here. And then he says, around line fifteen, the same thing would be true about the bad.

[6:43] Which is worse, to be able to be sick or to be sick? To be sick. To be able to be sick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But why? See. Well. Because the ability to be healthy. Yeah, the ability to be sick is the same ability things as ability to be healthy, right? So it's not entirely cut off for the good, is it?

[7:16] Why nothing in nothing good about being sick? You see. So the ability to be good is not as good as being good. And the ability to be bad is not as bad as being bad.

[7:45] The ability to be sick is being sick. You see the way he shows it, very convincing, right? Now, again, there's another point he's going to make now, and it's made in. In my opinion, too briefly, the text we have.

[8:10] After he points the help of the bad, But in line 17, he's going to bring out something very, very important about understanding the bad.

[8:25] And from his way of showing that it's better to be healthy than to be able to be healthy, and it's worse to be sick actually than to be able to be sick, you might say,

[8:44] what sense of actuality is that he's talking about when he's saying to be what sick? Is badness something actual, or it can be actual, right? Well, now

[9:12] in a way, there's a kind of equivocation here, or maybe it's a kind of metaphorical sense in which to be bad is some said to be something actual. When I say metaphorical, I mean really what distant, okay? Now, what does that mean? Well, if you go back to the fifth book of wisdom, when he talks, I believe about perfect there and so on, he throws in for good measure a metaphorical sense, right?

[9:57] Okay. Now we mentioned how the first two meanings of perfect mean something is complete, whole, right? And of course, Aristotle says in the in the he's the third book of natural hearing that whole and perfect mean almost the same thing.

[10:18] But Aristotle gives kind of the metaphorical sense, and I give an example in English. When the military police had me park my car down by the Hudson there for the game in the Hudson Rose and the salt water in the Hudson, and my car was totaled. That's what they say, right? Totaled. Now, what does that word "total" mean?

[10:56] Yeah. See, now it could be worse than that. Your car could be a complete wreck. But when your car is a complete wreck, how complete is it? Very incomplete. Yeah, yeah. You can see how distant that sense is, huh? There's some very distant likeness, but strictly speaking, properly speaking, as opposed to metaphorically speaking, when my car is completely wrecked, it's not complete at all.

[11:34] I'm completely ruined, right? Okay. So that metaphorical sense is kind of being used when you say that being bad is a kind of what actuality. Metaphorically speaking, you can speak that way, huh? But properly, that's not what the bad is at all.

[12:05] Okay. Now, let me give a simple example of that, huh? Take something that's very clearly bad, huh? You might say that I am able to be blind, right? And when I become blind, my ability to be blind is actualized, right?

[12:30] You can speak that way, but properly speaking, is that being made actual? Is that coming to be something? To have something? Notice the difference. I'm able to be a geometer, right? And when I acquire geometry, I'm actually a what? Geometer. But there's been really something added to me, huh?

[12:59] But when my ability to be blind, if you want to speak of having the ability to be blind, when I become actually blind, is something been added to me? I actually have something I didn't have before, Maybe blindness, huh? See, if you speak of blindness as something like geometry, right? By geometry, I'm a geometer, and by this form called blindness, I'm blind, right? What you have is a being of what reason, huh?

[13:33] Because you're thinking and speaking about what is really the non-being of something, as if it were a form, right? Just like when you say nothing is nothing, huh? Or you say nothing is something. It's nothing. And and that's that's a being of reason. There's nothing out there called nothing. Nothing is something only in the mind, huh? Okay. Or take another example here.

[14:10] I suspect that my students are able to be ignorant, huh? In fact, I suspect that they are actually ignorant. Um, now, is that an actualization of them to be actually ignorant? No. So,

[14:33] you speak of to be ignorant in act. You're speaking how? Metaphorically, huh? Speaking non figuratively, to be ignorant is not to know, to not have knowledge, right, huh? Although you're able to have knowledge, right? And especially when you should have it, huh? And so on. Okay.

