Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
32. Dispositions of the Will for the Philosopher, and Hope and Fear in Pursuing Truth (Metaphysics II intro)
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7b-wisdom-2006-colorado/032-dispositions-of-the-will-for-the-philosopher-and-hope-and/

[0:00] They're out on the counter. Very slow. Very slow. We might need to put them in the microwave and defrost. Yeah. The fire's coming back for pork chop or what? I don't know. I don't know. In the Name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God our enlightenment. guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly.

[0:30] Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Help us to understand all that you have written. In the Name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Before we begin the talking about the second book of wisdom, the second book of the so-called metaphysics, a couple things I want to talk about. The first is a little bit again about what we were talking about late last afternoon

[1:07] about Thomas's words there that God is both the first cause and the first being. Think about it a little bit again. Shakespeare has taught us that using your reason means most of all looking before and after. And Thomas, in calling God both the first cause, the prima causa, and the first being, the primum ens, suggests that there is a correspondence between the order, the before and after in causes and effects, and the order in being.

[1:59] Now, the two orders seem to be somewhat intertwined, and yet, as we said last time, the word cause and the word being are not synonyms. And so, in the fifth book of wisdom, you have a reading or a couple readings on the word cause, and then later on you have a reading on the word being. And of course, they're obviously not synonyms. They're quite different, huh? In some ways, huh?

[2:48] But yet, Thomas's statement that God is both the first cause and the first being suggests some kind of correspondence between the order in one and the order in the other, but they're not exactly identical, just as the words are not what synonyms, huh?

[3:17] Now we saw in our study. Also, act and ability—the way act and ability are intertwined with a consideration of the causes. For example, when we talked about the first two meanings of ability, we saw a connection between them and mover and matter, if you recall. And when we were talking about the act being

[3:48] more perfect, being before an ability and substance or perfection, Aristotle two ways of showing them, and one was tied up with form, and the other was tied up with the end. You call that, and that's just one intertwining, you might say, of the consideration of act and ability and the causes.

[4:16] Or another one that you meet very often is that matter is ability, but but the passive ability, while the other three causes—the form, and the mover, and the end—are all tied up with act. So these two things are kind of intertwined, but they're not exactly the same thing.

[4:43] And this suggests to me a way that Monsignor Dionne used to talk a little bit when he was talking about the prior analytics and the posterior analytics. And the prior analytics, you consider the form of the syllogism, and then in the other books, you're considering the matter of the syllogism. And so in the prior analytics, there's a kind of separation of the form from the matter. But Monsignor Dionne said it's not a complete separation by any means.

[5:23] And he compared it to Thomas when he's talking about the books on life by Aristotle. And the first book on life by Aristotle is the book, the three books about the soul.

[5:39] And in speaking about the three books about the soul, Thomas says that in those three books, Aristotle is considering the soul in quodam abstractione from the body and from matter. But that's obviously not a complete abstraction because you can't even define the soul without what bringing in the body. But if you compare the three books about the soul to the books that come afterwards, the books that come afterwards, Aristotle keeps on going more and more down into the body.

[6:19] Why in the three books about the soul, you could say, in a quodam abstractione, not a complete abstraction, but a kind of separation. He's sort of considering the soul, as the title says, by itself, but it can't be a complete one. Okay.

[6:37] And Monsignor Dionne says, he was explaining to me one time the the separation of the form of the syllogism from its matter there in the Prior Analytics, it's something like that, right? Not the same thing by any means, huh? But it's something like that. In that it's not a complete separation. It can't be complete abstraction. Then you get into symbolic logic or some other crazy thing. Um.

[7:06] Now, it's a little different this case of the order in cause and effect and the order in being, huh? But they do kind of correspond to each other, and they are kind of what intertwined, huh? And you can't, you can consider one order or the other in a kind of separation, but not in a what? Complete separation, huh? Okay. So I can be considering the order in causes, and then I can consider the order in being, but they're not altogether separate.

[7:48] The consideration of those two orders. And so when you're trying to find, say, the first cause, you might bring in statements from act and ability, huh? And if you argue, say, to the first mover, which is talking about the order in causes, right? And this is the first one. But you might argue from act and ability through the definition of motion, so on, right? So you can't entirely abstract the order of one from the order of the other.

[8:22] They're kind of tied up, huh? Now, one more observation about this. If you look at the first four arguments for the existence of God in the Summa Theologiae, you might say that the first two are more

[8:49] talking about the order in causes, because the first argument in the Summa Theologiae shows that God is the unmoved mover, which is of course the first mover, right? So you're talking about what is first in the order of movers, which is a kind of cause, huh?

[9:14] In the second argument. You're showing that there exists a first efficient cause, you could say a first maker, right? And that is God. But again, you're talking about what is first in the order of causes.

