Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
38. Metaphysics II, Reading 5: The Roads in Our Knowledge and the Natural Road
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[0:00] Now the last argument he gives here is kind of obscure the way it's stated here, and let me try to see it a little differently. What he's doing here, he's contrasting in a way form with matter, and it's kind of a commonplace that

[0:23] form is to matter like limit is to the unlimited. So wood, in a sense, is not limited to what you can make out of it, huh? And water is not what it's kind of unlimited in the shapes it could take on. And in fact, many of the Greek philosophers, in talking about the first matter, called it the unlimited. The second great thinker, the second Milesian, Maximander, said that the beginning was what the apeiron, the unlimited, the infinite.

[1:08] And he has something like this, even in Anaxagoras, right? Something infinite about the first matter. So, if you if you say then that the form is to matter as the limited to the unlimited, then you shouldn't be attributing to form what you attribute to what matter. Form itself is a limit.

[1:34] Now, at the end of the fourth reading, he very briefly considers and eliminates briefly another kind of infinity. One might say that, well, okay, there is a limit within each kind of cause. There's a first cause in each genus of cause: a mover, matter, end, and form. But there's an infinity of kinds of cause, right? And Aristotle says, "Well, in that case, you couldn't know either, could you?

[2:09] If there's an infinity of kinds of cause." You know, my definition of marriage as the stable union of a man, woman, by mutual choice, for the sake of children. I've made use of all four kinds of cause in that definition, but if I had to make use of an infinity of kinds of of causes to define marriage, I would never succeed in knowing what marriage is, would I?

[2:35] And but you'd also recall the fact that in the first book of of wisdom here, Aristotle confirmed that there are just four kinds of what causes in his narration of the opinions of the Greek philosophers. What if what if there were an infinite number of causes, but only a finite number belonged to any given thing? Well, I suppose you could say that, yeah. But this objection, this last part is simply, for the sake of completeness, saying that not only is there a limit within each kind of cause, but there's also a limit as to how many kinds of causes there are.

[3:19] Okay, and he's giving a reason somewhat similar to reasons he just given for the last one about form that you wouldn't know anything, right? If something had involved any kinds of cause, but maybe you can also refer back to the first book there, where there's confirmation. There are just four kinds of causes, Thomas has in the exposition or laying out of the. I'll speak English here because laying out is more revealing.

[3:56] The word isn't it? The exposition, exposition. You know, might remind you of a world fair or something. But laying out, you know, really gives you the idea of what he's doing. Thomas, there in laying out the second book of an actual hearing, gives a reason, kind of, why there are just four kinds of causes. And he goes back to the idea that causes what is responsible for the being or becoming of a thing.

[4:26] Now, the what's responsible for the being of a thing is the form. Because through the form, it has what being right. When you talk about becoming, you have to have the matter from which you come to be, and you have to have the one who is what. Helping the matter to be actualized, namely the mover, and the mover acts for an end. so now you've got the other three causes.

[4:52] Okay, but there might be other ways you could manifest, you know, kind of the completeness of that, huh? Because you might divide the four causes into the the inside causes and the outside causes, which seems exhausted, right? And then, if you subdivide, say, the inside causes into matter and form, and you understand matter, you know, to include things like parts, and the form is what is like the whole or the order of the thing, right?

[5:21] That seems to be exhausted, right? Because anything inside the thing has got to be somehow a part of it, right? Or else the way the parts are put together, and then the outside causes either before or after the thing, so you got the mover and the what end. So Aristotle in the first book kind of does so in a more concrete way by going through the various thinkers, huh?

[5:51] In that, with the idea of form, yeah, his arguments about definition, yeah, but if you just look at form and things, what is the order among forms in the beginning? The first form,

[6:18] the one thing is one form. I think he's thinking of form here more in the sense of something intrinsic to the thing, right? He's not thinking of the fact that you might speak of the

[6:32] form of the universe as a whole, right? Okay, because that would get a little more into natural what philosophy, right? You know, the question of what the universe is. Infinite, right?

[6:50] But is every whole a part, and is every part a whole? I was mentioning there about the physical sciences, right? That once you realize the same thing can be a part or a whole, just like when you realize the same thing can be a genus and a species, right? There arises two questions, right? Is every part a whole, right?

[7:27] So this will go on forever, right? In the downward direction, and then in the opposite direction, is every whole a part? So after the perfection, somewhat of quantum theory, and the perfection of the special relativity and so on, the Einstein went out in the direction of trying to see if there was a whole that is not a part, and Heisenberg and Bohr and Bohr and so on went the opposite direction to see if there is a part that is not a whole.