[15:02] Now, Aristotle's text here, going on here, is now dropping that metaphorical use, and saying what this really is as far as things are concerned, huh?

[15:18] And in line 17, there he says, "It is clear, therefore, that bad is not apart from things." And now he's using the word hysteron, which means what? After, right? Aristotle apparently looks before and after, huh? And he's saying, bad is by nature after ability. See? Is it definition? No, it's a before and after. See? Because what the bad is fundamentally is the non-being of something you are able to have when you are able to have it, and when you should have it, huh?

[16:06] See? So the non-being of of sight, let's say, in this glass, this glass doesn't see. That's not really the bad of the glass, is it? Because I know the glass doesn't see. It's not the non-being of something a glass is able to have and should have, huh? It's simply negation, right? But lack is not just a negation.

[16:39] That's why to be or not to be are more opposed than sight and blindness, because sight and blindness have in common a subject that by nature is able to have sight and should have it, and so on, huh? But blindness is a non-being of that in such a subject, huh? So you have to have the ability to have sight. Before, you can be what, blind, right? And that's why he says that the bad is after right ability.

[17:15] So you can have ability for something without the bad, but you can't have the bad without the ability. Yeah. Now, what sense of before is that? By the way. Second. Yeah. Yeah. One can be without the other, right? I can have the ability

[17:40] to have the sense of sight, right, without being blind, right? But you can't, strictly speaking, be said to be blind unless you're the kind of animal that is apt by nature to have sight. Okay. So my glass is not ignorant, right? Because it's not by nature apt to have knowledge, right? But my students are ignorant without any qualification.

[18:12] Now, here Aristotle is is not as complete as he could be, and often at this point I make an excursion to Aristotle's. Consideration of this in the first book of Natural Hearing. You know, at the end of the first book of Natural Hearing, in the

[18:42] towards the end, in the twelfth and thirteenth readings, and especially in the thirteenth reading, he points out that change is not always between contraries. You don't necessarily have the contrary form before you acquire form. Before you acquire virtue, for example, you don't necessarily have the contrary vice. Before you get the true opinion about something, you don't necessarily have the false opinion. But what you necessarily what's necessarily true is that you lack the virtue before you acquire it.

[19:16] Now, the man who has the opposite vice lacks it too. But not everybody who lacks the virtue has the contrary vice, and that's why it's easier to bring up a child to be virtuous than to take the person who has the vice and try to make them virtuous because they're going to be virtuous. Well, Aristotle ends up then with

[19:40] matter and form, and the lack of form is what's necessarily involved in these changes in the natural world. Well, what I do sometimes at that point,

[19:56] realizing the importance of distinction, huh? I sometimes use the ninth reading, which is Aristotle's long critique of the position of Anaxagoras about matter. I sometimes use it at that point, reading it after twelve and thirteen, because in a way, you could say the great Anaxagoras has mixed up matter and form. He's mixed up ability and act. He thinks that everything that you get out of matter or can get out of matter is actually in there.

[20:30] So in a way, he's mixing up what ability and act, matter and what form. And so I go through the great critique there that Aristotle has of Anaxagoras, where he shows all the difficulties that Anaxagoras gets into, right, and all the absurdities because he doesn't distinguish between act and ability, huh? Because he wants to make things that are only in ability actual. Now that separates matter and form.

[21:00] That critique helps you to, you know. And then he has a critique of Plato. Plato separates matter and form, but he doesn't distinguish between matter and what. Nothing. And lack of form. Nothing but lack of form.

[21:24] And of course, this same tendency you have in the Manichaeans and so on, right? Now, Aristotle is disagreeing with the greatest mind before him, right? Very great mind, Plato. Now, when you disagree with the great mind, you don't say Plato's wrong because I'm right. In fact, doesn't do much good anywhere to see that way. So Aristotle follows the advice of the central thinker, human thought, at this point, and Heraclitus says you have to follow what is common, right?