[9:35] Now, what is he doing in the Summa Theologica, in the third and the fourth arguments? Well, the third argument is the one from necessity and contingency, huh? And he's talking about contingent things, things that are able to be and not be, right? And how they depend for their being upon something that necessarily is. And since it necessarily is, can in some cases have a cause of necessity.

[10:08] Some things necessarily are to another. Then eventually you have to come to something that necessarily is to itself, and that's God. Now there, you seem to be talking more about the order in being, that the necessary being is before the contingent being, and the necessary to itself is before the necessary to another, huh? And you're arriving at the idea that God necessarily is to himself. You're talking about his being in a way, huh?

[10:56] He necessarily is to himself, huh? And the angels necessarily are through God, huh? Okay, and then the contingent things are through the necessary thing. This more emphasis upon the being as opposed to the first two arguments for it's in the cause, huh? And then you have the fourth argument, right? We're talking about yesterday. And in the fourth argument, again, you seem to be talking about where you have more or less in being and things of this sort, or in truth, you have something that is most true, most being, and so on, okay?

[11:37] That's interesting, huh? There seems to be some kind of correspondence between the order in causes and effects and the order in being, but they're not simply synonyms, are they? Because being and cause are not synonyms, huh? But in the first two arguments, existence of God, you seem to be emphasizing more the order in causes. Well, in the third and fourth argument, the order in what? Being, huh?

[12:08] But in both cases, you're arriving at the first cause or the first being, but it seems to be going in the same direction towards the first cause or first being. But you can't completely separate them, and you're raising the question there about the fourth argument. But you have to bring in causality in some way, right? And I think you're correct in saying that. But that's also a sign of what I was saying, that it's not able to consider these two in complete separation.

[12:39] You can't really understand causes without bringing in act and ability in your understanding of causes. And you can't really fully see that act is before ability in time, etc. Without somehow bringing in causality, how something doesn't go from ability to act, except because of something already an act. So we say because of, you're bringing in in something about cause, right? So you can't separate entirely one from the other, as Dianne said about these other things, huh?

[13:13] And yet you can see some distinction, right? You can see in the De Anima if we go back to his example there, that he is in a way considering the soul and concentrating on the soul in a kind of separation from the body, right? And then he goes into the details of the body in the later books, right? The same way here, in the first two arguments for existence of God, you're kind of concentrating on the order in causes.

[13:40] But in the third and fourth, upon being, but the two are not entirely able to be considered in separation. You see how complete Thomas is there, right? Where he proceeds. Now, also notice, huh, that the two from cause or from the order in causality are the first two arguments. He gives those before he gives the ones later on, as if that's the order in which to proceed.

[14:15] And his master Aristotle does the same thing because in the second book here we will see this something of the order within causes. In the first book, he had distinguished between the four kinds of causes, and he took up the causes in the second book of Natural Hearing. And when he talks about the word cause again in the fifth book, not only distinguishes the four kinds of causes, but you say that within each kind of cause there can be a before and after.

[14:56] But then in the second book here, he shows that that before and after doesn't go on forever, but there must be a what? First cause, huh? And Thomas goes back sometimes to the second book of Wisdom there. He wants to show that there's a first mover or a first maker or something of that sort. He goes back to to that, right? So the order in causes, all the way back to the first cause, is in the second book, and the order in being wasn't until the what ninth book, or we could say also in the seventh and the eighth books, because there you see the order of substance before quantity, quality, and so on, right?

[15:37] But the whole consideration of the order within being, the before and after in being, is in those later books more, seven through ten, right? But even talking about the the two orders in the fifth book, you talk about the order in causes before the order in what in uh in the predicaments, say in the fifth book.

[16:03] So there's a lot of before and after to consider there, right? Before and after in causes, the before and after in being, but how these cannot be completely considered in complete separation from each other, but also that when he emphasizes one or the other, he emphasizes first the before and after in causes before that in what being.

[16:28] So I think you know in discussing the third and the fourth arguments, you have to bring in what Dion said that about the other things. It's similar here. There can't be a complete separation. You have to understand that, practically through the the other or with the other. Yeah, that uh Saint Claire as Monsignor Dionne would say. Okay.

[16:58] Now, the second. One thing I want to talk about before we go into this. It's not, of course, the the main concern of Aristotle in the second book by any means. But as you situate the second book and among the books and so on, I'm going to talk about is something important to to see.

[17:28] And perhaps this is, in a way, the the third concern of the wise man. Are there dispositions of the will? Maybe emotions sometimes too, but mainly, are there dispositions of the will that are necessary in order to be a philosopher or in order to be a a good philosopher? Are the dispositions of will necessary?

[18:00] Well, they are. And there's at least seven seven dispositions of the will necessary to be a good philosopher. Now, of course, the I want to enumerate them in very kind of briefly here. The first disposition of the will necessary to be a philosopher or to be a good philosopher is the love of wisdom.

[18:35] That the philosopher must love wisdom for its own sake. He must love it more than anything else he loves for its own sake. So that he must love wisdom as the end or purpose of his life.

