Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
30. First Cause, First Being, and the Order of the Books of Wisdom
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[0:00] A little discourse here. We've talked here before about the great turnaround. Remember that. And in the great turnaround, if you recall, there were three things that wisdom is shown to be about,

[0:30] and in a certain order, right? In the proemium, it's shown that wisdom is about causes, and finally about the first causes. And in the beginning of the fourth book of wisdom, it's shown that wisdom is about being as being, and also the one and the many, which are almost the same thing. And then after that, it is shown that wisdom is about the

[1:03] axioms, huh? Okay. Now, just taking that far before we get to the great turnaround, this is very tight in one way, because Aristotle uses the truth that wisdom is about the first causes to reason out that it's about being as being.

[1:30] So they're continuous in the sense that the end of one is the beginning of the other. The conclusion is the other one from the great proemium that wisdom is about the first causes is the premise, one of the premises, for showing that it's about being as being.

[1:51] And then the conclusion that wisdom is about being as being and the one in the many is the beginning for concluding that it's about the axioms. It's going to defend the axioms and know them, huh? So if the end of one is the beginning of the other, that's very tight fit, huh? Okay. Then he turns it around, huh?

[2:19] And in the remainder of book one, he takes up the fundamental axiom of all, the axiom of being and non-being. And then he takes up being as being and the one in the many in books five through ten, and then in books eleven through fourteen, he investigates and finds the first causes and confirms them against the Platonists and so on. Now. Are these last three as tightly knit?

[3:00] Well, the axiom about being and non-being, and in general the axioms, are premises, huh? From which you reason, even in geometry, but in every science you reason from these, huh?

[3:16] And then, as we saw in the ninth book here of wisdom, which is the one we considered among the books on being and non-being, being and the one, that

[3:33] an understanding of act and ability and the order of act and ability is a beginning for reasoning to the first cause as being pure act, rather than matter, which is passive ability, huh? And so the end of one to some extent is the beginning of the what? Other, right? The conclusion that act is before ability simply

[4:03] is the premise for reasoning that the first cause must be what? Pure act, huh? So again, these things are fairly tight. You see, the end of one is the beginning of the next, huh? So you defend the axiom about contradiction. You're defending a beginning which you must follow in order to understand being as being. You must understand that before you can reason, right? Now,

[4:34] in the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas, without fully explaining himself, will say after he's proven the existence of God and other things that God is the first cause

[4:54] and that God is the first being. Prima causa, primo mens. Okay. Now, are you saying the same thing about God when you say he's the first cause? When you say he's the first being, are you saying the same thing about God?

[5:30] In order to be a cause, you have to be an act. Yeah. There's some connection between these two, right? I'm not denying that, but I'm asking the question now: to say that God is the first cause, which is one thing he says about him, and to say that he's the first being, they almost seem to be interchangeable for Thomas. They go together anyway. But are you saying exactly the same thing about God in those two?

[6:04] Well, let's examine what you are saying, right? Let's take the genus as a word. Um, Is the word "being" and the word "cause" saying the same thing about God?

[6:20] No, no. Because being, as you know, is tied up with what God is in Himself. I am who am. He said to be. But cause means you are a beginning of something else, the effect. So you don't seem to be saying the same thing, do you? By the word "being" and by the word "cause," even though, as you see, there may be a connection, you've got to be before you can cause something.

[6:47] One reason why the creature can't create himself is that he isn't. So an unbeing can't create anything. But now, what about that second word, first?

[7:06] What? Which sense of first. Yeah. Does the word "first" there mean the same thing when you say the first being, right, and the first cause? I mean, if I said, you know, white man and a white dog, man and dog would obviously mean something different. But does white mean something different? No, no. So now I am asking this question now, though. When you say the first being and the first cause, obviously being and cause don't mean the same thing.

[7:41] But they're connected in some way. But does "first" mean the same thing, or is the word "first" equivocal here? Equivocal. Okay. Now, doesn't the word "first" mean before all the rest?

[8:04] So doesn't the meaning of first depend upon the meaning of before? And does the meaning of before have many meanings? Doesn't the word "before" have many meanings? Okay. Now, when you say that God is the first cause, what sense of before do you have in mind in using the word first?

[8:31] It could be the fifth without which there's second here Well this is What? Well, why would you say that? Because Aristotle distinguishes the second sense from the fifth, the crowning sense. I put fifth and fourth because it's not fifth in order. Why would you want to change it from the crowning sense? Which causes it to be before the effect, right?