[22:04] And those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common to all. So Aristotle does is to find a common basis that he and Plato share,

[22:18] from which he can reason that he's right in distinguishing between matter and lack of form, and Plato is mistaken in not distinguishing between the two. Well, he can't take his common basis on matter and lack of form because that's where they disagree. Well, you got to go to the other thing then, right? Which is form. And Aristotle finds a common basis that he and Plato share. It's very profound in shows these two great minds that form is something godlike, good and desirable.

[22:57] And he's going to reason from this that Plato should distinguish between matter and lack of form. But stop for a moment on the common basis that Aristotle and Plato share. Form is something godlike, good and desirable. Well, form is

[23:19] an act, as we've seen, right? And God is what pure act. So in that sense, form is like God in a way that matter is not like God, and because the act is the perfection of a thing, as we saw, and perfection of thing is good and therefore desirable, therefore form is something good and desirable. Okay. Well, then Aristotle says, let's compare matter and lack of form.

[23:50] Well, matter, you could say, speaking very concretely, desires form because it's perfected by form, it's made actual by form, and in that sense, matter seems to be something good because it's capable of form. But lack of form would seem to be opposed to form, and therefore, if form is something good, the lack of form is something bad. So how can matter and lack of form be the same thing when one seems to be good and is perfected by form, and the other seems to be something bad opposed to form?

[24:25] And he says, if the lack of form were to desire form, it would desire its own destruction. So the one is perfected by form, the other is eliminated by form. They can't be the same thing. The ball game is over. So Aristotle, you know, sees distinction. But there you're getting kind of the key to what he's saying here, very briefly. That

[24:50] primarily, before anything else, matter is a kind of what? non being, huh? It's a non being of something you're able to have when you should have it, so on, huh? Okay. So this is kind of the key to understanding what bad is. And Augustine kind of, you know, exaggerates a bit when he say, you know, sin is nothing, and the man who sins becomes nothing, right? But Augustine sees that the bad is something.

[25:23] in negation, huh? Incidentally, Augustine has the same kind of argument that Aristotle has against Plato when he argues against the Manichaeans. Because the Manichaeans, like the Platonists and like Plotinus, if you identify matter and lack of form or don't distinguish between them, then matter is something bad. And that's kind of fundamental to Manicheans. But Augustine says, but matter being capable form, which is good, must itself be good.

[25:55] So he's using essentially the same argument against the Manichaeans that Aristotle does against Plato. But as far as we know, it's independent of Aristotle because we don't think he had the the eight books in actual hearing.

[26:10] Thomas Aquinas had the advantage of being able to read both Aristotle and and Augustine, who's perhaps the greatest of the Church Fathers. Aristotle, because the philosopher is, but they both these two great minds, they come up with substantially the same argument against the same mistake, and you have to admire that, huh? Um. Now, that's what Aristotle says in the line 17 there or 18. husteron gar te physei to kakon.

[26:42] The bad is what by nature after right ability right, or you could say ability is before matter right in the second sense. Okay. So you can't find matter. You can't find the bad all by itself. The bad is always a non-being, is something you should have. Um. So it's always in that sense presupposes something and some pragmaton some thing huh Now.

[27:16] Sorry, I just have one question. You were saying that you could say something is actually blind, and there you would be speaking kind of metaphorically. Yeah, yeah. Just like when you speak, my car is totaled, right? Right. See, I guess my question was this: that why wouldn't you say that you're speaking? By analogy, simply because you know how Saint Thomas and Aristotle say that being can be said in four ways according to analogy: either substance, or accident, or imperfect act, or yeah.

[27:46] Well, if there is an analogy there, it'd be a metaphorical analogy. Because strictly speaking, you are talking about a what lack of act, right? In reality, so to call a lack of act a reality, to call something that is completely destroyed, complete, right? Complete wreck. My car is complete in some sense, and

[28:10] when in reality it is as far from being complete as it ever would be, right? It's only metaphorical that you are there for saying this, huh? But, but Aristotle say that when you say that not a non-being or a being of reason is is a being by analogy by analogy. Yeah, it seems like that's the same thing you are talking about when you say that the car is actually not there, or or the man is actually blind, or something like that, because it seems like.