[18:58] Now, in addition to that love of wisdom, he needs two wants, two desires. He must want to know truth. He must have a strong desire to know truth.

[19:21] To be a good philosopher, and he must also have a strong desire. He must want to avoid mistake or error. He wants to avoid that. Thomas says in the I think it's the De Unitate Intellectus contra Averroistas in the Unity of the Intellect against the Averroists, that just as man has a natural desire to know. So he's a natural desire to avoid error and to refute it when he can.

[20:05] So that's two more dispositions of the will: wanting to know truth. That's necessary to be a philosopher or a good philosopher, but also wanting to avoid error.

[20:25] Now, the fourth and the fifth dispositions of the will are necessary because, for the most part, it's difficult to know truth, and for the most part, it's difficult to avoid mistakes or errors in your thinking.

[20:53] And the disagreement of thinkers, right, is a sign that it's difficult to know truth very often, and it's difficult to avoid error or mistakes, huh?

[21:08] And so, what you need in addition to wanting to know the truth is the hope, the persistence, huh, to overcome the difficulties in knowing truth, or rather, in coming to know truth, I should say. That if you despair of overcoming the difficulties in the way of knowing the truth, you will give up. It's not enough, therefore, to want to know the truth. You have to have this hope, which is the will, but strong enough, right, to persist in overcoming the difficulties in the way of knowing truth.

[21:56] And then, in terms of mistake, huh? It's not enough to want to avoid mistake. You have to have a healthy fear of being mistaken or falling into a mistake, huh? Now,

[22:17] this is not this hope and this fear are not assured by nature the way. Your wanting, let's say, to know truth or wanting to avoid mistakes is more assured by nature. But you also need a certain balance between the hope of coming to know the truth, despite the difficulties there are, and the fear of being mistaken.

[22:47] And a a good teacher, let's say, might at one time encourage the students if he thought they were being discouraged and and and starting to get closer to despair. But another time he might inculcate this fear of making a mistake and make them more cautious.

[23:10] Now, one advantage of the Socratic conversations, the dialogues that Plato wrote for us, is that you see the dispositions of will in the people engaging in the conversation, and how the dispositions of their will help or impede their thinking and trying to find the truth and avoid mistakes and so on. And perhaps the the dialogue, the Socratic conversations,

[23:46] revealed is more than a philosophical treatise, where you don't see so much the the will of people. Um. In terms of hope and fear,

[24:03] the great example there is the dialogue called the Phaedo. And in the major, the greatest conversation in the Phaedo, there's many of them, but the greatest conversation there is a conversation about the human soul, whether it survives death or not, whether the human soul is immortal or not.

[24:28] And this is something that's not obvious one way or the other. It's something you have to know through arguments if you're going to know it at all. And so, in that conversation, Socrates develops about three arguments, and they conclude to the immortality of the soul.

[24:52] And everybody is kind of resting in the discovered truth, huh? But Simmias and Cebes are over there, kind of having a little private conversation, so to speak. And Socrates says, "You're still thinking about this, or you've gone to something else? And because you're still thinking about it, tell us what you're thinking. " And Simmias and Cebes, there, and Cebes, they have been thinking about what Socrates says, and they see some difficulty.

[25:22] But he says, and so Simmias and Cebes, well, Socrates says, "Tell, tell, tell me. " So Simmias and Cebes come into objections, and they seem to poke holes in Socrates' arguments, huh? And all of a sudden, the whole thing collapses. Right. At that point, they fall into a kind of discouragement, a kind of despair, that how are we ever going to find the truth about the immortality of the soul?

[25:50] Here, there are three arguments of Socrates that seem to be good, and now everything seems to fall apart, huh? And Phaedo, who gives his name to the dialogue, Phaedo is narrating what took place on the last day of Socrates. That's why the dialogue is named from Phaedo. Not so much that he appears in the dialogue as a you know active participant, right? But he's narrating this to I think it's Echecrates huh?

[26:16] And Echecrates, you know, himself hearing this, you know, kind of shares vicariously that kind of sinking feeling that the friends of Socrates had, right? How will we ever know the truth, huh? And part of that despair is tied up with the idea that, well, how can you trust an argument? It seems good a minute ago, now it doesn't seem good anymore, right? If you can't trust an argument to know the truth, and the truth here can only be known through arguments, you might as well give up, right?

[26:50] You see? And Echecrates shares a little bit of that discouragement and, and, and as it were, verging on despair, right? And and he says to Phaedo, well, what did Socrates do? And and Phaedo expresses a certain admiration for Socrates at this point. I never admired Socrates more. And what Socrates does is to gradually lead them out of their what? Despair, right? And kind of restores their hope of eventually finding the truth out about the immortality of the soul.

[27:29] And you may recall how he does that now. The beautiful comparison between how men become misanthropes and how they become misologists, huh? And a beautiful comparison because it's more easily seen that misanthrope has a defect in him than the misologist, the heater of arguments, huh? But the way a man becomes a misanthrope is by trusting those he should not trust, and then being let down, or by trusting somebody more than he should, and then being let down, huh?

