Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
34. Truth and the Cause: Why Wisdom Most Considers Truth, and the Beginning of the First-Cause Argument
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7b-wisdom-2006-colorado/034-truth-and-the-cause-why-wisdom-most-considers-truth-and-the/

[0:00] two o'clock, and then we'll look at the second reading and maybe part of the third reading at least, right? Second and third now. Those, huh? Okay. At their stations. Okay. Say a

[0:26] little prayer. Name of the Father and the Son and 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. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. And help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:57] So now we go to the beginning here of the second part of the second book of Wisdom. And in the second part, Aristotle is going to, in a way, kill two birds with one stone.

[1:21] He's going to be giving a reason why the consideration of truth belongs most of all to the wise man or to wisdom. And since that reason is in part based upon wisdom being about the first causes, he subjoins, you might say, a manifestation that in the four kinds of causes, or in each kind of cause, there is a first cause.

[1:57] So, though that's in there to back up the reasoning that wisdom most of all, or to wisdom belongs most of all, the consideration of truth, it also advances right the understanding of causes from knowing there are four kinds of causes to seeing there's a first cause in each kind.

[2:29] And I call it sometimes a subplot. Okay. Because presumably the reason for the rest of Book One was not to manifest that there were four kinds of cause, but to see whether we could learn wisdom from the men who had previously sought it, right? Or whether we had to make ourselves an investigation.

[3:02] But then Aristotle saw that in trying to do the first of those two things, you had to first of all narrate what these guys said and why they said it, and then secondly examine it, right? And in narrating what they said and why they said it, this could serve another purpose, that of confirming that there's only four kinds of causes. And something like that here, in the second of the three parts of the second book, Aristotle is going to give a reason why it belongs to wisdom, most of all, to consider truth, which is a kind of reason for why the wise men would consider how man is towards truth.

[3:52] Because he's a guy mainly concerned with truth, huh? But in giving that reason, that wisdom is from wisdom being a knowledge of the first causes, he wants to manifest that there are indeed first causes, right? And now he's advancing our knowledge of the causes.

[4:16] Now, in a way, the reason he gets here in the middle too is also the reason for the third part. The third part is going to talk, as we said before, about how the road to follow or how the way to go forward in any reasoned out knowledge should and should not be determined. And in a sense, you're asking, you know, what road to truth should one follow in each science, and how should you determine that?

[4:48] And why should the wise man do that, right? Well, because the consideration of truth belongs to most of all. But I think I probably myself go back to the thing in the proemium that says the wise man directs everybody else. But in a way, the middle part connects and gives a reason for why you're doing what you're doing in the first and the third part.

[5:20] Reminds me a little bit of the order of the Meno huh? The Meno, if you read it carefully, I think you will see that the Meno is more useful as an introduction to logic than to ethics although presumably you're talking about whether virtue can be taught or or what virtue is. But it's more interesting in showing by way of that examples something about the art of defining when you're trying to answer the question what is virtue, and something about the art of reasoning when you are trying to reason that virtue can or cannot be taught, huh?

[6:05] And then what's the middle part of the Meno? Well, having studied logic under Albert the Great to some extent. Albert the Great divides logic a little bit differently than Thomas does. Thomas, as you may know, divides logic into three parts according to the three acts of reason. Albert divides logic into two parts: the art of defining and the art of what reasoning, the art of coming to know what you don't know, either the simple unknown, like by defining, like what is a man or what is a dog, and then the art of coming to know the complex unknown, which is a statement, right?

[6:48] And that's known by reasoning. So, in a way, the first part of the Meno corresponds to the attempt to define what virtue is, and you see something of the difficulty of defining and what you have to do to define. The third part is a kind of introduction to the art of reasoning. Well, the middle part is what's common to both, and that is that you come to know what you don't know through what you do know, and you have all those, you know, sophistical arguments of of mino that you can't investigate what you don't know, right?