[9:00] Why would you want to do that? See, if you say, the Adam was the first man, right? Well, he's the man who's before other men, right? Okay. So, if you speak of the first cause, aren't you talking about the causes before other causes, right? And would it be before other causes if you're not a cause of them in some way?

[9:38] So, is the sense of before in the word first when you speak of God as being the first cause? Is that the sense of before that is a crowning sense of before? Cause and effect. What do you think?

[9:55] Ask again. Ask again. Okay. Is the sense of before in the meaning of first when you say the first cause, right? Is that sense of before the crowning sense of before?

[10:13] The sense which a cause is before its effect, huh? Think so. Yeah, yeah. And maybe the next cause would be a cause, cause, right? Huh? So the first cause would be before the cause, cause, huh? The uncaused cause, right, would be before the caused cause as a cause is before an effect, right? Okay. So it seems, doesn't it, that when you say God is the first cause, when you say first, you have in mind the sense in which a cause is before an effect, huh?

[10:51] But now, when you say God is the first being, what is the meaning of before in the word first there? Could be the second or fourth.

[11:05] Second or fourth? Why do you say both? Because the fourth says he's the best, and the second because without him you couldn't have anything else. Okay, now God is before, right? Other things, right? Both in being, right? Because God can be before all the things, but they can't be without what? Him. And he's also before other things in the sense that he's better than all other things, right?

[11:41] Okay. But I see a little problem with either one of those answers. Um. This is very early in the Summa Contra Gentiles where he takes these two things. He says these two things, right? He's shown the existence of God and so on, but he hasn't shown that God is good explicitly yet. He hasn't shown that God is goodness itself. He hasn't shown that God is has nothing bad in him.

[12:21] He hasn't shown that God is the good of every good. He hasn't shown that God is the summum bonum, right? The five chapters on the good, right? That's coming later, right? Okay.

[12:34] So it's when you show that God is the summum bonum, which is the culmination of the consideration of goodness, that you see that God is better than everything else, huh? And he hasn't shown that everything exists because of him. Well, no, we'll come to that next. Okay, that's why I kind of hesitate to think, right? When he says the first being, he means the being that is better than all the other ones, huh?

[13:03] That would be more the meaning of summum bonum, right? The good that is better than all the rest, huh? Okay. Now, one would be tempted more to the other sense of before, just like when he said the first cause, we said first involves the sense of before of cause and effect, right? Well, why not say then when you speak of the first being, you mean

[13:35] what's before all other things in the second sense of before, before and being, would seem to be what, right? Right, exactly analogous, right, to the way we solved the other one, huh?

[13:54] Now, I have a little hesitation about that, but Thomas has that in mind explicitly at that point, because much later on in the second book, when he takes up God as the maker of the universe, right, and how things are proceeding from God as effects from a cause, when he goes to that to show that in the second book,

[14:36] but there's a whole number of thinkers for whom creation proceeds as were automatically or naturally from what God is. There's Spinoza who spoke of the universe proceeding from God, like from a triangle that it has interior angles to right angles, right?

[15:03] Yeah, yeah. I see. So, although two, for example, is the cause of half a four, it's not two because it's half a four, but it's half a four because it's two. Two is before half a four, in the sense in which the cause is before the effect. Where Aristotle's example, going back to you, where he said that you're sitting is a cause of the statement being true that you are sitting, but there's no what.

[15:35] One of these can't be without the other. You can't be sitting without the statement you are sitting being true, and vice versa, that statement can't be true without you sitting, right? So one of them is not before the other in being, right? But one is before the other as a cause is before an effect, huh? The same way that two is before four, right? When straight lines intersect, the vertical angles there are equal, right?

[16:06] Well, the straightness of the lines is why the angles are equal, but the lines aren't straight. And they can be straight without those angles being equal for a while or something, you know. It's it's together, right? Okay. So there are those who say that God must always have what produced creatures, huh? They must always have proceeded from him. The Neoplatonists have this idea, right? And Spinoza has, and other people have.

[16:39] And so Thomas has to show that it's possible, right, for God to be without what creatures, right? But it's impossible for creatures to be without God. He has to show that, right?

[17:02] And those are two different things to show, right? He shows in the second book of the Summa Contra Gentiles that other things cannot be without God, right? That's one thing he shows, but he also shows that God can be without them.