[28:14] Of course, Shakespeare's famous play about the misanthrope. In ancient times, that Plutarch mentions, there's Timon of Athens, right? You probably know the play, huh? But Timon, you know, thinks he's got all kinds of friends in Athens because he throws his house open for big feasts all the time and gives you little knickknack presents when you come and wonderful feast, and eventually falls into financial trouble, right? And of course, the stewards of the steward of of our friend Timon know he's making, you know, ass of himself, and says that these people are not really his friends, right?

[28:54] But when Timon falls into financial stringency. Oh, that's no problem. I can call upon him, or upon him, or upon him. You get all kinds of friends in Athens, and everybody calls upon him some excuse, you know. Oh, if you would have called me yesterday, I could have helped you. But you know, you know. Or then one of the other guys later on said, "Well, if you'd called upon me first, I wouldn't have given it to you.

[29:16] But you called upon him first, don't you think? " But they all have some excuse, right? And then Timon turns against all mankind, you see.

[29:26] And sometimes you find this with a woman too. Huh? She marries a no good bum, and then she hates all men, and she might poison her daughter's mind against all men and so on. Um, but Socrates is saying, um, the misanthrope should blame himself really for not being able to distinguish between a man you can trust completely, one you can't trust at all, and the vast number in between that you can trust more or less, or up to a certain point, some more and some less.

[30:01] And you have to be kind of naive about human beings to think that you can trust everybody completely, or right? Okay. And sometimes I make that comparison to a woman. Would be very naive if she thought she could trust every man completely, right? There are very few men you can trust completely. Some men you can't trust at all. You don't trust your daughter with Don Giovanni at all.

[30:30] Most men are in between. You can trust them up to a point, some further than others, right? And and they can see the point even class and the girls that you'd have to be a very naive woman to not know this about men. And therefore, if you trusted a man you shouldn't trust at all, or a man you should trust, you know, only up to this point, and you're let down, you kind of blame yourself, right, for your your hatred of men.

[30:57] The priest who officiated at our wedding, huh? He was on the marriage bureau, you know, and you get some of these ridiculous cases in there. And he's telling us one time, you know, you feel like burning out. Why the hell did you marry him in the first place? You should have known he was a no good bum, and so on. He said. Well, then Socrates makes a comparison.

[31:19] How do men become misologists, that is to say, haters of arguments, right? Well, they can't distinguish between the arguments you can trust completely. Not too many of those. Those you can't trust at all. And most arguments you can trust, but up to a point. And that's where Socrates says we need the art about what arguments, right? So you shouldn't hate arguments. That's like hating all men, right?

[31:47] You should blame yourself for not being able to see the distinction of the three. And therefore, he says you better acquire the art about arguments, and that, to my knowledge. Is the first time that the need for logica, as it's called today, is made explicitly by somebody. In the Greek, it says techne peri logous, the art about arguments. It's not a bad way of describing logic, because that's the culminating part of logic.

[32:18] But not only that, the so-called father of logic, our teacher here, Aristotle. If you look at the third part of logic, the culminating part, the art about arguments, has exactly those three parts that Socrates has. In the prior and the posterior analytics, you talk about the arguments you can trust completely. In sophistic refutations, the arguments you can't trust at all. In the book about places, the topics and the rhetoric about arguments, you can trust up to a point, but not what completely.

[32:57] The dialectical arguments more than the rhetorical arguments. So Socrates is anticipating not only the art about arguments, but the very threefold part of it that Aristotle, the father of logica, was to work out in those beautiful books.

[33:20] So what he does there is to somewhat restore their what? Their hope, right? Find the truth, huh? And not blame all arguments as all arguments are, you know, can prove anything, you know, like people say, people have that act right, or can disprove anything, you know, it's all. And you should blame yourself for not possessing the art about arguments, for not being able to distinguish between them, just as that woman who married the no good bum should blame herself for not being able to distinguish between a man you should trust and when you you should not, right?

[34:02] Remember, used to go visit. My friend downtown St. Paul, and so it was kind of late at night, going home on Saturday night, waiting for the bus. And one day, I'm standing there by the bus, and there's a woman there waiting for the bus too. That guy comes up, you know, stop, and sees the woman. It had to be a fool for her to get in the car with that guy, right?

[34:24] You know, If she got in the car with that guy, and there wouldn't know what would happen to the poor woman. You know, she had to be pretty stupid, you know. I was getting forward, like I was going to defend the woman, but she was smart enough not to get in that car. But you have to say to blame yourself, right, for getting involved with such a such a creep, you know.

[34:41] So now their confidence is so revived, and now Socrates takes up the objections of what Simmias and Cebes, and he first takes up the objection of Simmias. And bang, bang, bang! Three arguments he destroys the opinion that that Simmias has without proof brought in, right? To question the arguments, and wow, that was easy. And now they're getting what a little bit overconfident, right? Socrates has practically no come at all to destroy the objection of Simmias And.