[7:24] And Socrates trying to answer and so on, but Plato has artfully put a discussion about what is common to defining and reasoning in between defining and reasoning. Something kind of pleasant about that,

[7:44] and so he separates the consideration of the of defining and the consideration of reasoning by consideration of what they have in common. Sort of interesting. Well, it's not exactly the same here, but what is said in the middle part of this book illuminates why in wisdom we talk about what we do in the first part that we said saw this morning, and illuminates why to some extent the wise man talks about what he does in the third part.

[8:16] So it's a little bit like his his master Plato, and he spent twenty years in the school of Plato, right? Aristotle went to Plato's school because he's famous all over Greece, but he was worth listening to when he got there, right? Protagoras was not, but Plato was, and Aristotle spent twenty years and left only because Plato died and he was

[8:47] not going to sit at the feet of Speusippus the nephew of Plato who was not too sharp. Okay. So let's look now at the first sentence, which is line nineteen in in the nine ninety three nineteen. Still in the first chapter for that division, but it's it's a lesser part of chapter one. It's the beginning of the second reading in Thomas, second Orthos, correctly or rightly, do we call philosophy the episteme, the reasoned-out knowledge of the truth?

[9:26] I notice what he calls this part of philosophy, if you want to call it a part. He calls it what? Philosophy, right? And yet he's talking now not about natural philosophy, or mathematical philosophy, or political philosophy. He's using philosophy to mean what? First philosophy, or wisdom, right? Now, why can he do that? Because it almost is Yeah, and as I mentioned before, a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the etymology of philosophy is the meaning of the word philosophy.

[10:15] And there's a distinction between the etymology of a word, that from which it is taken, and that to which it is applied. And the word philosophy, at least by Plato and Aristotle, is not applied to the love of wisdom, which is the etymology, but to the knowledge, right, which the lover of wisdom would pursue.

[10:40] And of course, the lover of wisdom would pursue, as the name indicates, wisdom. So you could call wisdom philosophy, and the others are philosophy only in a kind of secondary sense. It kind of fits in with what Thomas says there in the seventh book too. That if he wanted to give a synonym for philosophy in Latin, since philosophy is a Greek-derived word, the synonym would be sapientia, wisdom.

[11:12] So, wisdom is philosophy, and natural philosophy is not wisdom, except secundum quid, if you want to say it's a wisdom about natural things. The wisdom period is this.

[11:28] Now he's going to show this in two what stages? Huh? And just like he did, and if you remember the premium, or if you study the premium, in the premium he shows the wisdom about causes, and then he shows in particular it's about the first causes.

[11:55] So, since wisdom is one of the theoretical kinds of philosophy, it's a part of theoretical or looking knowledge, as we would say. He's going to first show that the consideration of truth belongs more to looking knowledge than to practical knowledge, right? To making or doing. And then he wants to show that even among the various kinds of looking knowledge, a natural philosophy, mathematical philosophy, first philosophy, or wisdom, it belongs most of all to what?

[12:38] Wisdom, right? Now the reason he gives is that the very end or purpose of looking philosophy is truth. But of practical knowledge, the very end is not truth, but the doing or the making of something, some ergon, as he says here. Now the end or purpose of a thing is obviously what is most important in that thing, because everything else is for the sake of that end or purpose.

[13:13] So if truth is a very end or purpose of looking knowledge or looking philosophy, and it's not the end or purpose of practical knowledge or even of practical philosophy, then obviously the consideration of truth belongs more to looking knowledge, being its end, than it does to that knowledge where it's not the end or purpose of it.

[13:37] I mean, it might make a little excursion here related to this, but this is a little, maybe a little side, but important thing to see in some ways. A little puzzling in some ways, but

[13:55] in the dialogue called the Theaetetus, the young mathematician at that time, or is in the dialogue, but a real historical mathematician who made important contributions. If you get Heath's edition of Euclid, you'll find out what Theaetetus is, what parts are attributed to him, or what discoveries are attributed to him. The Theaetetus is introduced by his teacher Theodorus to Socrates. In the beginning of the dialogue, and Theodorus says, among other things, in praise or commenting on Theaetetus, that he's something of a philosopher.