[17:23] And eventually, this I suppose is involved the fact that God produces things not naturally, but because He wills them. Okay, that's a very difficult thing, you know, to refute the Neoplatonists and and Hegel, I suppose, too, and Spinoza and these people.

[17:49] So, given the great difficulty of that, and the fact that those great difficulties are resolved only over many chapters of Book Two in most difficult chapters, right? Is that what he has in mind when he says God is the first being? You see, you see. Now, to some extent, I find it very attractive to say that. I find it very attractive because

[18:19] you want to see that God is before creatures, both as a cause before an effect, but also that He's before them in the sense that He can be without them, but they cannot be without Him. And but as Thomas shown the second thing, right, explicitly at that point, has he fully brought that out? And that's the reason why he's he's saying that God is the first being.

[18:43] That would seem to be something that would come in after he'd shown that God can be without them, and and but they cannot be without Him, and therefore, in this sense, He's now first being, huh? First in the second sense of before, huh?

[19:03] Sorry, how does he prove that that God can be without them? Well, we're not going to go into the second book now. That would be another, of course, okay. By just mentioning that. That he shows in the second book of the Summa Contra Gentiles. If you know the first book, it's about God in Himself, mainly, huh? The second book is about God as a Maker and the protection of things from Him.

[19:28] And so he wants to show in the second book that nothing else can be without God, right? But he also wants to show that God can be without them. You see, and both of those things are difficult to show, which I don't intend to show now. But both of them are very difficult to show, and until they've been shown, we do have in mind that sense of God being the first being.

[19:58] See, he doesn't say, but the first being, I mean, the one who can be without everything else, but nothing else can be without him. Do you have that in mind there?

[20:13] I toyed with that myself a little, bit which I might say before in being right, you know, but and then but hesitate when I see the the long discourse. We said the other day that reason requires a reason discourses before it sees it before and after, and there is a long discourse in the second book before you could see that God is first in that sense, right?

[20:40] Okay. So why does he associate with God first cause for his being as if without explaining it really apparently right? It's if the two are so closely connected, eh? Why? Do they have the same meaning at first? What? Do they have the same meaning at first?

[21:19] The words first? Well, I considered that, but it said to me then, why bother? You see, God said to be the first being because he's the being who's the what? First cause. It seems kind of

[21:43] redundant, huh? Unworthy of the master. Maybe in the sense that nothing exists upon which he depends. There is nothing before him. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I suppose it first means you know, before all the rest, and therefore has like before it, right?

[22:14] His being's not dependent upon some other, so it reduces the second in that way rather than that in comparison to other beings. So you're saying first being's not after in the second sense.

[22:32] That sounds a little bit, um, exhortative, Thomas says sometimes. Well, I wonder if if one could approach this a bit from what I was saying, exemplifying a little bit earlier, this continuity in the in the books of wisdom, right? Where the end of one thing is the beginning of another, right? And therefore they're very closely what tied together, right? Okay.

[23:15] And when you see, like we saw in the ninth book, that act is before ability, meaning passive ability, simply, right? And therefore, you're talking about a before and after, and cause and effect as such. Are you there?

[23:45] See, is act and ability? Now we started the book with the distinction of act and ability, huh? And Aristotle even, you know, point out people who assume to confuse the two, right? Okay. But is the distinction of act and ability as such, right? A distinct the distinction of cause and effect. No, what's the distinction of? Being. What? Being. Yeah, ways of being, right? Huh? Okay. So if he's pure act, his first being.

[24:22] Yeah, so if you say that act is before what ability, simply speaking, right? You're talking about a before and after in cause and effect or in being.

[24:38] Now you say that may be connected, right? Okay. But you're talking about the before and after of ability and act, and that's one of the chief distinctions of being, act and ability, right? Okay. So when you say that act is before ability, simply speaking, therefore the first being must be what.

[25:07] Pure act, right? And the last being must be what? Yeah. In the middle being must be what? Yeah, something composed of act and ability, huh? Okay.

[25:27] And of these three, by the way, which is most known to us? Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of funny, right? I always think of Dante saying in the middle of of life, right, that he says the way he begins the the Divine Comedy, these things happen to in the middle of life. Does Thomas say somewhere in the Summa that's because of our nature? Well, maybe so. Yeah, we're composed of ability and act.

[25:53] But a sign that the middle is more known to us is that when we, as the word define, the beginning or the end, we define the one by saying it's pure act, right? And pure is what? Grammatically it's affirmative, but doesn't it signify something negative? There's act there with no passive ability, right? Okay. And then at the the end, you talk about the first matter by itself, although it can't exist by itself, right?

