Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
29. Act Before Ability: Knowability, Truth and the End of Book IX
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7b-wisdom-2006-colorado/029-act-before-ability-knowability-truth-and-the-end-of-book/

[0:01] The chief gift of the artist is knowing when to stop. I always say I had the that gift, you know. I didn't go on sometimes.

[0:14] So tomorrow we'll live it up in. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand all that you have written. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the, Holy Spirit, Amen.

[0:46] So now we're going to do the third part of the third part. The third part of the ninth book was the comparison of act and ability, first very explicitly according to before and after. And there Aristotle showed that it's before in definition, act is before ability in definition, and in knowledge. And then he showed that act is before ability in time, right? And you might maybe add in being causality.

[1:24] And then he showed in the eighth and ninth readings that being act is before ability in what he calls substance, but Thomas explains in perfection. And in one of the readings, he showed that it was before imperfection from the same thing, and then in the ninth reading, more clearly from the comparison of eternal things or incorruptible things to corruptible things. So with the eternal things being better than the corruptible things, with eternal things being to the corruptible things as act is to ability.

[2:10] Okay, then in the second part of the third part, he talked about act being better than ability. But in that reading, you also it also touches upon what the bad is, and we brought in a text from Thomas where, following Aristotle, Thomas distinguishes the three basic senses of bad.

[2:41] And the first meaning of bad is the lack, the non-being of something you're able to have and should have, and when you should have it. And then the second meaning of bad is what has such a lack,

[3:06] and the third meaning of bad is what causes such a lack. So blindness, which is the lack of sight in a subject able to see by nature, which should be able to see by nature, and which should see, that's the first example, the first meaning of bad. But a blind dog would be an example, the second one, right? Now the dog is not simply non-being, no, but it's bad to be a blind dog because you have this what lack.

[3:42] You can use the word have there, right? Because you lack this. But then, what causes the dog to be blind would be bad in the third sense. So among the the forms of a name equivocal by reason, this seems to be carrying over the name from the first to the second, and likewise in the second to the third meaning, by the ratio of the second to the first, and then by the ratio of the third to the what second, right?

[4:14] And I was comparing it to how the word political is placed first upon the polis, the city, and then secondly upon government because of its ratio to the polis, it rules the polis. So that political there has a different meaning; it doesn't mean polis anymore, but what rules the polis, And then it's carried over to revolution, which is also a political matter, but by its ratio to government, which has a ratio to the city.

[4:49] For revolution is is a change of government, huh, and the overthrow of government and so on. So likewise, huh? You can say there's a certain order, right, among these three senses of bad, but the name is carried over from the first to the second by the ratio of the second to the first.

[5:12] So the badness in the first sense of human act is the disorder, the lack of measure, and the lack of order in human act. But then the human act itself that lacks the order and the measure of reason is said to be bad in the second sense, but by reason of having this lack, and then what leads you to such disorder and unmeasured acts, right, would be bad in a third sense.

[5:44] Now that text is very brief of Aristotle about that. That's what we referred back to the first book of Natural Hearing, where Aristotle, in his critique of Plato, brings this out a little bit more.

[5:57] Now there are some nice consequences that too, and that is that the bad is not simply non-being; it's a non-being of something in a subject. Able to have something in which, by nature, should have it, and when it should have it. So, in that sense, Aristotle says that bad is after ability, because you have to have an ability for something in order to have the non-being of which you're able to have when you should have it.

[6:31] And so, if God is pure act, then there can't be any lack in God, and therefore there can't be anything bad in God. It's interesting. If you go back to the fifth book of Wisdom, where Aristotle distinguishes the senses of the words used in Wisdom, especially, but also in the axioms, and to some extent everywhere, and he gets through going through the senses of perfect that are really found in creatures, we could say.

[7:09] Then he distinguishes that sense of perfect from the sense in which God is said to be perfect. And so, when we say Homer is a perfect poet, he lacks nothing that a poet should have. But he might lack what Mozart has, or he might lack what Aristotle has, or something else. But God is said to be perfect, lacking in nothing. So there's no lack in God. Therefore, there can't be anything bad in God.