[8:07] Okay. So there you're getting into a little more difficult question, right? Huh? Okay. But that's sort of like saying, you know, Colorado is part of the United States. The United States is part of North America, part of the world, and part of the solar system. Part of you know, but you're not dealing with the intrinsic form there, right? You know, this says only unity of order, right?

[8:38] You have a similar question there, right? Let's take it up more in natural philosophy. Those two two questions, huh? Heisenberg said, "I never thought this would go on forever." Okay. You don't really

[9:00] have an intrinsic form there. That's sort of a argument, huh? So in the one thing, intrinsic form. Yeah. What do you mean, first form, second form, third form? Well, again, again,

[9:22] it's in the eighth book of wisdom that the connection, again, between definition and form is made more fully or developed more fully, and then the definitions of things are like what numbers, but you don't necessarily have a multiplication of real forms.

[9:47] Because the higher form gives what the lower form gives plus something more. Mentions it a little more commentary. Yeah. Grades of. Yeah, Thomas talks about that. Yeah, but you're not talking about a real distinction of forms.

[10:10] So it's not like man has one form, but which is a man, and one but which is an animal, one but which is able to to grow, another but which is able to have length and width and death, right?

[10:27] Okay. Now, would you say that? Aristotle in readings two, three, and four has been using his reason. That is to say, looking before and after. Yeah. Yeah. First. Yeah, his first is defined by before and after, right? Okay.

[10:53] Notice that when a man even asks the more the question why, right? Is he looking before when he asks the question why? Looking for the cause, right? Yeah, because the cause is said to be before the effect in that crowning sense of before in the twelfth chapter of the categories. So every time you ask the question why, you're looking before. You may not think of speaking that way, right?

[11:21] But it comes under Shakespeare's phrase, looking before and after, right? You are looking before, right? Any time you look for the consequences of your action, you're looking what after, right? And of course, the virtue of foresight, huh? Which is the name, really the English name for for prudence from providentia. The very name itself indicates something going on about before and after, right? Foresight, huh? The man who can foresee the results of going into Iraq or foresee the results of doing this or not doing that, right?

[12:02] Huh? That that he's a man of foresight, huh? Okay. Can foresee what happens if you drink that much, huh? Okay. Foresee what? And of course, art. You know, Thomas kind of defines art in the broad sense, like even the proemium to the Posterior Analytics. It's always an ordering by reason, right? You know, one, two, three, right? Like in a recipe, right? So any art, in a sense, consists almost in in knowing an order of steps that you have to go through to accomplish something, huh?

[12:43] So you see the connection there between before and after. But here it's tied up with that crowning sense of before and after, huh? Was he looking before and after when he when he talked about or gave the reason why this consideration of how man is towards truth, right, belongs to the wise man, right? When he's showing that the wise man, the consideration of truth, belongs most of all to the wise man, right?

[13:18] Was he was he seeing it before and after there, Aristotle? First cause. Yeah, yeah. You're seeing that there's an order, that the order in being and the order in what truth was was the same, right? As a thing isn't being, so is isn't truth, right? So he's seeing a it's an order there. And you go back now to the first chapter, or the first reading, brother.

[14:00] Is there a before and after that Aristotle was finding there in that first reading? Begin with a distinction, right? The consideration of truth is in one way difficult, another way easy. But that there was a a a a good distinction, right? Huh?

[14:34] But then you went into each of them, right? And in the consideration of the easiness of truth, right? Is there a before and after in a sense that he's seeing there?

[14:50] Yeah. that were known by everybody Yeah. Some people saw Yeah. You could say that the truth that everyone sees, which is the truth in the axioms, right? The truth that everyone sees and cannot avoid seeing, really, at least in a confused way, huh? In a distinct way. That's a cornerstone of our knowledge of truth, huh?

[15:28] And now beyond that, one man may discover something that some other man does not discover, right? And vice versa. And then bringing together these many discoveries, you get a certain larger amount of truth, huh? So you see that beyond that part of the truth that everyone sees, the rest of truth, we tend to see a part of it before we see the whole. And maybe one man sees one part at first, another man sees another part, and then you you put together and start to see the whole, right?

[16:12] But even sometimes the same man discovers the whole something. He's not going to discover it all at once. He's going to see one part, and then maybe see another part, right? So there's a lot of befores and afters there, right? Okay. Now we came to talk about the other half that truth is difficult, right? Did he see it before and after there?