[26:29] But you consider it by itself, its ability with no act whatsoever, right? When Augustine is talking about, he says, "I know what to say about it. In fact, it's something that is nothing, or nothing that is something." He says, "That's what I would say." But even the great Augustine is puzzled how to speak of this thing, right? Huh? So, I define it by what?

[26:55] Ability and the negation of what? Act, right? Because you know negatives come after affirmatives, huh? So you seem to be what? Define the extremes by negating. Something in the middle. Yeah. And something different in the two cases, huh? So it makes kind of see that way, huh? It's a little bit like when Aristotle defines the three parts of a plot in the book on the Poetic Art: beginning, middle, and end.

[27:28] And he defines the middle as what has something before it and something after it, and the beginning has something after it but nothing before it, and the end has something before it but nothing after it. So you have two affirmatives there in the definition of the middle, and one affirmative and one negative in the what? Yeah, yeah.

[28:03] And this is another sense in which the Philomuthos is. In some way, like a philosopher, huh? Because the word muthos in Greek means first what, myth. Secondly, story, and then in the poetics of Aristotle, takes on the third sense, that of the plot, right? So you could say the philomuthos is like the philosopher, not only that the philomuthos wonders, but he's a lover of plots, and the plot is beginning, middle, and end, and the philosopher likes to see the beginning, middle, and end of being.

[28:41] According to what act and ability, that pure act is the beginning. Pure ability is the end, and in the middle, there's something that's composed of these two things, right? Okay.

[28:58] Why, if you're talking about cause and effect, using the word cause and effect, you'd probably put what in the middle, the caused cause, right? And the end, maybe an effect that doesn't cause anything, right? An effect that is not a cause, and then in the beginning, the cause that is not an effect, the uncaused cause, huh? The unmoved mover, right? Now, or if you're taking a particular, you know, mover and so on, you'd say the move mover is in the middle, and the move that is not a mover is the end, and the mover that is not moved is beginning, right?

[29:43] Huh? Okay. So when when he says that act is before ability, simply, therefore the first, what's even more natural, the first cause or the first being is pure act, which is more natural to say.

[30:13] Yeah, yeah. You're talking about it before and after being, right? Right. Okay. And yet, notice how close that is, right? I was mentioning that beautiful chapter, right? The 16th chapter of the first book of the Summa Contra Gentiles, huh? And if I can remember correctly now,

[30:46] Aristotle or Thomas, rather, is showing there that there's no potencia passiva, no passive ability in God, right? He's showing that God is altogether actual, right? He's pure act, huh?

[31:03] And one argument starts from what has been shown in the chapter 15, which Thomas often does in Summa Contra Gentiles, to make this next chapter continues the one right before. You use a conclusion of the previous chapter, right, as a premise for the first argument, right, for the next chapter. It's a nice way to tie them together, right? Well, as I mentioned before, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, the arguments for motion are far more developed, right? And in the Summa Theologiae, one of the five, the first, is from motion.

[31:46] But in the Summa Contra Gentiles, the first two are from motion, right? And both of them was nothing really like the second one in the Summa Theologiae, but the first one, which is closer to the Summa Theologiae, is much more developed. I don't know, like three middle terms for this premise and three for that, so you really get that, so that Thomas can take almost as a corollary and not a conclusion to be reasoned to in chapter fourteen that God is unchanging, unchangeable, right?

[32:20] Okay, you've developed, in other words, in the arguments for the existence of God, you see further than you do in the Summa, right? That God is what unchangeable, right? And so immediately he does in the fourteenth chapter, and then the fifteenth chapter, he reasons that God must be what eternal, right? That's the same order that you have in the question on the unchangeableness of God in the Summa, which comes before the eternity, right?

[32:49] Okay. Ah, that's the first argument, right? Now the second argument brings together what has been shown in the arguments for the existence of God that God is the first mover, the first efficient cause, right, the first cause,

[33:15] with the conclusion in the ninth book of Wisdom that act is before what ability, simply, right? Okay. And puts those two together and says, well, then the first cause must be what pure act, right? Okay. That's how closely tied those two things are.