[7:38] So, when you're trying to understand badness, you have to find what is the lack that is the first meaning of bad here, and then, if you're using the word bad in one of the second senses, it has to be understood going back to the first sense. So, at times they were a little expanding upon Aristotle, but Aristotle knows that stuff. Okay. Now, in the second half. Here of Lectio ten, beginning around line twenty one, where he starts to talk about the geometrical diagrams, and then through the eleventh reading, he's going to be comparing act and ability, as far as their knowability is concerned,

[8:29] and that act is more knowable than what ability, and then compare them in terms of what truth and falsity, primarily truth, in the eleventh reading.

[8:45] But this is anticipated a bit by the before and after we saw first, that act is before ability in definition, and therefore in knowledge, he's kind of expanding upon this. Now the way in the second half of the tenth reading that he shows this is through the example of geometrical figures, where in the original drawing of the figure one doesn't see, or one isn't able to know something, but once you make actual certain lines, and you know the previous theorems, then it suddenly becomes what knowable,

[9:33] and the examples are fairly easy ones to take. The first one is the theorem about the triangle having its interior angles equal to two right angles.

[9:47] Now, as you perhaps know, that theorem is based upon an understanding of the parallel theorems. If you wanted to use the parallel theorems right away to prove that the interior angles are two right angles, you could draw a line through one of the vertices parallel to the opposite base, and then you know that the alternate angles are equal on both sides, right? So these two angles equal to those two up there, and the third one is up there, and so around a straight line.

[10:25] Ah, right away now, now I know it. Now I know that equal two right angles. Or if you do like Euclid does, where he kind of combines two things together there, right? That if you extend the side of the triangle, he says, the exterior angle will be equal to two interior and opposite angles. And if that's true, then you can see that the two interior being equal to the outside angle and the third angle are around a straight line.

[10:52] And you know how he does. He draws a a line parallel to the opposite side, right? Then use the alternate one, and then ones on the same side, the interior and opposite angle. You know the theorems, right? So, but it's not until you make actual the lines. That you see, that

[11:13] the interior angles must be equal to right angles, huh? Right when those lines are there, the parallel lines and so on, and the extended line are there. only an ability, it's not really knowable. So something becomes knowable when it's made in act. A little bit like watching a house or a building going up, and you think it's going to be this, and then it's it's becomes more actual.

[11:40] You realize it's going to be maybe something different, huh? And it's a little bit like Eddington compares, you know, physics to a man doing a painting. You sit back, see the first swipes, you think he's painting this, and then a little bit later on, you think he's painting that, and then a little later on, oh, it's this, you know, but it's not really knowable until it becomes what An act.

[12:02] huh? It's their own inability; it's not what knowable. Now the second argument or the second example he takes is the theorem that they attribute, I think, to Thales, right? That if you take the semicircle and you take any point except the endpoints in the semicircle and draw lines to the ends of the diameter, that angle will always be a what right angle, huh? And Thomas has, kind of a little more complicated way.

[12:37] that. I would do it to prove it, huh? And Thomas draws the line from the vertex of the angle of the semicircle down to the what center of the circle, right? And then he uses the idea that the two angles in the one triangle up at the top will be equal because the radii equal, therefore the isosceles triangle thing. belongs. the same for the two over here, and then he takes the what exterior angle on both sides being equal to the two, and therefore double of the one part up there.

[13:16] He takes the other angle and takes the exterior angle equal to these two, therefore double of this. Therefore, the two at the bottom are double of the two up there. The ones at the bottom are two right angles. Therefore, that's one right angle. That's kind of a complicated way. The way I would probably do it would be to to draw that line down again, right? And then use the theorem that these two triangles have four what right angles, huh?

[13:46] And then you could what say that two of the right angles are down there at the base, right, where the center is, and the rest are what equal to two right angles, huh? And because they're equal, these two will be half of two right angles, which is one equal, huh? The point is, you have to draw the line and make it actual, huh? And incidentally, I guess they attribute that theorem to Thales, but they also attribute the rigorous proof of the isosceles triangle theorem.

[14:18] And it makes sense because that's used in in both of these examples of proving the theorem. Is used in proving the theorem that the angle contained in the right in the semicircle is always a what right angle?

[14:36] So what Aristotle is showing here is that something becomes knowable when it's made actual, and therefore act is more knowable than what ability. huh? Now,

[14:51] a little footnote here to to to Immanuel Kant. Kant notices how you have to make these things actual in order to understand them. And in the the preface, the later preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, he says, "Well, this shows that the success of geometry is due to our making what we know." And then he says, "And this is what led to the discover for the development of modern physical science that we realized we had to make what we know."