[16:42] Yes, he said why. Yeah, yeah. We said asking why is it difficult, right? Well, now he's looking before, right? And sometimes he sees it's in the thing. That's where the cause is, right? Because the thing itself is not very actual. Or the cause of difficulty is really in us, right? Okay. Just like as we said in the comparison there, why is it difficult for me to love this, right?

[17:12] Well, is it in the thing, there, right, or is it in me, right? Um. Why doesn't Bertram love Helena? Huh. Right. In all's well that ends well, huh? That that mercy and forgiveness play Shakespeare. Why is that so, right? You know.

[17:41] Is it that she's not really lovable? It's a defect in her, or is it in Bertram, right? Huh. He's the son of the countess, right? He's the count, therefore, and she's a commoner, right?

[18:00] And the the king is sick, you know, and the king says, given up on his doctors because they've been fooling around with him and done him any good, right? And Helena is the son of a famous doctor who's dead, but he had left her a medicine or a thing, huh? And so she she boldly goes to the what king and announces, you know, I will cure you.

[18:28] And if I don't, you know, they put me to death if you want to, you know. And and somehow he allows her to do it, and he's cured by her.

[18:40] And as reward, she can choose her husband, right, from the young men who are now spending time in the court, and she chooses, of course, Bertram, right. And of course, so she's kind of forcing herself upon him, right? Huh. This commoner now is going to marry the count, and so he flees the court. I mean, he he marries her because he can't do anything but that. But the marriage is never consummated, right?

[19:09] And and he flees the court, right? And of course, as you know from the title, all's well that ends well. But but anyway, um, um, he doesn't love Helena, right? But is the difficulty in her that she's a, you know. A desirable woman who has forced herself upon him, or is it that he's proud, right, and doesn't want to, you know? You see, but then you're looking before in the sense of what.

[19:43] Cause and effect, right? You know, is it in her or in the defect in his heart? And Shakespeare is saying the defect is in his heart, but you could probably argue a little bit about it. You know.

[20:01] So notice incidentally, this is. This side, you know, but when Aristotle talked about how one man is helped by another man in the pursuit of truth, he's showing that to some extent, what is said in the politics that man is by nature a political animal, and sometimes we generalize that and say man is by nature a social animal, right? That this extends even to the life of the mind to some extent, even though you might say the life of the mind is more solitary than than most lives, right?

[20:37] It's not entirely a solitary life, right? Because man is very much dependent upon others for going forward in knowing, and he's even dependent upon those he disagrees with, and and even dependent upon their mistakes, huh? So that Augustine can say, you know, heresy is necessary for the development of theology, and that's kind of a striking thing. But if it's in with what the philosopher says there, that one is indebted even to those who exercised our minds, right?

[21:11] Huh? And the um occasion of refuting the heretic who's denying an article of the faith and maybe has some reason for it, right? The refuting of that leads us to a greater understanding of that article of faith, huh? And so the Second Vatican Council was talking about the

[21:32] learning of theology there for priests and so on. It speaks of the Church Fathers as contributing to the understanding of individual mysteries of the faith, but to see them, you know, in an orderly way, they should look at these things with Thomas as a guide, huh? But they're kind of an ad hoc character to the development of theology in the Church Fathers and even in the the councils, because the councils often are in part a reaction to some heresy that's present at the time, and it leads therefore to a definition eventually of that or greater clarification of this article of the faith in response to this heretic's objections.

[22:20] Just like the nuns up there in choir, there, that's kind of you know, man is a social animal, right? You know, there's a certain aspect to that.

[22:31] Okay, now. We're going to start returning, turning here now to the third part of the second book of wisdom. And here again, point out something going back to Shakespeare's definition there.

[22:59] A reason is the ability for large discourse, looking before and after. We're saying in its own discourse, right? Reason is looking before and after. But reason can also look at the before and after in its own discourse, and in its own what knowledge, right? And sometimes we call that what before and after in our knowledge a road in our knowledge, huh? And this is the way Parmenides spoke, huh?

[23:35] And this is the way Empedocles spoke, and this is the way I guess Heraclitus, yeah. And especially Plato and Aristotle speak of a a before and after, an order in our knowledge as a what road, right? Okay. And they give this name often to philosophy of calling it a what methodos, right? Which means literally over a road, right? Huh? As if philosophy is knowledge over a road, or knowledge that follows a road, right?

[24:12] And this fifth reading, this third part of the second book of wisdom, could be identified as being about how should the road to follow, right? In a

[24:40] in any reasoned out knowledge, how should that road be determined, right? And how should it not be determined, huh? Or you could use instead of the word road if you wanted to.