[33:43] Then you have the third argument, right? The third argument is very interesting. What he does in the third argument is to give the very same argument that is the third argument in the Summa Theologiae, the argument from necessity and contingency. He develops that argument there

[34:11] as a preliminary to reasoning that God is pure act. So he gives, in a sense, the third argument for the existence of God in the Summa Theologiae, which is not one of the five arguments in the Summa Contra Gentiles, right? He gives that now in the great sixteenth chapter, right? He's a more complete, in some ways, in this matter, the Summa Contra Gentiles is, right?

[34:37] And then he argues that if act is simply before ability, and the first cause is before everything else, right? Then the first cause must be what pure act, right? Okay. So there he's assuming that God is the first cause because, been shown, he's been the unmover and the first maker, right? And then he reasons, huh, from that and this here, that God must be the first, must be what pure act, right?

[35:10] So how closely those things are tied together, right? Almost continuous, huh? Okay. Then in the fourth argument, right, he comes back to the third argument of the existence of God, and brings out that God is the first maker, huh? Okay.

[35:37] And then something that Aristotle points out, perhaps more in the seventh book, that you make insofar as you are in act, right? And if God is the first maker,

[35:54] he must be pure act, because if he's not pure act, he's going to be partaking of actuality, and the partaker is subsequent to the partaken.

[36:12] And since God, being the first maker, is not subsequent to anything, then actuality must belong to him purely and not by participation. Kind of beautiful argument, right? But but again, it makes use of the fact he's the first maker.

[36:33] And then in the fifth argument, he goes back to God being the unmoved mover, That there's no motion God at all, right? He can't be moved. And he says it's always by passive ability that one is movable, right? So if God is completely immovable, there can't be any passive ability because that would make it movable, and changeable, right? You know, that's beautiful. Now, what does he do in the last argument?

[37:10] Well, now, like in the second argument, right, he goes back, right, to the ninth book that act is simply speaking before ability, huh? And he says, well, there are things that go from ability to act in this world, huh? And but they can't give themselves the act they don't have, and so on. So they go back from ability to act, right? Because it's something already in act, huh?

[37:37] And then he brings in the thing that's been talked about many times before, that this can't be a, you know, infinite backup, right? These sort of things. So. Many reasons out that there must be something that is pure act, but it's like a separate argument for God's existence, right?

[38:02] So he's showing the existence of pure act, right? And this is God, okay? And there he doesn't make use of the arguments for God being the unmoved mover or God being the first maker, like he did in the second argument and in the what fourth and fifth arguments, huh? Okay,

[38:32] was kind of independent, right? God is the first being, right? But not done so much in terms of a particular kind of cause, huh? Maybe a particular kind of cause is involved there, right? It's a little bit like we were saying before, you know, when he talks about act being before ability simply, does he mean just in time? Well, if he did that and concluded to God, then God would be before things in time.

[39:03] He's not before things in time, huh? So, without being altogether explicit about it, let's bring in a little bit of the second and the third senses, right? I mean, second sense in the grounding sense, huh?

[39:20] Act is before ability simply because ability can't go to act without act, huh? But you could also say that ability can't be without act, huh? Okay, and that act therefore, in some sense, the cause of ability.

[39:44] Now, going back to the to the third argument, huh? The third argument for God being pure act, the argument from what necessity and contingency, right? And like in the Summa Theologiae, you begin with the observation that there are things like you and me that are able to be and not be, right? Those are contingent things, right? They can be and not be, huh? And since they can be the one, what determines which they are?

[40:18] It has to be something other than themselves because they are open equally to either one, huh? So it must be something other than them, something that is not able to be and not be, right? And that will have to be something necessary to be, huh? Okay.

[40:41] And there is a subtle thing that Aristotle touches upon in the second book that if this. Necessary being is necessary through another, right? Just like the conclusion of the demonstration is necessary, but necessary through another, then there has to be something, right? Necessary what? Through itself, right? And that's what God, right? So God, God

[41:14] necessarily is through himself, right? So you're proving the existence of something that is necessarily necessarily is through itself, contingency. And then he uses that to show that there can't be any passive ability. because that would be able then not to be, right? Would be necessary though not necessary through itself.

[41:43] Now, what is this distinction between the necessary and the contingent, right? Is that a a distinction of cause and effect? Or being? Seems like being is a distinction between whether you have ability or not. Yeah. Yeah. You seem to be saying that the contingent is what is able to be and not be, right? The necessary is what is not able not to be, right? Okay. And the impossible, which has no being, right, is what is not able to be, right?