[15:30] So he goes back to an observation of this, but to make a different what point that Aristotle is making. And then and then you know Karl Marx takes that and and says, "Well, if we only know what we make, you got the tyrant custom that you're only accustomed to this knowledge where your knowing involves a kind of making. Of course, for the ancients that was true about geometry.

[15:55] That's why they called it, a liberal art. It's an art because it has a making. It's kind of a mental making, but there's still a kind of making there, and that's why we call it an art. And by

[16:08] your custom, only to that knowing where the thing is made actual by kind of making, then you say we know only what we can make. And even and the physicists sometimes in the 20th century, like Weizsäcker, will say only that which is of our making could be knowable to us. And Marx says, "Well, we're the beginning, the end of what we make, and we know only what we make.

[16:32] So we must see ourselves as beginning the end of all things. So that's kind of an aside there. But now Thomas will come back to this passage when he's explaining the beginning."Beginning of the

[16:51] first book of Natural Hearing, the Physics. Aristotle is talking about the natural road in our knowledge. Aristotle makes the very difficult statement that what is more known to us

[17:13] is not more known by nature, and what is more known to us is not more known simply. Uses both expressions, and that the natural road is from what is more known to us to what is less known to us. Therefore, the natural road is from what is more known to us to what is more known simply. But here you have again this kind of distinction that is worth noting because it comes up so many times and is talked about in many cases here.

[17:52] Aristotle is seeing a distinction of that kind. What's more known simply, or more knowable simply, and what is more known in some not simply but in some way that is to us.

[18:12] And if you know that first reading of the Physics, Aristotle applies it to our knowing the confused before the distinct. Now you can see by kind of manuductio there from less universal things that the distinct when something is known distinctly it is more known than when it's known confusedly. But it's more known to us in a confused way than when it's known what distinctly. So if you give me a glass of a dry red wine, it's more known to me that this is a dry red wine than that this is a Cabernet Sauvignon.

[19:03] But what is known to be Cabernet Sauvignon is more known than what's just known to be a dry red wine. So when Aristotle shows by many kinds of examples there

[19:18] that we know things in a confused way before distinctly, then you see that in fact what is more known to us is less known by nature, and what is more known by nature or more known simply is less known to us.

[19:37] Now another place where he he applies this is in the Nicomachean Ethics. He's talking about our mind knowing the effect before the cause, which is true for the most part,

[19:51] and how we tend to know the effect by itself first. And so, when we ask why, we know the effect by itself. But is the effect fully known by itself? Is the effect fully knowable by itself? No. The effect is fully known only in the light of the cause. So we're going from what is more known to us, the effect by itself, to what is more known by nature, more known simply, the effect in the light of the cause.

[20:27] The cause really manifests the effect. Thomas is explaining that a bit. He'll come back to this reading in Aristotle in the second part of the tenth reading, and recall what Aristotle teaches here: that something is knowable to the extent it is in act And then he'll point out how our mind starts out ignorant, empty, empty, like a tablet upon which nothing has been written, and so our mind is going gradually from ability to act.

[21:03] So act comes later on for us, but the actual is more knowable. So what comes later for us is the more knowable, and what comes first is more knowable to us, but it's really less knowable. That's kind of a very subtle thing,

[21:23] and we mentioned before how Descartes makes one of the greatest mistakes in history, because he identifies certitude, even for us, with clarity and distinction. He identifies, therefore, what is more known to us with what is more known by nature, and that mix-up is a beginning for two kinds of mistakes that Descartes can subsequently make as a result of the original mistake. And one is that he can think when he's sure about something that's very well known to him that he knows it clearly and distinctly.

[22:13] So when Descartes says in the cogito, "I think, therefore I am," he's very sure about that. He's very sure that he's thinking. Well, then I must know clearly and distinctly what thinking is. Does that follow? No, and that's a result of the first mistake.

[22:33] And then the other mistake, the reverse mistake, he might, when he gets into his mathematical science of nature, say, "This is so clear and distinct, it must be true." Because they go together, so you get two subsequent mistakes from the fundamental one.