[28:39] Well, no, if you want to talk, you can say blindness. Blindness is is a being of reason, right? Okay, but in things, right? Blindness is not a thing, but the lack of the thing, right? Okay, we're talking about in things now, right? We're not talking about the fact that blindness has a certain being in reason, and but the fact that it has no being, it's a non-being in in things.

[29:08] We're talking about things now, okay? Um. Now, although that's the basic mention of bad, you should realize that the word bad is equivocal by reason. And the text that I am aware of, for Thomas distinguishes the three basic meanings of bad, is in his commentary in the second book of the Sentences,

[29:50] Distinction Thirty Four, Question One, Article Two, the Solution. Okay, and here Thomas distinguishes three senses of bad. The first sense of bad is the lack, Right? In the strict sense, the non-being of what you are able to have and should have when you should have it, right? The second sense of bad is what quotes has that lack, right?

[30:24] The third sense of bad is what causes that lack, right? Okay, so take an example of that. Blindness is an example of bad in the first sense. Blindness is a non-being of sight in a subject capable of sight and that should have sight and when it should have sight. So that's the fundamental meaning of bad.

[30:56] But not only is it bad, not only is blindness bad, but it's bad to be blind, right? Okay. So, but that refers back to the first sense, right? Okay.

[31:12] And then, if it's bad to be blind, then it's bad for me to poke your eye or something like that. Okay. But my poking your eye is bad because it blinds you, right? And you being blind is bad because blindness is bad, right? Okay. So Thomas says in the text there, in in bad things in this way said there is such an order that that which is per se malum, through itself bad, is said first, right?

[31:50] And all others by relation to it, by ratio to it, right? It's that kind of a what a name equivocal by reason, huh? Okay.

[32:07] And according to the grade, in second grade, huh, holds malum praejacens, which is the subject of bad, right? Which is called bad from this, that the privation or the English word the lack, right? Which per se is bad, it has in itself, right? And in the third grade, that is said to be bad. praefaciens as a cause inducing bad.

[32:41] This does not have in itself of necessity privation or lack, but it makes something to be having a privation or a lack. Whence first is said what is absolutely bad, like blindness. And the second, in order to the first, right? And the third, in order to the what? Second, right? Now that's a little complication, but it's it's the basically the kind of name equivocal by reason here is by the ratio, right?

[33:22] Relation, the one that comes after to the one before, right? And then the same kind of equivocation by reason of the third having relation to the second. And second, I was giving an example there of political, right? Political is said first of the polis, okay, and then it's said second of government by reason of the ratio, the relation of government to that, right? It's said third, let us say, of revolution, not by the ratio of revolution to the polis, but by the ratio of of revolution to government.

[34:05] It's a change of government, right? Okay, just as government rules the the polis. So as Thomas is saying, right? The first meaning of bad is always a lack in the strict sense, a non-being of something you're able to have and should have when you should have it. The second meaning of bad is a different meaning, right? But it's what has that lack, right? Okay. You can use the word has there.

[34:34] Careful about that. So the second meaning of bad has a relation to that. The third meaning of bad is what produces that condition or that lack in you, right? Okay.

[34:52] It should be said, therefore, Thomas says that bad nominat names non ens, a non-being, right? Whence that which is per se bad does not place something, right? But is said to be as a privation or lack. Now he says the bad. This is now the second sense. The bad which is the subject of privation, the one in whom there is this lack, right? Is something positive the subject, right?

[35:26] But not from that is it bad, right? Just as the eye is something, but not from this that is blind, because blindness is not in it except as a negation of vision. What? Now he goes to third sense. What is said to be bad as a cause of bad, considered in itself is something, but in order to the effect, by reason of which it is said to be bad, is also said privatively.

[36:01] For bad is said from this that it induces what? A privation or a lack, deprive or something. And thus also the ratio of non being redundant comes back to it, causaliter, just as the ratio of mali comes back to it, huh?