[35:19] Socrates says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Cebes is not going to be so easy to answer, right? " And of course, we know the dialogue; it's a much more involved thing, right? But notice what a good teacher like Socrates can do, right? When his students are discouraged and they need to be encouraged, right, their hope restored, then he would do that, right? But when the hope is there and strong, and they're pushing forward, then maybe sometimes you got to put the brakes on a bit and give them a little bit of caution and a little bit of fear that they might, you know, make a mistake.

[35:56] Kasurik, my teacher, was telling me one time after class he went to see Monsignor Dionne there in the office there, and he found Dion talking much different in the office than he did in class. And he said to Monsignor, "Why are you speaking this way? You were speaking otherwise in class. " And Dionne said, "Well, it's the duty of the teacher to encourage the student. Okay, but now Kasurik didn't need encouragement, right?

[36:34] See, he needed more, maybe what? A little bit of caution, a little bit of brakes, huh? when I was going to do my doctoral thesis under Monsignor Dionne I had to submit an outline of what I was going to do. And so he had it for a few days, and then I came in to see him, and he began, you know, with a few little minor questions.

[36:59] What do you mean by this? What do you mean by that? And explain so on. Now he says now a more important objection, you know, and he proposed a reordering of my thesis. And the minute he proposed it, I could see it was better. In fact, it was so perfect that I could write the thesis myself after that. Dionne used to say that the main, the main responsibility of a thesis director is to order the thesis, right?

[37:22] So when he proposed it, I could see right away it was an improvement, and and I agreed right away with it. And he said, oh, I don't have any evidence, he says. What I'm saying.

[37:35] Or, in my last year there with De Koninck, this is a course for the most advanced students, huh? And the last year students, so to speak, it was a seminar on the five ways, huh? In the Summa Theologiae. It was part of the seminar where each of us had to give a paper, huh? Present in class, and each of us had to choose one of the five ways, and look at either some modern Thomists or some modern philosopher discussing that way, huh?

[38:07] And it seemed that every modern Thomist and every modern philosopher that were considered in the individual papers was found to not have understood the very proof he was talking about.

[38:22] And I think De Koninck was trying to what? Caution us, right, about the difficulty of understanding the five ways, and this kind of naive approach that people have somehow that we can get them in freshman year college or something and go out and convince the world of these things. And so at the end of the course, De Koninck was saying, I think I can prove the existence of God, he said, but I would not be so presumptuous as to say so.

[38:53] But it made a lot of sense after seeing, you know, everybody who had discussed one of these things had failed to understand the argument. I did mine on Descartes because I was working on Descartes anyway for my doctoral thesis, and he had misunderstood the major premise, he had misunderstood the minor premise of the very argument that he's discussing. Okay, but there, as I say, you see that represented by the great Plato there in the dialogue, the Phaedo, right?

[39:19] And of course, there are other areas of human life where maybe not the same kind of hope and fear, but other kinds of hope and fear are essential, huh? Like in in in the life of the Christian there, when Thomas is talking about some of the songs where hope and fear are mentioned together, and Thomas talks about how you need both of them. If you don't have hope in the mercy of God, you're going to despair of your salvation, and that's terrible.

[39:50] But if you don't have a fear of the divine justice, then you become kind of presumptuous, huh? So you need a kind of balance of the hope in the divine mercy. With the fear of the divine justice, huh? And I suppose the spiritual director would have to see in what condition the soul he's advising is, right? Because if that soul was in a kind of despair because of their sins, they've committed abortion or some terrible thing, you know, he might have to what, you know, encourage them to have hope in the divine mercy that they can be forgiven despite whatever bad thing they've done, right?

[40:29] Huh? But somebody else who doesn't seem to even know what sin is, right, and has no fear and going on with his wicked life and so on, he might need to have a little bit, you know, fear of God. I remember one time being in a in a Catholic bookstore. I forget where it was, and I think it was a little work by Saint Anselm. You know, meditation to gain the fear of the Lord.

[40:53] I said, that's exactly what we need today. You know, all you hear about in church, you know, is is you find you're going to be taken care of. You know, we're all going to paradise. You know, and and maybe you need to balance this with with some fear, huh? Or like say with the politician sometimes, huh? The politician's going to run a good campaign. He's got to have hope of winning the election, because if he doesn't have hope to win the election, he's going to despair.

[41:22] He's going to go through the motions, huh? But they say he runs a good campaign when he runs scared, huh? And sometimes the guy's been elected more than once, you know. Well, you know, they're going to do it again. And somebody else who's not so confident is back there, or during the district, you know, and and these guys come back from Washington. All of a sudden, the other guys made inroads, and so they didn't run scared, right?