[14:38] And later on in the conversation between Socrates and Theaetetus, Theaetetus breaks out in wonder, and Socrates stops at that point and he says, "Theodorus didn't guess badly about your nature. You are something of a philosopher." And it's because of the wonder he sees in Theaetetus. And then Socrates makes a very strong statement

[15:08] that there's no other beginning of philosophy than wonder. That's it. He's very different about that. And then in the text, it's kind of clever in the sense that he goes on to make a statement that it's all obscure, and if you don't wonder about it, I suppose it's sign you're not a philosopher yourself. And he says, "It wasn't a bad genealogy. The man who said that

[15:45] the rainbow, right, was the offspring of what? No, excuse me. That Iris was the offspring of what? Thalmas. Thaumas being kind of personification of wonder. And this is in is in Hesiod, I guess. This genealogy that Iris is the offspring of Thaumas but Thaumas comes from the Greek word for wonder thaumazein Well, Iris is both what the rainbow personified, and Iris is a messenger of the gods.

[16:20] And you should first of all wonder why is Iris both the rainbow and the what messenger of gods? Well, the rainbow unites heaven and earth, huh? Place of God and place of man, and the messenger of the gods unites man with God. Huh? So the saying wasn't a bad genealogy to say that Iris is the offspring of wonder. What does Socrates say? Does he explain it? Wonder unites us with the cause.

[16:51] Yeah, on the side of our reason, huh? Because wonder makes us look for the cause, and if the cause has a cause, for the cause of the cause, and at last for the first cause, the first cause is God. Wonder, at least on the side of our reason, unites us with what God, huh? Well, in the premium to wisdom, when Aristotle begins the second part of the premium, he's talking about what kind of knowledge wisdom is.

[17:24] The first thing he wants to say about wisdom is that it's looking knowledge, huh? And the sign that he gives of that. Is that it begins from wonder, and the man who wonders, not trying to feed his stomach or get warm or something, he's merely trying to know. And looking knowledge means that it's for the sake simply of knowing, for the sake of seeing or understanding. So Aristotle uses wonder

[17:55] as the beginning of philosophy. That men in the beginning and now began to philosophize out of wonder as a sign to conclude that philosophy or or wisdom must be what looking knowledge, huh? Not practical knowledge. And so you ask yourself, well, what are you going to say then about ethics and political philosophy? They philosophy. Do they arise from wonder, the desire to know, for its own sake, or is practical philosophy, as the name indicates, that this is for the sake of doing, and therefore it's not arising out of wonder?

[18:40] So, you have a little puzzle there, right? You say philosophy begins in wonder, and you can reason from that that it's looking knowledge. Then how can there be such a thing as what practical philosophy? Maybe it's not philosophy in the same sense exactly, and and does practical philosophy begin from wonder? I suppose you could say there's an element of wonder there, but seems maybe that practical philosophy begins more from the desire for happiness, huh?

[19:21] And so you want to know what happiness is and how to achieve it, so it arises from the desire to be truly happy, huh?

[19:33] So be aware of that a little bit, huh? Of course, Augustine has interesting things in Augustine there, where I guess he's following Varro at one point. Varro says that there's no reason to philosophize except to be happy. And then they go to the tenth book of Nicomachean Ethics, where Aristotle distinguishes two happiness, and one is according to this here wisdom, and the other is according to foresight, and especially political foresight.

[20:10] So then you get the two kinds of philosophy, huh? And the desire for happiness, but both in the premium here and then in the Theaetetus wonder is certainly the beginning of philosophy. So in that sense, looking either looking philosophy alone is philosophy, or it's more so than. Practical philosophy, there is there is some you know wonder in I suppose practical philosophy, and there is even some in logic.

[20:44] Monsignor Dian used to say, "a teaching with no wonder is nothing. So, excuse me. Okay, so it gives us the reason then, the main reason why the consideration of truth belongs more to looking knowledge than practical knowledge, is that it's the very end purpose of looking knowledge. It's not the end or purpose of practical knowledge.

[21:19] and then kind of a secondary reason, he says, that if they sometimes look for how things are right. Not so much looking for the cause as such, but what is what relevant to their actions.

[21:38] And so, if you are going to go to war, you got to know who your friends and enemies are, right? So, if England's going to go to war. Maybe today, Germany is a friend of France of England, as it was in Napoleonic wars, and then in the First World War, Second World War, it's just the reverse, right? And you want to know if you are going to invest your money?