[36:22] Now, sometimes people misunderstand Thomas or Aristotle's position or Augustine's position, to that matter, because they say, you know, aren't the Nazis bad? But they get all this power and so on, right, huh? And so on, and and they are, and it's not just a lack, right? You see, um, I'm beating people up and so on. I got some strength, you know. It's not just a lack, you know.

[36:52] I got, you see, um, uh, but they're forgetting that the word bad is equivocal by reason, huh? And that the first meaning of bad, in ratio to which other meanings must be understood in some way, is just a what? Lack and unbeing, right? So when you get into say ethics, right? And people say, well, um, uh, bad is is not simply negation. They say, you know, he drank too much, huh?

[37:34] Well, that's not just negation. I mean, the bottle's going down, obviously. Um, but if you want to understand a bad human act, right? You have to find the lack in the strict sense, the none being of something the act is able to have and should have. Okay. Now, a human act, since man is an animal with reason, a human act should be ordered by reason, huh? Not subject to reason to order things, and it should be what measured by reason, right?

[38:18] Okay. So what is a bad to speak in general? What is a bad human act? See, where a bad human act—it's really an act—is not simply negation, right? But a bad human act is now bad in the second sense. It's an act which lacks the order or the measure of reason, right?

[38:51] So premarital sex lacks the order of before and after there, right? Or drinking too much lacks the what—the measure of reason. So the root of the bad act, right, is a lack.

[39:11] So you could say the lack of order, the disorder in the act, the lack of measure—that's the fundamental bad in this, right? But the act is said to be bad in the second sense. It's not the lack of order and measure, but it lacks the order, okay? Now, if you induce me to drink too much, then you're a bad guy. You're bad, right? See, because now you're inducing me to an act that's unmeasured, that's excessive, and so on, right?

[39:50] But in order to understand what's bad about you or what's bad about my act, you have to go back to the first meaning of bad, which is indeed nothing other than a lack. It's the lack of the order and measure of reason in an act that is able to have that order and measure and should have it and wishes should have it. Okay, so that lack, as defined, is the first meaning of bad in morality.

[40:19] The second meaning is an act that lacks that, and the third meaning is what induces us to act in such a way. You see? So if you want to understand good and want us to understand bad in particular human acts, you have to think out or work your way back to the original meaning of bad, the root meaning, and then understand the bad human act in relation to that.

[40:52] You see that? What's an error? The etymology of what's the origin of the word error? To wander, yeah, yeah. Now it's interesting that the Latin word for error comes from the word to wander. The Greek word, you know, planasthe. When our Lord talks to Sadducees, you err, he says, planasthe. That's where you get the word planet, because the planets seem to wander around the sky.

[41:21] But that etymology of the word error, or planate in Greek, there suggests that error is result of the wandering of reason. But more precisely, you could say it suggests that error is result of a disordered movement of reason. Okay, the wander seems to indicate there, right? Okay. So

[41:53] this act of reason that is wandering, and you wander into error, huh, like Shakespeare says there in Comedy of Errors, and now we wander in illusions. Something like the modern philosophers—they wander in illusions. Um, this is a bad act of reason. Say, but understand why it's a bad act. You have to see what it is that this act what lacks, right? You know, lacks the order that

[42:30] a knowledge of logic or you know whatever it is, knowledge of its own road would impose upon that act. You see that? So this is kind of the key to understanding the what bad, right? Now the great philosopher after this, he says. After he sees this before and after here,

[42:56] the bad is what by nature after ability. And he says by nature there, I think he's indicating that he's thinking of the what second sense of before and after.

[43:09] Might use the word physis there, but anyway, that's often you know used for some sense of before other than time, right? But especially the second sense and sometimes the fourth sense too. Then he draws a conclusion from that. Therefore, in the things that are from the beginning and in eternal things, the things that don't have this ability, right? There's nothing bad, right? Okay. Thomas, of course, says in in their insofar as they're eternal, right?