[41:44] So maybe different kinds of hope and fear, but there's many areas in human life where you need this, huh? You need, I suppose, even a you know a team or something, you know. If they if they despair of winning, they're going to lose. But they but if they're so overconfident that they don't have any fear of the enemies, you know,

[42:07] the Yankees were down about six games there, you know, and my my doctor said, Don't count'em out, though, you know, and press the right back there, you know, so can't get too confident just because they're doing so good this year or something. Oh, wow.

[42:23] Okay, so. We'll see some things in the way Aristotle proceeds that correspond to the need for both hope and fear, right? And the need for a balance between the two. I'll make some observations when I when I situate book two.

[42:46] So you need the love of wisdom. The you must want to know truth, want to avoid error, but you need in addition to those last two, the hope of overcoming the difficulties in coming to know truth, and the fear of making the mistakes.

[43:05] Is that like they can keep us well irascible the first two and second two? Well, there's some resemblance to it, except it's in the will, right? Okay. Now, when I look back upon my three teachers there, I kind of had Kasurik first, and then De Koninck and then Dionne Kasurik very much encouraged me to think about things and say, you know, Duane, go out and read this, you know, and then you know push me on and on, right?

[43:32] Deconic, you know, a little more cautious there. And of course, as Ward Murray said about Monsignor Dian, his predominant passion is fear. And but I sometimes think if I had had Monsignor Dian first, I would have been afraid to think. You see, so I was kind of fortunate having these guys in the proper order. But

[43:59] okay, now what do you need in addition to those five dispositions of the will that I've mentioned so far? Well, the sixth one you need what is called docility or teachableness on the side of the will. There's two kinds of teachableness on the side of the will and the side of reason. Thomas talks about both of them. The teachableness on the side of the will means that you're willing to read carefully, frequently, and with reverence, or to hear carefully, frequently, and reverence the words of those wiser than you.

[44:49] So Thomas talks about them, and he talks about docility on the side of the will. So if you want to be a good philosopher, you need to be willing to hear or read carefully, frequently, and with reverence. Those are the three words Thomas uses: the words of those wiser than you. Otherwise, you don't go very far. So that's the sixth disposition of will necessary.

[45:21] Now the seventh disposition is humility, huh? Which is necessary not only for that teachableness, that docility that I just mentioned, but in order to what avoid mistakes,

[45:41] because pride is the mother of error, and it's a cause of error in in more than one way. In the commentaries on the Epistles of Saint Paul, Thomas says that pride is a cause of error in two ways: you overestimate your powers, and you apply your mind to something above your power to judge,

[46:04] and then it withdraws you from listening to those wiser than you, who would call you back or prevent you from falling into some of these mistakes or errors. So that's the seventh disposition of the will that you need.

[46:20] Now there are other dispositions you might want to mention, but see like like mildness that you need for conversation because you get angry to the guy and prevents you from. Thomas often says it: the man who wants to dispute, he's got to he's got to be keep his anger in control. But that's to some extent more a disposition maybe of the emotions than of the the will.

[46:50] Another one you could mention that may be involved in in the love of wisdom. You have to love the truth more than your what friend, right? And Socrates gives a very strong example of that in the Phaedo because he says, "If you have an objection to my arguments for the immortality of the soul, I want to hear them, and don't hold back on the grounds that oh, Socrates is going to die today, he's going to face death more bravely if he thinks his soul is going to survive death.

[47:24] So let's not disturb Socrates on the day he's going to die, right? And Socrates says, "Well, if you listen to me, you'll care very much about the truth and little about Socrates in comparison to that. " And you all know the passage where Aristotle, you know, follows Socrates and Plato when he says that Plato's a what

[47:47] friend, but truth is a greater friend, right? Okay. Storn Stern translate Plato's a friend, but truth is my sister. Okay. So that's a little outline there of of some of the main dispositions, right?

[48:13] Of will that are necessary for being a philosopher, and especially for being a good philosopher. About those. And Plato is aware of this, and Aristotle is aware of this, huh? And in the way Aristotle writes the metaphysics, there seems to be a certain

[48:39] understanding, right, of the dispositions of will necessary to be a philosopher. Obviously, in the proemium to wisdom, huh? Where you learn what wisdom aims at and the kind of knowledge it is. There, Aristotle shows that it's the best and most honorable knowledge. That's the fourth thing he shows about the kind of knowledge it is. It's the best and most honorable knowledge because it's the most divine knowledge.

[49:10] So he's certainly giving you, in the proemium to wisdom, a reason, huh, to love wisdom, right? Which is the first disposition, huh? Okay. Of course, he. Everybody knows he starts from the famous words: "All men by nature, right, desire to." Actually, the Greek says to identify to to understand, right? We sometimes translate to know. As I mentioned, Thomas takes recalls that in the Unitate Intellectus, and says that just if he has a natural desire to know, right, you have a natural desire to avoid error.