[22:51] We were talking about how the same kind of mistake is made by the materialists, because they see that ability, the passive ability, in some way comes before the act,

[23:10] and what is before in some way they think is before simply, without qualification. Therefore, they think matter, the most potential of all things, the most in this passive ability, must be the beginning of all things. So that's a very important kind of distinction, a very common kind of distinction, and there is a very common and fundamental mistake due to not seeing that distinction, and it's going to lead to all kinds of errors as a result of that.

[23:49] As I mentioned before, in the Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle distinguishes the six common kinds of mistake that come from words, and then he distinguishes the seven common kinds of mistake that come outside of speech. But sometimes I like to single out the first two kinds of mistake in both groups,

[24:23] partly because they're very common and they're very dangerous and so on, and very easily made, but also because they correspond to four kinds of distinction, which are used again and again and again, and are very important in the life of the mind. And so, understanding those four kinds of distinction and what they are, what kind of distinction they are, helps you to understand the four kinds of mistakes, and seeing the four kinds of mistakes again confirms the importance of seeing those distinctions.

[25:01] Now, the first kind of mistake from words and the most common, according to Aristotle, in our thinking, is the mistake for mixing up the senses of a word, what some people call the fallacy of equivocation. But more clearly, you can say it's a mistake for mixing up the senses of a word, and this happens especially with a word equivocal by reason, because there's already some connection or likeness, maybe, of the meanings, and so you're more easily able to mix them up.

[25:36] The second kind of mistake from words is like the first one, except instead of. Different senses of the same word is different senses of the same speech.

[25:54] And give an example there. If I was to say, the Bible is the word of God. The word of God is the Son of God. Therefore, the Bible is the Son of God. Well, I've used the phrase now, which is speech, as opposed to one name, "word of God" in two different senses. And so you're mixing them up, right?

[26:21] But it's interesting to see that. I am very fond, you know, of putting into speech what Aristotle says in the beginning of the *Proemium there, or at the end of the *Premium*, where he's saying, to put in speech rather than a word, that wisdom is the knowledge of God. In both senses, Aristotle says it's the most divine knowledge, right? But in the two senses of the knowledge being divine.

[26:52] But sometimes I turn instead of divine, I use speech, and I say, wisdom is the knowledge of God in both senses. One sense of knowledge of God is that's a knowledge about God, and Aristotle gives the reason why wisdom is a knowledge about God. He's already shown in the first part of the *Premium* that wisdom is a knowledge about the first cause. And then he takes his problem at this point because he doesn't want to prove it at this point.

[27:24] the first cause is God. Therefore, wisdom is knowledge about God. And then, as all the great Greek philosophers thought, either God alone should be said to be wise, or God most of all. So it's a knowledge of God in the sense of the knowledge which God has.

[27:43] It's kind of beautiful to see that connection there. There's a connection there between the word of God in the two senses that we mentioned before, because the word of God in the sense of the Bible is chiefly about the word of God in the sense of the Son of God. And that's why I like Shakespeare's name for the philosophy of nature in *King Lear*, where he calls the philosophy of nature the wisdom of nature.

[28:16] The wisdom of nature has two meanings. It can mean the wisdom about nature, right? Or it can mean the wisdom that nature shows and what it does. And you could say the wisdom of nature in one sense, meaning the philosophy of nature, is about the wisdom of nature in the other sense. Kind of a nice technique those two, huh? Where I was teaching the *De Anima* this summer.

[28:45] I said, the De Anima is the knowledge of the soul in both senses. Which you kind of stop and think, right? It's a knowledge which the soul has about itself, huh? So it's a knowledge of the soul in two senses. Geometry is a knowledge of the soul in one sense, huh? It's a knowledge which the soul has, but it's not about the soul. But the De Anima is a knowledge of the soul in both senses, huh?

[29:16] Now they call, you know, this amphiboly, huh, as opposed to equivocation, but similar, right? One case you have one word that has more than one meaning. Other case you have speech, which is vocal sound having parts to signify by themselves, but the whole phrase has can be taken in two different meanings, huh?

[29:42] But the first distinction, of course, is more overlooked and more common and more taken into account, right? With a single word. Now the first two mistakes outside of speech. The first one is from mixing up the through itself and the through happening, or you could say the as such and the by happening.