[43:44] There's a bit about the bad angels, right? But in the substance of these things, if there's no ability, right, to have and to lack, then there can't be anything bad, right? But we could go further and say what if God is pure act? You can syllogize now. There can't be anything bad in God.

[44:10] Once you know that the bad is what the non-being of something you're able to have when you should have it, and so on. So now you know that the first cause is good, right? Not bad. Of course, if you know it's perfect, you know it's going to be good too, right? But that's really beautiful Aristotle sees there, huh?

[44:39] Is this as close as you can get to a definition of bad? Yeah. Yeah. But you got to be careful now, though, because see, what is bad, right? I've seen people, you know, who say, you know, well, Thomas says bad is just a privation or lack. But my punching you—that's not just a, you know, you know. Well, you're forgetting now that the word bad is what equivocal by reason.

[45:08] What Thomas is saying, but he doesn't always, or Aristotle doesn't always in a text. You know, every time you have a word, you don't always go into all the meanings, right? But this text I just gave you from the

[45:23] writings on the sentence of Peter Lombard, there he distinguishes the three basic senses of bad. And it's only the first sense that is just a lack, right? The second sense is the subject of that lack, and the third sense is what causes that subject to have that lack.

[45:44] Okay. You know another little text here from Thomas, but just about the Prima pars, question forty-eight, article 5, odd 1. Because bad is a what, privation of the good,

[46:08] and not a negation, a pure negation. Not every defect of good is bad, but the defect of the good which one is apt to have, right, and ought to have, huh? I don't know how exactly it would be the best way to translate defect is, because sometimes it has too strong a sense here, right? The defect of vision is not bad in the stone, but in the what, animal, right?

[46:37] Because it's against the ratio of a stone that has sight, huh? Likewise, it, is against the ratio of the creature that it be conserved in being by itself, because the same thing gives to be and conserves it. Whence this defect is not a the bad of the creature. See.

[47:02] Now I have a little footnote here on my own. Karl Marx, huh, sees man's dependence upon God, huh, not only for his conservation, but for his being in the original, as something bad, right? But is not something bad, for is against the ratio of the creature that have existence from itself, or that it be conserved in existence from itself. It would seem to be by pride that Marx is deceived into thinking that what is not bad is bad, huh?

[47:38] Likewise, the moderns see the dependence of the learner upon a teacher as bad. They think that it is bad if the student does not reach his judgments independently of the teacher.

[47:56] They see the support which the reason of the student gets from believing a worthy mind as bad. Pride may also be a cause of this deception.

[48:15] Because they're to make it bad, they're implying that there is an ability that we should have, something that we should have. Yeah yeah yeah. in that sense,

[48:31] you're kind of denying that there should be an order among human beings, right? In the order that I talk about, the wits and the dim wits and the midwits, huh? Okay. But even with the wits, you have a wit learning from wit. Yeah, that's that's true. Yeah, and that's because man is social and doesn't achieve his full perfection in one individual. But but the the wit is able to discover great things by himself.

[48:59] And the dimwits like us can learn those great things from the wits, but we can't discover them by ourselves. Why the nitwit is incapable even of learning them from those.

[49:14] Let's do a couple of little texts here, but. Thomas is touching upon that distinction I made before, right before this, when he talked about becoming actually bad, right? For actuality would be seem to be opposed to non-being, right?

[49:38] This is from a text in the Sentences, second book of the Sentences, distinction forty-four, question one, article one two. Can we sweet part of it here? Perfectio in malitia, okay. Perfection in evil, you know. I'm completely evil now, see.

[50:06] Well, can you really speak of perfection with evil? Perfection in malitia is not perfectio proprie. dicta, sed quasi transumptive and that's what uses more when you have a metaphorical likeness. Just as we speak, he says of a perfectum latronum, you know, perfect thief, huh? And we speak of the perfection of blindness, huh? He's fully blind, right? Completely blind, huh? As is said in the fifth book of the Metaphysics, huh?

[50:48] Okay, Thomas knows that, huh? So maybe we should stop here