[49:56] Aristotle does say something in the proemium about the difficulty of becoming wise, huh? Okay. But then. And in the rest of Book One, after the proemium Aristotle, he could say, is considering whether he should try to learn wisdom from his predecessors, right? Which would be the reasonable thing to do if they've arrived, or whether it's necessary for him to try to discover wisdom, although with their help, right?

[50:35] And the rest of Book One, you might say, shows the need for a further investigation of causes that the Greek philosophers before him that sought wisdom, right, did not arrive at adequate knowledge of causes, and he not only narrates what they said and why they said it, but then he subsequently has a critique of that.

[51:02] Now, something discouraging about that, right? If you see that everybody who has pursued this goal before you seems to have failed to achieve it, that could discourage you, if not put you in a state of what? Despair. Despair, and this has happened, right, to many people in the history of human thinking, huh? But Aristotle, as I've mentioned before, when he narrates the opinions of his predecessors about causes and gives the reasons that they had for their opinions, he states that we're going to do this not only so we can examine whether what they say is sufficient or not, but we're going to

[52:01] go through these things to see if they touched upon any kind of cause in addition to the four kinds of causes that were distinguished in the Natural Philosophy.

[52:16] And so, although you come away with the negative conclusion that none of those who have pursued wisdom before you have come to an adequate knowledge of the causes, let alone of the very first causes, yet you get confirmation at the same time in the first book that there are indeed four kinds of causes, and that's a positive step forward in considering causes to know how many kinds of causes there are, right?

[52:50] And that we can distinguish four kinds of causes and know that at least, right? So there's something for some reason to hope, right? As well as some reason to be fearful about this whole enterprise, because of the failure of all these men before you. You see a little connection there between the balance of hope and fear is necessary when you go through that, right?

[53:19] There is something for hope, but maybe more for fear. Okay. Now, because of that kind of fear you might have, you might want to say, well, given the failure of these men who pursued this

[53:38] and who were seeking, you might say a kind of universal truth about all things, because that's part of the description of the wise man. He knows all things in some way,

[53:50] and especially the truth about the first causes. Maybe we should stop and consider how man is towards knowing truth, right? It would seem a little bit of caution would be in order here, right? Before we merrily set off to find the truth about all things in general and the truth about the first causes, it would seem appropriate here now to talk about well, how really is man towards knowing truth, huh?

[54:22] And that's what he's going to do first in what book two, right? Okay. As I think I may have mentioned yesterday, after he shows how man is towards knowing truth, he's going to bring out that the consideration of truth belongs most of all to the wise man, and he's going to reason from the fact that he his knowledge is about the first causes, and therefore it's appropriate if the consideration of truth belongs most of all to the wise man that to him also belongs the task of considering and determining how man really is towards this activity of knowing truth, huh?

[55:15] Do you see that? But I might mention that when he gives the reason why the consideration of truth belongs most of all to the wise man, it involves the idea that wisdom is the knowledge of the first causes, and the first causes is going to argue are more true than the else. But it kind of supposes that there are first causes, right? And so right after that, he's going to in the rest of the second and in the third and the fourth readings, he's going to show that there are first causes in the four kinds of causes that we considered in the first book, right?

[56:05] So despite you know the reasons for discouragement. You're going forward, right? First, in the in the first book, that there are four kinds of causes, and now you're starting to see reasons why there must be first causes in each of the four kinds of what, genera, right? And so this is what encouragement, right? This is hope that I eventually will reach the goal of the wise man, right?

[56:37] And already I know there are four kinds of causes, and therefore I must look for the first cause in one or more than one of these four kinds. That's already a considerable step, right? And now I see very good reasons why there is a first cause in each of these four kinds of what, causes, huh?

[57:06] Now, knowing. How man is towards knowing truth is not explicitly talking about how should we proceed, huh? What's the way of considering truth, right? And that's the third thing in book two, right? It'll be about how one should consider truth, huh? But actually, you'll see that third part of book two is about how we should determine the way of considering truth in each particular reasoned out knowledge, huh?

[57:49] But we will recall that point, how that more general question directs us in every reasoned out knowledge whatsoever, because in every reasoned out knowledge we have to ask how should we proceed, right? How should we reason in this particular reasoned out knowledge? And so, in the third part of second book, when he shows how we should determine that way that's appropriate in this or that reasoned out knowledge, he's in some way directing all reasoned out knowledge, huh?

[58:26] And that would, at least he doesn't stop and say it here, but that would go back to what he showed about the wise man, the sixth attribute of the wise man, in the premium that he he's directed by nobody, but he directs everybody else, huh? And therefore, it's appropriate that the wise man determine how the private road or the private way of proceeding, the modus proprius, as Thomas would call, it, of each reasoned out knowledge should or should not be determined.

[58:56] I say should or should not be determined because you know there's the same knowledge of opposites. If you don't know how it should not be determined, you don't know how it should be determined either. Okay. Aristotle will also show how, in fact, it usually is determined, which is the way it should not be determined. That's really a beautiful, beautiful reading, but it's again the brevity of wisdom, huh?