[24:58] How should the way of going forward, huh? In any reasoned out knowledge, how should that be determined, huh? And since it's the same knowledge of opposites, how should it not be determined, huh? Okay.

[25:15] Um. Now, the Greek, when Aristotle is more complete, he'll say sometimes the the tropasa. Of going forward, right? pro againe tropas in Greek could be taken as meaning turning, right? Or more broadly, as way, right? See, so the tropas could be translated as the way, and then when he has the whole phrase, the way of going forward, right? I can see in the in the in the prooemium to the to the eight books of natural hearing, the the so called physics, he speaks of the tropos of going forward, the way of going forward.

[26:16] Thomas in his commentary, or in Metaphysics, will speak of the modus procedendi, right? Okay, procedendi means going forward. In English, we translate that usually as the way of going forward, huh? Okay.

[26:36] But you will find Thomas sometimes kind of speaking in a more contracted way, and speaking instead of the modus procedendi of the science, the modus of the science, huh? Okay.

[26:55] And sometimes you'll find Aristotle, like in this reading here, instead of speaking of the tropas, the way of going forward, just the tropas of the science, huh? Okay.

[27:11] Now the the the word, the English word way, can be taken in a more maybe abstract way, but sometimes way almost means the same thing as road, right? Okay. But if you want to translate modus procedendi from Thomas or tropas proagaine of going forward, we have to use the word way, not road, right? Okay. But if you go back to the prooemium to the physics, Aristotle will speak, will use the word tropas, the way of going forward, the whole phrase, and he'll talk about the road.

[27:52] And I sometimes use those two ways of speaking, going back to the sixth book of natural hearing, where Aristotle says that if you have a road, and then you walk or move down that road, right? It takes you some time to go down that road. The before and after in the road, and the before and after in the motion over the road, and the before and after in the time it takes to go down there, they kind of correspond, right?

[28:22] Okay. So if I go from Worcester to Boston, and I go from Worcester to Framingham, and then from Framingham to Boston, right? Well, just as the road from Worcester to Framingham comes before the road from Framingham to Boston, right? So my journey to Boston will go from Worcester to Framingham before it goes from Framingham to Boston, and the time it takes, right? So Thomas will, Aristotle will speak there in the sixth book of Natural Hearing that the orders are what kind of proportional, right?

[28:55] Okay, and that's why in the first sense of before and after in the categories, which is before in time, before and after in motion, before and after in the magnitude of which the motion is, they all are led back to that first sense, okay? Just as the first sense of beginning in the fifth book of Wisdom is beginning of a magnitude, and to that is led back the beginning of the motion of that magnitude.

[29:22] If you start from the beginning and the beginning of the time that takes you to go down that, and Thomas will explain that in the in the exposition, the laying out of the fifth book of Wisdom, right? In the laying out of that word beginning there,

[29:37] just like the first meaning of in in place, to that should lead back in time because of the similarity of being in an extrinsic measure.

[29:49] So I kind of borrowed that when I explained why does Aristotle take this as being almost the same thing? To talk about the way of going forward from what is more known to us to what is less known to us, or what is more known by nature, or the road from what is more known to us to what is what less known to us, or the road from what is more known to us to what is more known by nature, right?

[30:16] And kind of like you say, the order is proportional, right? Between the before and after in the road and in the motion or going forward along that road, now you're going to follow the same thing, right?

[30:38] I say the word tropas there in Greek could be used for for way and therefore almost for road, but also for the first word in the way of going forward, but you know it's very briefy, right? I say Thomas does the same thing in Latin. He'll speak and actually uses in the in the laying out of this fifth thing, he uses the word modus procedendi, right? And he'll make a distinction between the the proprius modus procedendi, the way of going forward that is private to geometry or private to natural philosophy or private to to wisdom and so on, and then he will distinguish between that and the communis modus procedendi, the common way of going forward in any reasoned out knowledge, and he'll say that

[31:35] the Common way of going forward in any reasoned out knowledge is studied in logic, like in the posterior analytics and so on. And the private way of going forward, the way of going forward that's private to geometry or to natural philosophy or any other reasoned out knowledge, is something you should learn at the beginning of that science, right? Okay. So there is something similar about the way you go forward in any reasoned out knowledge from the fact that you are using reason, right?

[32:11] And that's studied in logic, right? But there is something peculiar to geometry and something peculiar or private to natural philosophy about how you go forward in that reasoned out knowledge, and that's something appropriately studied at the beginning of that reasoned out knowledge. Okay.