[30:12] We had an example of that when we talked about what activity is the end of man, right? And what activity does he reach his ultimate perfection? You might say. And we're mentioning how Karl Marx says that man reaches his ultimate perfection by making. Of course, that fits into the tyrannical custom there of modern science, where we seem to accomplish things by making, it. And

[30:52] Aristotle points out that making is a perfecting of the thing made. It's not a perfecting of the maker. So if the end of man is a perfecting of man or the perfection of man, how can it consist in activity like making? Well, Karl Marx says, well, when we make things, we not only change them, we change ourselves. And so a carpenter or a painter who's making something hasn't made before, he's learning something and so on.

[31:27] He's improving himself, right? So on. But that's accidental to making, huh? It's accidental to making but the maker is perfected by it. And that happens when he doesn't really know how to make fully, And he's not as a maker. If he's learning how to make things to that extent, he's not a maker. So Marx is being deceived by the mistake of

[32:00] mixing up the as such and the by happening, the accidental and the non-accidental. And this is a very common mistake. Aristotle says it deceives even the wise. And you see in his argument against Plato at the end of the first book of Natural hearing that Plato has confused the as such and the accidental there when he mixes up

[32:31] lack of form with matter, huh? Or Sartre, as we mentioned the other day, mixes up the ability to choose with the lack of choice before you choose, huh? And the accidental especially deceives us when it's always there. So before you choose. There's always a lack of choice in you, right? So the lack of choice always happens to the ability to choose before you choose. But is it through that lack of choice that you choose?

[33:06] Is that your ability to choose? You're always ignorant before you learn. But is it through your ignorance that you learn? And then the second mistake outside of speech is the mistake for mixing up what is so simply and not simply, but in some way. And that kind of distinction we've seen being made again and again here, but when so overlooked, right? And the example we gave primarily there was the one of the materialists who think that what is before in some way, but not simply, is before what simply.

[33:51] Well, Descartes is making that same kind of mistake, huh? He's mixing up what is more known simply with what is not more known simply, but to us, huh? And this is one of the greatest mistakes. So you find the same kind of mistake at the beginning of of how we're supposed to know these things, and you see at the end there we're talking about the first clause, which is the goal of our of our knowledge, huh?

[34:25] As I said, Thomas comes back here, huh? In explaining Aristotle's distinction and the order that something is knowable to the extent it is an act. Therefore, what is most knowable, most actual, rather, is most knowable. As Aristotle will say in the second book, those things aren't most known to us. God is pure act and therefore most knowable, but not to us. And that's because our mind goes from ability to act, huh?

[35:02] And so the act which is most known to us, as we learned earlier in the book, in the first part, right? The act which is most known to us is motion, huh? But as you know from your study of motion in the third book of Natural Hearing, motion is the least actual of acts, huh? It's the act of what is able to be insofar as it's still able to be.

[35:34] So it's an act that is always what incomplete, huh? But because our knowledge starts with the senses and things in motion, sooner catch the eye than what not stirs, this act seems to be most known to us among acts.

[35:55] So. We go from what is more known to us, the act which is motion, and the great proof of God's existence, to the act which is most knowable but least known to us. And that's kind of the ultimate example of our knowledge going from what is more known to us, but

[36:20] less knowable, and in the beginning, least knowable by nature or simply, to what is most knowable by nature or most knowable simply, but least knowable to what us.

[36:36] And that's where Aristotle will say in the second book that this shows that the difficulty in knowing is more in us than in things. Because if it was just in things, then the things that are more knowable would be more knowable to us, but they're not.

[36:58] It's the cause that explains the effect, but the cause is less known to us than the effect. It's a beautiful use that Thomas makes of this in explaining Aristotle's text there huh? In the beginning of the first book in the proemium there to the eight books of Natural Hearing, so-called Physics. huh? Now, in both Plato and Aristotle, they use darkness and light in talking about this. So, in the Republic, there Plato speaks as if we were like those born in the cave, and of course, in the cave, there isn't much light, and things are barely visible in the cave.

[37:51] But if we escaped from the cave and came out to sunlight, where there's more light, and therefore things are more visible out there, we'd be at first what blinded by the sun. Aristotle takes a little different example, thinking that perhaps the reason why the bat flies at night and not during the day is that the light of the day is too bright for him. And if that was so, then the bat would be analogous to us, just like Scripture says if God dwells in light inaccessible.