[22:03] Is the market going up or is it going down? Right, but those things that are relevant to action are not true always. Sometimes they're true. Sometimes the market's going up. Sometimes it's going down. Sometimes France is a friend. Sometimes the enemy, of England, right? As the British statesman said, "We have no permanent friends, just permanent interests." And so,

[22:29] that's kind of a secondary thing that they have some concern with what's true. It's the here and now true, which is not very true, because that can't be true always. It's going to be you know another truth tomorrow.

[22:43] Okay. Um. Now, having said that, now he's going to give a reason why among looking knowledge, right? Wisdom is the one that is most concerned with truth,

[23:04] and he's going to tell you. Have the connection between truth and the cause, and then around line 25 he's going to state the principle, and it's stated fairly briefly.

[23:24] You find it stated often in Thomas very briefly. That in account of which more so, that's what he'll say. And he'll say, What do you mean, that in account of which more so? That because of which more so? " Well, usually what I do is I'll expand it into a few more words, and I'll say, "When the same, which he calls synonymon here, when the same belongs to two things, but to one of them because of the other, it belongs more to the cause.

[24:02] " Okay. Now you can manifest this a little bit with very simple examples, and if hot is said of the fire, right, and the air around the fire, but of the air around the fire because of the fire, which is hotter. Yeah. And if wet is said of the water and of the dishcloth, of the dishcloth because of the water, which is wetter. And if sweet is said of the sugar and my coffee, of my coffee because of the sugar, which is sweeter.

[24:42] Okay. And then this principle is used throughout philosophy, like in logic. We'll say if known is said of the premises of the syllogism and the conclusion, right? But known is said of the conclusion because of the premises, which is more known. Premises. Yeah. And you could say in addition that the premises were not more known, you wouldn't use them to prove the what conclusion, huh? And in ethics, huh, we say

[25:25] if desirable is said of the end of the means, like say health and medicine, but it's said of the means, like medicine, because of the other, like medicine is desirable because health is desirable, which is more desirable, which is better. Yeah. Okay. So it has a very major applications, huh? If I

[25:55] love your children because I love you, so I love you and your children. I love your children because you. Whom do I love more?

[26:11] Okay. You see. And if this book moves this glass, right? And I move the book, right? In some sense, the book is moving the glass, and I'm moving the book. But the book is moving the glass because it's what moved by me. Which is more the mover? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now, Aristotle is going to apply that very famous thing here again, huh? And the application will be that true can be said of the cause and the effect, but the effect is true because of the cause.

[27:02] So, which is more true? Cause. Yeah. Okay. And so, if the cause is more true than the effect, what is most true will be the first cause. And wisdom is about the first cause. Therefore, the consideration of what is most true belongs to wisdom. And therefore, we can say that the consideration of wisdom belongs most of all to what wisdom, huh? Maybe we could argue from its considering the axioms a bit too, right?

[27:37] Because they're most true amongst statements, huh? Okay. Now, apart from this example. We hear the old example of hot, that is concrete example, like I was taking.

[27:53] He has a few things that come out of this around line twenty-eight, and you hear see Aristotle indicating that there can be a cause of the necessary, right? Whence he says the beginnings, meaning the causes, because you often use the word beginnings in the sense of causes. Whence the beginning of the things that always are,

[28:30] and the things that always are are the necessary things. Whence he's saying the causes of the things that always are are necessarily most true,

[28:47] and I guess it was Democritus who said that when something is necessary, you don't look for a reason for it. And Aristotle sees no, there can be something that is necessary, but necessary through another, yeah, like the conclusions of a demonstration, right? Are necessary, but the necessary because of what's in the premises. And so it's a little bit touching upon the thing we talked about before about the argument for the necessary and the contingent.

[29:20] It's talking a little bit upon the fact that there can be what something necessary through another, and something necessary through itself, and the necessary through itself would be the beginning or cause of the necessary through another.