[32:33] But then Dion took that distinction, which Thomas makes there, which the logician, as I said, Laval was recalling, and added to that the way of going forward that Aristotle says is natural, right, in the proemium to natural philosophy there, and then came up with the three ways of what going forward, right? Okay. So I don't know any text in Aristotle or Thomas where they say explicitly that there are three ways of going forward, right?

[33:14] Um. But Dionne, to my knowledge, is the first man to say that, okay. But then myself coming back to the text in the Physics there at the beginning, Aristotle sees that connection between the way of going forward in the road, right? Then I started to speak of there being three roads, right? It's very concrete, huh? Um. And sometimes you'll see Aristotle using that word runs through the Greek philosophers to talk about a road in our knowledge.

[33:55] Socrates says, "Remember the man who forgets which way the road goes, huh? " You know, when Descartes wants to go from the cause to the effect, more or less in all of our knowledge, and Spinoza even more so, right? Right. For the most part, our knowledge goes in the opposite direction, right, from the effect to the cause. So I tell the students, you are in the Worcester train station there, and you want to get to Boston, huh?

[34:28] And Descartes is behind the counter there, right, or Spinoza, and he wants to sell you a ticket from Boston to Worcester. Not any good. I'm in Worcester. I want to get to Boston. You know, then we'll accept a ticket from Boston to Worcester to get me.

[34:49] So I want to get from the effect to the cause, and they're carded and Spinoza trying to sell you a ticket that goes from the cause to the effect. It's okay for an angel or God, but I mean, it's not any good for us to buy that kind of ticket.

[35:06] Okay. Okay. okay. Um. about that recorded. Um, the wise man could have made here or somewhere maybe else the distinction of those three roads, huh? Okay. Or those three ways of going forward, huh? Because he's going to be talking here in this reading, this fifth reading, about the way of going forward, private to one or another reasoned out knowledge, huh? But you could stand back and see this more universal distinction, huh?

[36:05] And in the premium, he talked a bit about the way of going forward that is natural, right? And he talked about sensing coming before memory, and memory before experience, and experience before a knowledge of the universal, and so on. He was had been talking there in the premium about the natural road in human knowledge, the first road, huh? And he wasn't talking about it as the subject where he was talking about this, but because he wanted to bring out something about wisdom, right?

[36:48] Well, you could say the natural road in human knowledge is going in the direction of wisdom, and therefore an understanding of the natural road in our knowledge and the direction in which it is going is going to be a way of beginning to see what wisdom might be. And

[37:16] when I myself begin to talk to students about philosophy being a love of wisdom, or the philosopher being a love of wisdom, and what is wisdom, and I ask them, you know, do you think wisdom comes in the beginning of our knowledge, or in the middle, or in the end, right? And they invariably say the end, huh? So you're looking at what comes more or less at the end of our knowledge, and so it's useful maybe to see in what direction our knowledge is going to see what the end might possibly be, right?

[37:51] Or something about the end, huh? So Aristotle talks in the premium not because he's considering the natural road, right? He's considering what wisdom is, or what wisdom is a knowledge of, or what it's aiming at, in order to. Find that out, or to help us come to see what it might be about or what it might be aiming at, he does talk about the what natural road, right?

[38:20] Okay. Now, in this book, he's got to find the road to follow within wisdom, right? And he's going to talk here about this last reading about something that's presupposed to that, and that is how should you find or determine, right, the road to follow in any reasoned out knowledge. And that's more general, right? And is useful for any reasoned out knowledge where you're going to look for the road to follow in that reasoned out knowledge, okay?

[39:05] And this more general consideration is appropriately the concern of the wise man because the man who considers in general how the road to follow in any reasoned out knowledge should be found or determined is in a way directing all of them, right? And that belongs to the wise men from the sixth attribute they were looking at at the beginning of class today. Do you see that? Okay.

[39:38] But again, you could say that in talking about the private road, reasoned out knowledge, or the private roads, you could say at some time maybe the wise men should distinguish between the private road and the common road, which Thomas does. The common road of reasoned out knowledge, which Thomas does in the in the exposition or laying out, although he uses the other phrase, the common way of going forward and the private way of going forward.

[40:16] But because he talks about the other road in the premium, right, at some place, right, he should distinguish all three. But we don't have any text where he does so. I don't see he he didn't in his own mind or couldn't. I'm sure he did, right? But we don't have a text where he does it, huh? But that's what Dion did, huh? One thing he did, but a very great thing.