[42:25] So it seems to be a distinction of being, right? And I have the text of Thomas where he says this is a distinction of being as being. And then in the third way he crosses it with cause because he says it's the necessary that is caused. Yeah, it was a necessary through another thing. Yeah. Contrary to to Marxists huh? So here you have another distinction of being as being, right?

[42:57] Not given in the fifth, but look, when Aristotle distinguishes senses of being, right? Being the necessary contingent. Yeah, yeah. And when Thomas is reasoning, say that God's causality is going to create both necessary and contingent things, right?

[43:22] He'll reason from God being the cause of being as being, and therefore it's reasonable that God caused both necessary and contingent things. Otherwise, he would not be the cause of being as being, huh? So

[43:38] you might ask yourself, well, I mean, my question comes to mind a little bit is. Why does Aristotle give that as another distinction of being as such? Right. Okay. You've got substantial being, ascendal being, being an act, being an ability, necessary, and contingent being. Why doesn't he give that in the fifth book? Right. You

[44:10] use the distinction of act and ability to explain. Yeah, it seemed that that's one thing occurred to me. You know, as you speak of the contingent, it, was able to be and not be. So you know, maybe it's not as fundamental as act and ability, right? Okay.

[44:28] But I like to use my tongue twisters here. You know, I told you my tongue twister. What sense of before does one sense? of... What sense of before can be before another sense of before. Try to dry the student up the wall, you know. Simple question. What sense of before? Just one sense of before. We got to stop and think, right? Of the senses of before, and then figure out, you know, that since there is an order among the meanings, in which of the four senses of before, one does in fact come before the other, right?

[44:57] Now, okay. Well, is it necessary to consider the sense of necessity? And what sense of necessity? Is it what sense of necessary? Is it necessary to consider the sense of necessary? You know.

[45:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Now, where does the word necessary appear in the fifth book of wisdom? Because it does appear in the fifth book of wisdom, right? And Aristotle sees it's necessary to distinguish the senses of necessary, huh? And he does that in the fifth book of wisdom. But does he do it in the first or the second or the third part?

[45:59] Remember how he di how he Thomas divides the third book, because you can't divide it into more than three. that you might not break down simply, right? Well, Thomas says that Aristotle is distinguishing the senses of the words used most of all in wisdom, even as an episteme, right? And every episteme has a subject, right? And it shows certain properties of that subject through causes, right? So you have three groups of names, huh?

[46:30] Names of causes, something like that, pertaining to cause. Names of the subject, which in this case is being and one, and so on. And you actually meet the names of the parts of being and one, and then names of the what? Effects, right? Okay. Now, the third part begins with the word perfect, and the words perfect and whole are kind of the anchors of that third sense, huh?

[47:01] And we saw a little bit of that. We talked about the good and the what? True, right? Okay, like perfections of being, huh? They're more like properties of of being, right? Even though they're transcendentals. In the middle part, he has takes up the words one and being, and the word substance. Substance being the chief kind of being, and then he takes up the names of the parts of being, parts of one rather, and then the parts of being, huh?

[47:33] The first group of names is names of causes, huh? First time pertaining to that, and you have beginning. Cause, element, nature, and then what?

[47:50] Necessary. Okay. And Thomas takes up the word necessary there. Aristotle does. Thomas says, because this seems to pertain to what a cause is, huh? And in the the say fourth sense, is it necessary to distinguish there? I might say, for example, it's necessary to breathe, right? Okay. Well, then you are thinking at the end, right? I can't live without breathing, or it's necessary to eat, right? Huh?

[48:23] Okay. Something cannot be without what? This, right? Or it's necessary to read what? Aristotle or Thomas, because you can't be wise without them, right? So something can be necessary for being well, right? Not just being, right? Okay. Thomas, of course takes the example. You know, a horse is necessary for a journey, but you can travel without that. But you need the horse to travel well, right? Huh?

[48:56] Okay. I could have come here on my feet, right? See, plane wasn't necessary for me, or even a car necessary for me, right? I could have got here eventually. Probably we'd be all gone by that time. But to get here well, right? Expediency and so on is necessary to have a car or to have an airplane or something.

[49:21] And then you have necessary in the sense of forcing you to do something, right? Huh? And that's more like the efficient cause, right? And then you have necessary tied up with intrinsic causes like matter and form.

[49:35] You necessarily die and so on, right? Huh? You see the connection in the meanings of necessary with what? Cause, right? Huh? There is a lot of distinctions to be made about that.

[49:50] It's kind of interesting that the word necessary is among the words pertaining to what? Cause. And yet this distinction of being into necessary and contingent is a division of being as what? Being, right?