[29:39] So he's talking in a way about the cause of the necessary, and they will necessarily be most what true, right? Seems Aristotle. Yeah, the principle he's citing here is that if something is the cause, then it must be the maximum, or more than the other things. Thomas often cites this text to say that whatever is the maximum must be the cause as well. Yeah, yeah, in both ways.

[30:06] And that's why it seems you got to you got to make explicit something, right? Huh? We were talking about the other day about it

[30:14] can't be more than one cause as such to the same thing, huh? And so what? That makes it convertible. Well, yeah, but you could you could say that if there's only one cause as such of something, then

[30:36] other things either don't have that, or they only have it by the cause as such. But the causes such as something would have that most of all, and the others would have it more or less as they approach the cause as such. So what has it most of all must be the cause of all the rest.

[30:57] Okay. So then he has a kind of corollary at the end there of this little section. So as each thing has itself in being, so also in what truth, huh? And there you see kind of that switch from one to the other too, right? Because he's saying now instead of the order in causes and effect there, the order in being, right?

[31:30] Now I sometimes like to pause at this point and and talk about those pagans, you know. And I was reading one time, Hilary, of Hilary of Poitiers, I guess, the guy wrote on the Trinity and so on. Apparently he was a Greek philosopher before he was a Christian, huh? And in the beginning, I think of his work on the Trinity, I believe it is, where he gives a little autobiographical sketch, huh?

[32:00] And one of the motives of credibility for him coming into the church was he'd picked up the Old Testament and read there, and Moses asked God, "What's your name?" and so on, and God says, "I am who I am," right? That impressed him, you know. That's he's sensitive him as an educated, you know, philosopher to some extent.

[32:29] There would be a motive of credibility for a philosopher, not for you know the average person, but if Aristotle had had come across that, which we don't think he did, but then if in addition he he turns the New Testament and and hears Christ saying, you know, "I am truth itself," right? It fits very well with this text, right? As a thing has itself in being, so in truth, right?

[32:59] So the one who is I am who I am is also what truth itself, huh? So it would become a motive of credibility for Aristotle, but I don't know if you've ever heard that motive of credibility because the New Testament was not written until some time after Aristotle's death, hundreds of years afterwards, and as far as we know, he doesn't give any evidence of acquaintance with the Hebrew scriptures, right?

[33:27] But it's kind of nice to see that harmony here between and then the two testaments and calling God I am who I am and then truth itself and this little corollary Aristotle has, right? So as things are in being, so they are in what truth, right? And Thomas recalls that we saw that in the last reading of the ninth book. He's talking about the the truth of composed things and the truth of simple things is not exactly the same truth.

[33:59] And Thomas says this is not surprising because their being is not of the same kind, and that goes back to this, right? As a thing is in being, so it is in truth. So if the being of the simple things is more so than that of the material things or composed things, then the truth is going to be higher in that case too.

[34:26] So here again, you see, again a kind of correspondence of two orders: the order of things in being and the order of them in truth. In some ways, that enters into those arguments from to referring to in the two Summas,

[34:43] just like we were talking this morning about some correspondence between the order in being and the order in causes and effects, but that identity.

[34:57] Now, of course. To say that wisdom is a knowledge of first causes presupposes that there are first causes to be known, right? And someone might say, well, are there first causes, right? Aristotle, in the rest of the second reading, which goes into the first part of the second chapter in the other division, he's kind of going to announce what he's going to try to prove or show in the third and the fourth readings that there are first causes in the different kinds of cause.

[35:35] Now you will notice in the statement of what he intends to show about the four causes, and then in the actual showing of it, although there will be some

[35:55] variations here. He speaks of this first of all in regard to the material cause and the mover here. Later on, in terms of the mover and the matter first, and then

[36:14] in the fourth reading, he'll be showing it about the end and the form, right? Okay. He first enumerates positions here. I think he starts with with matter, and then he goes to the what beginning of motion, the mover, and then he goes to the

[36:37] other two causes, the end next, and then the what was to be the the form. And he's going to follow that order in the showing of it, but there'll be a little change there. We'll see when you get there. But now,

[36:58] and when he gets to proving it, he'll start with the mover, and then he'll do something different with the matter. But we'll see what the reason for that when you get there. But it's the mover and the matter, or the matter and the mover, either way, you want to order before the end and the what form? Yeah, yeah. Now, is any reason for that? If you're going to show that there is a first cause, you might want to show it in regard to the mover and the matter before the end and the form.