[40:42] I think he did, huh? And show what a great mind he has. Now, maybe we should talk a little bit about the division I just just you know before we go into the fifth reading I'll just see things here a bit.

[40:59] Now, the the the logical and understandable division of the roads in our knowledge. Is going to be into two or three, okay? But you first of all have to know what you mean by a road in our knowledge, huh?

[41:24] And roughly speaking, what you mean by a road in our knowledge is an order in our knowledge, a before and after in our knowledge.

[41:36] And actually, each of the roads we will talk about will involve a number of before and afters, right? But the rough idea of a road in our knowledge is a what order in our knowledge, a before and after in our knowledge, huh? Okay.

[42:01] And the fact that people don't talk about the roads in our knowledge is a sign of a massive failure to use reason, because to use reason means most of all to look before and after. And reason should look before and after, not only in the things that it's studying, like Aristotle, in studying, you know, act and ability, look for the before and after of act and ability, as we saw in the ninth book, right?

[42:31] And considering causes, right? He looked for the before and after in causes, right? But one should also look for the before and after in our knowledge, and that they don't do that is a sign of a massive failure to to use reason, huh? Massive failure to look before and after. And of course, there is a before and after, not only in each of the roads that we will distinguish.

[43:00] In fact, many befores and afters, but there is also before and after among these roads. Because there is a first road and a second road and a third road, so that there you are looking before and after again, too. Now, you could divide the roads in our knowledge into either two or three, huh? If you divide it into two, you divide it into the natural road and the road or roads made by reason, huh?

[43:38] And of course, the natural road will be the first road, because the nature of a thing is what's first in it. The nature of a thing is what it is, and you've got to be what you are before you can be anything else.

[43:55] And so the first road in our knowledge, nature is one of the what nature and reason are the two sources of order, right? That we're aware of, huh? And but the natural road would be the first one, right?

[44:17] Now the natural road in our knowledge is based, of course, on the nature of man, and man is by nature an animal that has reason.

[44:30] And animals, you know, is defined by having senses. But man is not just an animal; he's an animal that has reason. And what is generic in a thing develops before what is specific.

[44:52] So the natural road is the road from the senses into what reason. Okay. Now, maybe we'll go into what we did one day here before. I remember went into the before and after along that road.

[45:20] Let me just repeat it a little bit. huh? Okay, Um, it seems to me that to get a distinct knowledge of the before and after in the natural. way,Road, you need to see some distinctions, right? And the first distinction that I see is the distinction between the order of different kinds of knowing along this road,

[45:55] and the distinction and the order in things as known along this road. Now, obviously, there's some correspondence there, but I think you should distinguish those two because you don't bring out exactly the same when you go into them.

[46:16] So that's the first distinction I would see: distinction between the order of different kinds of knowing along this road and the order in which things are known along this road. Not saying exactly the same thing, are you?

[46:36] Now, as I have mentioned already in the proemium, right to wisdom, Aristotle gives us something of the order in which different kinds of knowing come along this road. And obviously, what comes first along this road, is. the first kind of knowing, is sensing, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching. And what comes second along this road is memory of what you sensed.

[47:10] And what comes third along this road is that collection of memories of the same, which Aristotle calls experience. Now, all this is still in the realm of the singular. It's a singular always that you sense, and the sensing that you remember is of the singular. And even this collection of many memories is a collection of many singulars.

[47:42] And after that comes a knowledge of the what universal. With the help of what we saw in the second book, we can see that the natural understanding of the universals, that's in the axioms in their parts, comes first among the universals,

[48:07] and then comes a reason out understanding of the universal, and last comes wisdom, which is the perfection of natural understanding and reason out understanding.

[48:24] Now, you could say that these last three are knowledge of the universal. The first three are a knowledge of the singular universal. So you could also say that the knowledge of the singular comes before a knowledge of the universal. Okay, so this is something of the order of different kinds of knowing along the natural road from the senses into reason, huh? Sensing, memory, experience, natural understanding, reasoned-out understanding, wisdom.

[49:00] Okay, now we could go more into detail because there are many forms of reasoned-out understanding before wisdom, and there's a certain order among them, right? Okay,

[49:16] but I won't go into that detail right now. Okay, you see that, right? So that's one part, right, of my original distinction, huh? The order in which different kinds of knowing come along this road. It's very clear what Aristotle is doing there. Sensing is the beginning of the road, and wisdom is the end, huh? The road from sensing to wisdom, and that's the reason why that road belongs very much to the wise man to talk about because it's the road to wisdom.