[38:27] He's too knowable. So this is a very interesting first part of the the third part. Okay. Now, the eleventh reading, he. says,Takes us up in terms of the comparison of act and ability as far as truth is concerned,

[39:08] and it seems it could be a little more explicit in a lot of places here. It seems in the eleventh, eleventh reading as to exactly how he's proceeding here. But maybe

[39:20] would unfold more if he's here for us, or maybe expects us to do something. Just like Heath insists that it was contrary to the custom of the great geometers like Euclid to spell out all the cases right of a theorem, but he would do the difficult case right and leave the easy cases to us, dimwits. The very first thing where he announces his purpose here, Thomas spells it out more explicitly than Aristotle does.

[39:55] Because what does the word refer to? Since being is said and non-being in one way, according to the figures of the categories, the figures of predicate, substance, quantity, and so on, and then according to ability and act, contrary,

[40:28] this is most chiefly true or false. Thomas says he means act there. Okay, Thomas is saying what To was referring back to, right? The last thing there in Argya. okay,

[40:49] it's clear to Thomas from the text that that's what Aristotle's trying to do, and therefore intending to do in eleventh reading to show that act is more true than what ability, huh?

[41:09] And Thomas says, and you can see in the text of Aristotle that he's first going to do this in material things or in composed things, huh? And then in simple things, the immaterial things, huh? So let's look at the more known here, huh? And first of all, he's going back and explaining in a way what truth and falsity means,

[41:39] at least in these composed things. What does truth and falsity mean? To say that what is is, what is not is not. Yeah, yeah. That what is together, so to speak, right, is together, and what is not together, is not together, right? And falsity would be the contrary of this, right?

[42:12] Okay. Now, he wants to tie this up with being, right? Because he's talking about act and ability, which are a division of being, right? And so he says, "It's not an account of us thinking truly that you are white, that you are what white, huh? But due to you being, huh, white, we saying this are saying the truth, huh? Okay.

[42:59] Are you sitting? Because it's true to say that you are sitting. Obviously, it's true to say you are sitting because you are sitting, right? So the disposition of the thing is the cause of the what truth of the what statement, huh?

[43:21] And if that wasn't so, he wouldn't be doing what he's doing here, right? Now, if you're able to sit, is it true that you are sitting?

[43:36] Not yet, true, huh? But now, when you're actually sitting, like you're doing now, now it's what? It's true, really true, actually true. So that's one way of seeing that act is more true than what ability, right? Okay. But then he goes on to point out that there are some things that are always together, like man is an animal, right? Some things that are always divided, like man is an ass, right?

[44:15] Okay. Sometimes. And then some things are what? Sometimes together and sometimes not. So sometimes man or you are sitting, and sometimes you are not. Now, man is an animal. Is always actually so, right? And so the statement "man is an animal" is always true. Is the statement "you are sitting" always true? No. Sometimes it's true, and sometimes not. Which is more true: that man is an animal, or you are sitting?

[45:00] Yeah, yeah. But why is it you are sometimes sitting and sometimes not? That's because of your ability, right? You're able to be sitting, you're able not to be, right? Why man has no ability not to be a what? Animal, right? So man is always actually an animal.

[45:20] So if what is actual in that way is always true, and because the ability you are sitting, you are sitting is not always true, well then act must be more true than what? Ability, right? Okay.

[45:40] Okay. Then around line. Seventeen, I guess it is. He starts to talk about the things that are simple, asyntheta that are not composed. Okay. He says, "What does true and false really mean there, right? Okay. What does it mean if something is simple that this is put together with that, or this is separated from that? Well, the simple things don't have this composition or separation.

[46:19] So he says, really, to know these simple things, your mind either knows them or it doesn't know them, right? If it knows them, then there's a kind of truth in the mind because it knows the thing as it is. If it doesn't know it, it's not really false, right? It's just what ignorant, right? Okay.

[46:46] That's like knowing red or something. Yeah, yeah. Now the simple things, they're not able to be other than they are. They don't have that ability, right? They're just actual, more actual than the composed things. And they are incorruptible and so on.

[47:03] So they're even more true, right, than the material things. They're always true, so to speak, and they're more actual. Well, this shows again that actuality is what more true than ability. And Thomas, in the commentary, refers back to something we'll see if we do the second book, right? That as things are in being, so they are in truth. And the more being something has in a way, the more true it is.