[37:35] Is any reason for that? More More than maybe, maybe, maybe. Or he's had more arguments about it not being that way from matter and efficient cause. Well, as I'll mention when you get to the third reading. It was a common opinion of the Greek philosophers before Aristotle that there is a first matter. And although they disagreed as to whether the first matter was Mother Earth or water or air or fire or all four of these or something like that, they weren't in disagreement that there was a first matter.

[38:14] They might disagree as to what it was, but they all agreed there was a first matter. And that may be part of the reason why he doesn't really show it about matter in particular in the third reading. Now he does something else. We'll see, right? There may be some other reasons too that we'll talk about when you get there. But

[38:40] Aristotle's reasons for the unmoved mover is something kind of well, maybe I don't know if it's due to Plato altogether, but somewhat due to the early Greeks, right? But is there something else that we touched upon when we were doing the ninth book? And we talked in the very beginning and made a connection between the first two basic senses of ability and the causes called matter and mover and the definitions of matter and mover.

[39:19] Ability, right? Well, no, I was talking there about just about ability, right, in the first part of the ninth book. And Aristotle spoke of the ability to act upon another, the ability to move another. That seems to correspond to the mover, right? And then you had the ability to be acted upon or to be moved by another, and that seems to be tied up with the matter, right?

[39:45] Okay, but we brought something else there, if you remember, huh? Most clearly, causes. Well, yes, or most clearly beginnings, huh? Now, in the fifth book, when you take up the names of causes, we begin with the name beginning first, and then the name cause second, huh? And then the name element third, right? Now, just as far as those three are concerned, there is an order, right? Because beginning is more general than cause, and cause is more general than element.

[40:26] So every cause is a beginning, some way, but not every beginning is a what? Cause. So the point is beginning the line, but not the cause of the line. And every element is a cause, usually, you know, strictly speaking, material cause, but not every cause is an element, huh? But just stick with the first two for a moment: beginning and cause. So beginning is more general, and the more general is more known to us, huh?

[41:04] But now. You see the matter and the mover more as beginnings than you see form and end. That's clear from the definitions of them, right? The definition of matter is that from which something comes to be, existing within it, and a beginning is that from which something proceeds in some way, right? And then the mover is defined as whence first there is a beginning of motion. So those two causes seem to be more obviously beginnings, and that's confirmed when you go to the senses of the word beginning, because the first sense of beginning is beginning of a magnitude, like the point is the beginning of a line, and a line is beginning of the surface, and a surface is beginning of a body.

[42:05] And the second sense is somewhat like that, and then the third sense is the fundamental part of a thing, like the foundation of the beginning of a house, and that has some likeness to matter, right? Because the foundation is one of the parts at which the house is made. And then the fourth sense of beginning is the what?

[42:28] No, no, that's the mover. You see, and it comes forth because now the beginning or source is outside that of which it is a beginning or source, while the point is in the line in which it is a beginning, and the foundation is in the house which is a beginning, right? So the foundation is the beginning of the house is closer to the point of the beginning of the line insofar as it's a beginning inside the thing of which it is a beginning, while the carpenter or the you know the the rule of the prince and so on, right?

[43:03] He's not a part of what he is a beginning of, huh? Okay. Now the fifth sense of beginning is beginning in knowing, huh? Like the premises are the beginning of the conclusion. Of course, Aristotle talks about the premises as the beginning of the conclusion. Sometimes he sees them as the mover or maker, but also since it contains the subject and predicate of the conclusion, it's something like matter, huh?

[43:35] So you're still kind of along the line there, right? It's not until the sixth or last sense of beginning, where Aristotle says, well, every cause is in some way beginning, right? And of course, then you have this strange thing: the end is a beginning, you know, because it's first in intention, and and first means almost the same thing as beginning, right?

[44:01] So matter and mover. Are more clearly recognized as beginnings, than end and what form. You know the definition of form. There is what was to be. That's not the beginning. That's got to be at the end, right? And end doesn't seem to be the beginning. It seems to be the opposite of the beginning, huh?