[49:56] In class, I sometimes distinguish between the road to wisdom, sensing, memory, experience, and so on, and the road within wisdom, right? The private road to wisdom. Okay, I was talking about the great turnaround. I was talking about the private road to wisdom, right? But okay, now the other order to be seen

[50:26] along this natural road is the order in which things are known along this road, huh? And there I see first a very important distinction, huh?

[50:44] Between a distinction between the order in which different things are known along this road and the order in which the same thing is known along this road.

[51:02] There's both an order in which different things are known along this road. One thing is known before another thing because of this road and its order. But even in knowing one and the same thing, there's an order in that knowledge, huh? That's the last thing I'll talk about because it's most difficult. Okay. Um. Now, in general, you can say what's most obvious is that sensible things are known before things that cannot be sensed along this road.

[51:35] You can say that in general, right? It's very obvious, huh? Okay. But now, in ascending order, terms of universality, you could say, well, then it follows that material things are known before immaterial things along this road, because the former are more or less sensible, right? The latter are not.

[52:06] But more generally, you can say that for the most part along this road, the effect is known before the cause. Not only because immaterial things are causes of material things, but even within material things, the effect is more sensible, right? Usually, than the cause.

[52:33] The only place where the cause seems to be more known than the effect is in geometry or arithmetic, but there you're dealing with just what an accident, right? Considered kind of abstractly, I'm going to take quantity. But

[52:51] for the most part, the effect is known before the cause and more known than the cause. And last, you could say the composed is known before the simple. Not only because the cause is simpler than the effect, but even more generally, the

[53:18] you can see in geometry say that as you go from the body to the surface to the line to the point, you keep on negating things, right? You're knowing the composed before the simple, even though the simple is not yet the cause.

[53:32] So we see that the surface has length and width, but no depth, and then the line has neither, does even have width, and then the point has neither length nor width nor depth. So you're knowing the simple or the simpler by the negation of the composed.

[53:58] Now these are things that Aristotle and Thomas say here or there, but I've never seen them put them all together, right? So what is the order in which different things are known along this road? Well, in general, sensible things are known before things that cannot be sensed, but then material things before immaterial things, effects for the most part before causes, the composed before the what simple, right?

[54:28] Okay. Now the other part of this was the order in which one and the same thing is known along this road. The first thing I would say is following the great Boethius in his commentary on Porphyry. A thing is singular when sensed, but universal when understood.

[55:02] Okay, so when I see a man or a dog, I'm seeing a singular. But when I understand what a man is or what a dog is, it's now something what universal. And so, in a way, it's the same thing you're talking about, right? But it's singular when sensed, he says, and universal understood. And that's the reason why men tend to give examples of a thing before they give the universal definition of the thing.

[55:33] That's why induction comes before syllogism, because by induction we get from the singulars to the universal, which is half. But the syllogism begins the universal.

[55:49] Second thing I would say. We tend to know things in an outward way before inwardly. The senses know more the outside of things. Outward. Is

[56:14] outward there mean anything different than sensed? Well, the fact that we use outward is almost a synonym for sensible, shows a connection between the road here, and this. But you and Aristotle, for example, in the Nicomachean Ethics, when he first defines happiness, he calls this the perigraphe, right? Which means drawing a line around. We tend to draw a line around the thing, and then we tend to think about it more and penetrate it more, bring out the nature.

[56:50] In a way, you could say this is more general than the singular to universal, right? Because when you go from the singular to universal, we're asking what this is, and so we're kind of getting inside, right? But you see, even in our definitions of what a thing is, we tend to define it first, for the most part, in a kind of outward way. So Aristotle first defines virtue as a praiseworthy quality, right?

[57:21] What praise is outside, right? Praise is not the inner nature, the inner what it is of the virtue. So we're knowing virtue in a kind of outward way. As a child, you know, when you're praised for doing some things and criticized for doing other things. You don't do that, you know, or you do this, but you don't come an outward way that this is, you know, mommy or daddy will approve of this, and they won't approve you doing that, huh?

[57:46] And so you know in kind of an outward way of the good and the bad, huh? But then later on, you know, in a more inward way, what it is, yeah.

[57:57] And we we can sometimes, you know, reason our way in. We might say virtues are praised with equality. What is praised is the mean. Therefore, virtue is the mean. You're kind of reasoning yourself in from the outward to the inward, huh? I often start with the thing that wisdom is the best knowledge, huh? Okay, well, let's call the best knowledge wisdom. Whatever it is, right? But to call wisdom the best knowledge is not to tell you inwardly what wisdom is.