[50:12] What does that show about these two things? Huh? It shows they seem to be almost the same. They seem to be almost continuous, right? Huh? Right. Being and cause. Well, there is a connection between them, right? Huh? Okay.

[50:33] It's curious that the word necessary is put with the words for cause by Thomas himself, or Aristotle, and Thomas explaining Aristotle. And then in another context, right? The word necessary with the word contingent, right? Are a division of being as such. Okay.

[51:00] It shows these things are, well, almost inseparable, right? Almost inseparable. And when you say that, act is is simply, before ability. And your understanding of that, is it completely separable from, the actual being the cause of the, able coming to be an act. Is it separable from that?

[51:43] But it's said in terms of act and ability, right? It's not saying explicitly in terms of cause and effect, but they seem to be kind of intertwined, don't they?

[51:54] So you can't altogether separate these things, can you? Now, it's much simpler to see when Thomas, talks to take a different example here, when Thomas talks about, the fifth book of wisdom, right? And in his division of the of the books, you'll see that he regards the fifth book or or puts the fifth book, as the first book. About being as being and the one and the many, right?

[52:27] And he says being and one have many meanings. Therefore, as we begin our study of being and and one, we have to distinguish these meanings, right? And that's all true, right? And he refers back to the beginning of book four, where Aristotle says, the wisdom is about being as being, right? And raises an objection to his conclusion, right? Saying, but being doesn't mean one thing, and how can there be one knowledge of what doesn't mean one thing?

[52:55] And then he explains that, well, yeah, but there's a connection among these meanings, right? Just like political doesn't mean one thing, but they're all linked in some way all the way back to one thing, polis. And all these meanings of being are related all the way back to one meaning of being, which is what substance, right?

[53:15] But I've seen I think texts in Thomas, not in the commentary that he's dividing the text, but where he's talking about how the wise man takes up the axioms. And of course, he's careful to point out the wise man is not going to, prove the axioms, huh? Because these statements are known to themselves and so on. He's not going to prove the axioms. But he's going to what?

[53:44] Clarify them by distinguishing the meanings of the words in the axioms. And lo and behold, it's the same words in the axioms and in being as being, etc. And most obvious example is that the first axiom is that you can't both be and not be at the same time in the same way. So, in a way, in distinguishing the words used in wisdom as episteme, right? You're also distinguishing the meanings of the words used in the axioms.

[54:24] So that, in a way, you could say the fifth book is a continuation and completion of the defense of the axioms, or it's a completion of coming to a distinct knowledge of the axioms,

[54:44] and a distinct knowledge that enables you to defend the axioms, especially against those fallacious arguments that proceed from people mixing up the sense of the word. You've heard my my example there of how I refute the axiom that the whole is more than a part. You see, and I do so, and and and my students are taken up with that. You heard that, right?

[55:13] I say to students, "What is man? " Right? Well, he's an animal, isn't he? Yeah, he's an animal. Okay, is that everything? Man is just an animal? No, no, no. That's only a part of what man is. Animal, right? Man is an animal that has reason. I quote my mother and so on. Yeah, okay. And then I say, okay, yeah, but animal, which you say is only a part of man, right, includes besides man, dog, cat, horse, elephant.

[55:41] So sometimes the part includes more than the whole. Yeah, I never thought of that. You know. Well now, by a sophistical argument against the axiom that the whole is always more than the part,

[56:01] they think that they don't know what they do know—that the whole is always more than the part. But this has proceeded from my mixing up two senses of whole and part. When I say animal is a part of man, I'm talking about part and whole in the sense of the definition and the parts of the definition. And there are other parts in the definition of man besides animals.

[56:25] It's only a part of the definition. When I say that animal includes besides man, dog, cat, horse, and elephant, I'm talking about what they call the universal whole and its parts, right?

[56:40] So every whole has parts. Either parts it's put together from. Or parts that it is set up, and if it's a whole put together from parts, it's put together from more than one of its parts. And if it's a whole set of its parts, it's set of more than any one of its parts is set up, right? See, so since the word "whole" and "part" have more than one meaning, the axiom, right, isn't altogether one in meaning, huh?

[57:17] Okay, and so you could say that Book Five is both the end of the defense of the axioms, right? The the end of the consideration of the axioms, but at the same time, it's the beginning of the consideration of being as being and the one and the many, huh?