[47:37] And we'll see that a little bit in the second book. So, is there a different sense of truth? Because you were saying truth and falsity comes first in statements. Yeah, and and Thomas, in a sense, is admitting there's kind of a different sense of truth, right? It's not you say univocal, right? And he says that's not surprising because being is the cause of of being true. And they don't they don't have being in the same way that the material things have being.

[48:11] So they have truth more purely than the composed things. And then Thomas or Aristotle rather here goes back to the idea that in understanding what something is, one is not really deceived, except perhaps accidentally when there's a composition of some sort. But in terms of grasping, you either grasp it or you don't grasp it.

[48:46] Now, at the end of the reading. He has a little kind of corollary. Thomas says that likewise, in these unchanging, immaterial things, you don't have deception according to time.

[49:06] So I might be sitting at one time, another time not sitting. But is two at one time, maybe half of four, and maybe another time two is not half of four.

[49:19] Well, no, but those things that involve time and therefore ability more than act, they are not always true, you know. But you don't have to worry about that with the things that are always the same, right? And not subject to time, huh?

[49:38] So that brings us to the end of Book One. Theta. So let's have a little excursion, huh? And something that's kind of puzzles me a bit. I have a question about simple things. Well I hope it's a simple question then?

[50:07] An accident, is an example, of a simple thing like Red, but also. Yeah, but he's thinking of a simple thing that's subsistent, right? Okay. In substance, huh? Incidentally, you know this idea that I was mentioning earlier with Thomas that Aristotle says in the beginning of the

[50:29] first book of Natural Hearing, the Premium to Natural Hearing, that we go from what is more known to us to what is more known by nature, right? And we're going from what is least actual to what is more actual, right? Well, when you get to the books on the first causes, which are after the books on being and on the one and the many, so they're after the books six and seven, eight, nine, ten.

[50:57] You got the four last books, right? Eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen. Well, in book eleven, in the first half of book twelve, Aristotle is preparing the way for determining the truth about the first cause. And so, in the second half of book twelve, Aristotle actually determines the truth about the first cause, about God Himself. What is he doing in that book and a half? We got to it, huh?

[51:32] See. Well, in the eleventh book, huh? He begins from imperfect being. He recalls what was said even about accidental being, which hardly is, huh? Like, for example, I am a Christian philosopher, right? Or a Christian geometer. Well, there hardly is a Christian geometer. Is a man who's Christian who also is a geometer, but does his Christianity and geometry come together and make one thing? No. By what would I be a Christian geometer if I was?

[52:16] There's no such thing as Christian geometry, huh? And how would I become a Christian geometer? There's no way to do so. There's a way to become a Christian by baptism, let's say, or something like that. A way to become a geometer by studying Euclid or something like that, but there's no way to become a Christian geometer. And since I wasn't born one, how do I ever get to be one?

[52:37] How could I become one? How could I be, therefore, a Christian geometer? He goes all the way back to that hardly is, right? And he goes back to a beautiful kind of summary, you might say, of the eight books of Natural Hearing, huh? But there you're talking about imperfect beings, like matter and motion and time, that hardly exist. So he's spending a whole book preparing for the most perfect being of all, starting from the most imperfect beings of all.

[53:12] Why does he do that? Because you have to go from what is more known to us to what is more known simply, huh? And then in the beginning, the first half of the twelfth book, he takes up substance, huh, which is now much more perfect being than what he's been talking about the eleven, and then find he's ready to talk about the most perfect being of all.

[53:39] There's a little passage of Thomas where he says, "I study the body," he says, "so I can study the soul, and I study the soul so I can study the angels, and I study the angels so I can study God. That's it. I don't study God so I can study anything else. That's it. I come to the end of my book. Okay. So it's beautiful to see that, huh?

[54:07] That order from what is more known to us but less known simply or by nature to what is most known by nature but least known to us, huh?

[54:23] And in that sense, two, in one of the two senses of long discourse, you could say this is the longest discourse of the human mind, huh? As it goes between things that are, as it were, infinite distance, huh? So that's the longest discourse. You heard about the longest day, right? This is the longest discourse in the sense that it goes between things that are most far apart.

[54:53] Yeah. Now.