[59:19] Okay. So that's a little preparatory now. We're just starting to look at the first, second book of wisdom, right? It's common in philosophy courses to have a course on epistemology. And there is no such animal, right? I mean, it starts right away. You know, if you look at the Greek word epistemology, if you take what the Greek words are saying, that's the posterior analytics, you see. But these other considerations, like the consideration of how man is towards, you know, knowing truth, they probably put with epistemology, right?

[59:59] But there ain't no such animal. It belongs the wise man to determine that, right? You want to take episteme in the original Greek sense and the way Aristotle uses it, then that's the posterior analytics, the prior and the posterior analytics. That's epistemology. Episteme means, you know, episteme is is an effective demonstration, so it's it's in the consideration of demonstration and its effectiveness. And therefore, Aristotle takes up episteme there, right after he takes up demonstration in the posterior analytics.

[1:00:29] But you're going to go and say something further about. episteme? They ain't no such animal, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a it's a bastard science, huh? Okay. For example, Yes. it's sort of starting right, sort of starting wrong, because. Yeah, they might do some things that would belong to the anima too, right? In the so-called epistemology course, they're talking about the senses or something like that, right? But consideration of the senses belongs to the second book about the soul.

[1:00:59] So you're making a hodgepodge, you know, of things, and so it's really a bastard science. Okay. Now let's look a little bit here at the beginning of the second book, which is in the Greek called Alpha Tres. Now Aristotle begins with a statement,

[1:01:37] but you could say the statement is the answer to a question, and the question could be stated thus: Is the consideration of truth easy or difficult for man?

[1:02:04] And there's three possible answers. One is the consideration of truth is easy for man, and hardly anybody would say that, right? Except a fool.

[1:02:21] A second possible answer would be consideration of truth is difficult for man, and that's what probably most professors would say, right? The third possible answer is what Aristotle gives. In one way it's difficult, in another way it's what easy, right?

[1:02:44] And sometimes I put it in kind of a concrete way to students, and I say, now if you went down Mahogany Row and all these rows of doors, professors' offices, and you knocked on the door, and Professor So and So comes the door, and you ask him, "Is it easy or difficult to know the truth? " What do you think Professor X would say? Well, probably say, "Difficult, if not impossible."

[1:03:11] Okay. You go all the way down the line, you get that same answer all the way down until the last door says Aristotle. Let's see what this guy says. Knocking the door, is the knowledge of truth easy or difficult for man? In one way it's difficult, in another way easy. This is unusual answer, right? Okay. And notice Aristotle in answering the question says, he gives chalepon difficult before easy, right?

[1:03:42] As if it's more known and recognized, right, that the consideration of truth is difficult for man, right? What's surprising is though that he says in one way difficult and in one way what easy, right? Now again, apart from the truth of that answer that is going to become clear as you go on, but apart from the truth of that answer, notice how that restores a certain balance to.

[1:04:14] The pursuit of truth, right? That if you emphasized only the difficulty of knowing truth, which is very great, you might get discouraged and even despair eventually of knowing the truth. And that's the way most thinkers are. They're agnostics, you know. They get nothing to sense. You know when Whittaker Chambers came back to Columbia University with his old friends after he became a communist, and he found that they treated ideas like ping pong balls.

[1:04:43] He said, "You know, well, ping pong balls, you knock around, but you don't take it too seriously, a ping pong ball. That's you do. You knock around ideas, you know, around and blah blah blah blah blah, and then you go and do something, you know, go and make some money or do something worthwhile. And of course, at that point, you know, he admired the communists more than the you know buddies at Columbia University, at least they had somewhat seriously about their ideas.

[1:05:09] Um, it seems to me most professors I've known, you know, are kind of that way. I know when I was first at Assumption there, I used to meet sometimes on Fridays there myself, another philosophy professor and a political scientist professor, They were all interested in the poetics of Aristotle, right? And of course, we two guys, philosophers, had been trained at the law and so on, and we, you know, rather serious in the way we proceeded now with the poetics.

[1:05:42] And the other guy remarked, you know, I've never seen this before, you know, never seen anybody taking things seriously really before. Get the impression, you know, this is kind of new to him, right? You know that we really thought there was something to be known here, and that you could read this text seriously and and come to know something, right, as a result of doing it. You know, this unusual, you know, experience for this guy.

[1:06:04] So you get the impression, you know, that that that they they've given up, you know, and either they, if they're honest, they would leave the academic world, right? But they say that they're just, you know, playing games with with ideas, ideas like ping pong balls. Okay. In the Greek, there's something equivalent to the vero in the Latin to the vero in the Latin says sic vero, at least like he's trying to say.

[1:06:35] Indeed, there's something easy. Well, no, see, see, men de on one hand, and the other hand, sort of like that, huh? Te men chalepon in this way is difficult, in that way te de radia easy, huh? Okay. Now, before we.