[57:46] Right. It's connected with the other thing we said too, you know, but that at the most universal level you have here, the distinction of the senses of word also corresponds to a distinction of kinds of things and so on. And I mentioned that because it shows how tight the the book of wisdom is, right? It's not just that here is the end of the consideration of the axioms, okay?

[58:14] Now that's all finished, and now here's the beginning of the consideration of being as being. No, this is the end of the consideration of the what? Yeah, and this is the beginning, also the same thing, of the consideration of being as being, right? Just like with continuous syllogisms, now this is the conclusion of the first syllogism, and the very conclusion of the first syllogism is the premise in the next syllogism.

[58:43] That's what you see in Euclid, right? It's continuous things, right? That's fairly easy to see what you're doing there, right? Those examples, right? But now

[58:56] when you're talking about is the understanding of being as being completed, right? By an understanding of the first cause. An understanding of being as being includes an understanding of act and ability, and not only their distinction, right, huh? But of their order, right?

[59:37] But lo and behold, an understanding of that order, right. Seems to involve almost understanding of the first cause, right? It's very hard to separate them,

[59:52] so that Thomas can use the order of act and ability to reason to the first cause, right? Okay, so it shows how tightly connected those things are, and you can't really what

[1:00:13] separate them, or you can't put something in between, right? As if there's something that could come between the consideration of being as being and the consideration of what

[1:00:29] the first cause, right? Just like you know, when you have syllogisms that are continuous, you can't really insert anything in between there, can you? If the conclusion of the first syllogism is in fact a premise in the second syllogism, that's really the mind likes to see that.

[1:00:49] Nothing else could come in between, right? I don't know if that casts any light, but Thomas, will, you know, without explaining himself, right? Talk about God as the first cause and the first being, you know, almost interchangeably or together, right? Let's see. Let's see. Let's see. It's kind of amazing he does that, right? Huh? But doesn't that correspond to the fact what I was just saying? Because there is that continuity between the two, huh?

[1:01:33] You can use the before and after in being to arrive at the first cause. But vice versa, he argues from God being the first cause to being pure act. You know, so I mean, they're very much connected, huh? Pretty kind of powerful the way he's doing it, Aristotle's done. Nobody quite like this, I don't think. But Thomas just kind of, you know, I say Thomas is, as De Koninck says, Aristotle's most humble and faithful disciple, huh?

[1:02:08] What do we mean? What do we mean when we say that act is before ability? Simply He says it goes three different ways in which it's before. Well, he first shows that act is before ability in definition or knowledge, right? Yeah. Because we know ability through the act for which it is an ability, huh? And in fact, we distinguish one ability from another one, like the ability to hear and the ability to see.

[1:02:38] Well, ability doesn't tell you what the difference is, but the act for which it is an ability tells you what the difference is, huh? And then the second thing he says is that act is before ability in time in one way, right? In another way, ability is before act in time. And then he explains that in the thing that goes from ability to act, it's an ability before it's an act.

[1:03:08] So in that way, ability in time is before act. But since it goes from ability to act because of something already in act, because the ability for act can't give itself the act it doesn't have, so look at the whole picture, you can say simply act is going to have to come before ability, and therefore what comes first or before everything else will have to be pure act, huh?

[1:03:40] Okay. In time. Well, as I say, it's not altogether clear that he means to limit it to before in time, right? Yeah. I think he starts there because this example to see is where the maker is univocal with the effect, right? So the man, so something is able to become a man because something already a man, right? Okay. And but the one to whom he becomes a man must be before him in time because it takes some time to generate a man and so on right okay

[1:04:27] but other senses might come in mind namely that which the cause is before the effect because he's saying that what goes from ability to act does so because of something already in act and therefore there's a before the cause is before the effect right

[1:04:55] and likewise you could say that pure ability right cannot be without some act the first matter can't exist except under some form see while you can have an act without ability huh so maybe it's before in the sense of being huh but Aristotle doesn't elaborate that right huh

[1:05:19] but before in being and before in the sense in which cause is before effect just led back to that second sense right they're the closest in the s in the five senses of before right to before in time so maybe he means us to understand right As you go from ability towards the first act right you're getting something first of all before in time and then later on maybe in being and and cause only right not just in time right he didn't spell it out that much Aristotle there right but I think it makes sense in terms of the senses of before in terms what he says that he's not limiting himself to before in time he certainly couldn't when he gets to God being

[1:06:06] pure act right because God is not in time because he's pure act see that okay now