[44:33] Now, if you say that there is a first cause, first means almost the same as what? Beginning. Beginning, yeah. So maybe maybe that's something of the reason why he talks about matter and mover, or mover and matter, as the what? As having a beginning, right? Having a first cause, huh? Because they themselves seem to be what beginnings, huh? So

[45:06] to say that these two causes are beginnings, and the other two are not, or not, or else some very extended meaning of beginning, puts these a little bit closer to saying that you expect here or look here first to see if there is a first cause and something that's apt to be a beginning. The beginning almost is the same thing as a first cause, huh? Okay.

[45:31] Now a second thing, huh? If you go back to the first meaning of beginning, which is not that of cause, the beginning of the magnitude, the first sense of beginning. Nevertheless, you see a certain likeness to there being a first cause, huh?

[46:01] And that is that when you take the beginning of a magnitude, you have a beginning that has a beginning, right? But this doesn't go on forever. Eventually, you come to a beginning that has no beginning, in this sense of beginning. So you can say that the surface of the body is the beginning of that body, right? Huh? But does the surface itself? Let's say it does take a cube to be clear.

[46:35] one of the squares is the beginning of the cube, but does the square itself also have a beginning? Yeah. And this beginning is what? A line. Yeah. Yeah. Now the line is the beginning of the square, but is that a beginning that also has a beginning? Okay. And what's the beginning of the line? Yeah. Now the point is a beginning, but is that a beginning that has a beginning?

[47:13] This is something similar, right? With the first sense of beginning, huh? Which is not that of a cause, right? Although the cause in some sense is a beginning, but here you see that there can be a beginning that has a beginning, but eventually you come to a beginning, the point that has no what beginning, right? Okay.

[47:41] And would the cube be limited if the squares that contain the cube were not themselves limited? Would it? If the squares that contain the cube, if they were not limited, they went on forever, then the cube would not be limited, right? So the

[48:07] squares should be limited, right? But now would a square be limited if the lines that contain it went on forever? No, so they have to be limited, right?

[48:22] Now in the case you get down to the point, no problem, right? See, the point is a limit that is not limited, so you don't need a limit to make the point a limit, right? Yeah, yeah, okay. So there's some similarity there to what he wants to show about cause

[48:51] in the first meaning of what beginning, huh? Okay. Remind a little bit of Aristotle's way in the ninth book of saying that act is before what. Ability and time. Simply, we say, well, does he mean just in time, or does he have in mind some other senses of before that come

[49:20] fairly close to the first meaning of of before, which is in time, right? Maybe he means also before in being to some extent, right? And then before as a cause before an effect, right?

[49:38] But something similar I'm doing here, right? With beginning and cause. huh? Kind of anticipating, huh? Maybe there's something like that. And you could ask yourself now, not only can you see clearly in this mathematical thing that the point is a beginning that has no beginning, right? A limit that has no limit, right? But would anything be limited

[50:13] if every limit had to have a limit? Had to go on for infinity. Kind of strange, right? So maybe kind of anticipates the the argument, right, with something much easier to see than than what we're going to see, right?

[50:38] A limit that has a limit is a kind of middle limit, isn't it? It's middle between what is limiting, right? And that the limits it.

[50:52] Now, if you have a limited limit, could there be a limited limit without something before it? Without a limit before it, right? It would make any difference how many limited limits you have,

[51:18] one or many, and if many, even infinity of them or finite number of them. All these limits presuppose something, right, before them that is not a what limited limit, and that's a limit that has no limit. So you're anticipating the argument he's going to give, right? Okay. So so in the first meaning of beginning, there's anticipation of the argument, and a kind of similar argument, but you can see that that's the way it is very easily.

[51:52] And then you can see that the word beginning, which anticipates the whole argument here, in its first meaning, is seen as applying to matter and the mover before the other clauses, huh? Because there's seen to be a beginning, recognized to be a beginning, before the form and the end are beginning. I mean, at first it's either a contradiction. Say the end is the beginning.

[52:31] So he's saying.