[58:30] It doesn't even tell you what wisdom is a knowledge of. You see? But then you say, what makes one knowledge better than another? Well, it's about a better thing. Yeah. So if knowledge of a better thing is better, the best knowledge must be knowledge of the best thing. Okay, that's a little step forward, right? The best knowledge is the knowledge of the best thing. Okay. Now, if you can figure out what the best thing is, let's say the best thing is God, and wisdom is a knowledge of God, right?

[59:00] You see, now I'm getting inside, aren't I, huh? Because I'm starting to know what wisdom is a knowledge of, huh? You see. I might eventually add, how do we know him? You know, and now you're getting, you know, bringing out more and more what what wisdom is, right? But we tend to begin from the outside. Wisdom is the best knowledge. Virtues are praised with equality.

[59:23] Comedy is a play that makes you laugh. Well, laughing is, but in the audience, right? The audience is laughing. You see, but you're you're kind of knowing in an outward way, huh? Okay. Um. So that's the second thing, right? A thing is singular in sense, universal understood, as the great Boethius says. Okay. We know things in an outward way before what inwardly, huh? Okay. And then even more universally than that, Aristotle brings out in the proemium to natural philosophy.

[1:00:03] We know things in a confused way before we know them what distinctly, right? Confused as before, distinctive. So all this is an order in which the same thing can be known, right? The thing is known singularly before universally. It's known in an outward way before inwardly. It's known in a confused way. Before what? Distinctly, huh? So Aristotle says the knowledge when you can name something is to the knowledge when you can define it as a confused, as a distinct, right?

[1:00:49] To knowing it in a confused, and distinct way, first. Now, again, Aristotle says all these things, but or Boethius says it. Somebody says I'm trying to bring them together, right? Okay.

[1:01:04] Now, Aristotle in the first in the Premium to Natural Philosophy, there, beginning of the Physics, he brings out something common. To the two orders I just talked about, and that is that

[1:01:24] it's inborn, he says, natural, to go from what is more known to us to what is more known by nature. And in that same reading, he's applying this to going from the confused to the distinct.

[1:01:45] We know things more in a confused way, but the thing is more known when it's known distinctly. So we're going from what is more known to us, the confused, to what is more known simply, the distinct. but the nicomachean ethics he's talking about how we have to go from the effect to the cause, he again applies to that that we're going from what is more known to us, the effect or the effect by itself, to the cause or the effect in the light of the cause.

[1:02:16] Okay, that's a culmination. That's the most profound, right? The most difficult to see. Culmination of an understanding of the order in which things are known along this road, right? That this road goes from what is more known to us to what is more known by nature, right? We saw the supreme example a bit in the ninth reading, right? We go from motion, the act which is most known to us, all the way to the pure act which is God, which is most known by nature but least known to us.

[1:02:57] Okay. So there's a lot of before and after to be seen for a distinct knowledge of the natural road, but because it's a natural road based on the nature of man, the nature of his senses, his reason.

[1:03:17] When Thomas explains why we go from the confused to distinct, that's true both in the senses and in reason, because they are both able to know something before they actually know it. And as you go from ability to act, knowing something in a confused way is in between not knowing at all and knowing it distinctly, right? So we naturally know things in a confused way before distinctly.

[1:03:42] Now, this natural road underlies all of our knowledge, from the senses all the way to wisdom, in all of our knowledge. But this is important to see. If you look at the three forms of looking philosophy, the natural road is followed most of all. Which one of the three?

[1:04:11] Philosophy of nature. Yeah, yeah, and that's why it's said to proceed rationabiliter in the in the sense in which it's said to proceed not rationabiliter in Boethius is there, okay? Which one next and which one least follows the natural road? Mathematics, next, and then wisdom. well, notice.

[1:04:39] Well, but notice, huh? Mathematics seems to be the exception to going from the effect to the cause. It goes from the cause to the effect. That's least natural. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we've seen here in our study of the ninth book of wisdom, Aristotle goes from ability and actors are found in sensible things in mobile things, you know, towards the immaterial right.

[1:05:10] When we take up the the words, you know, we start from the sensible meaning, right, and go toward the meanings that are less sensible. When he studies substance, the beginning of the study of substance here is in the seventh and the eighth books, not concluded until the twelfth book. When the seventh and eighth books, he's starting from what material substance, right? Okay, so he's starting from the what sensible, right?

[1:05:43] Okay. So you are following the the natural road more in in wisdom, than you are, it seems, in in geometry, right? In geometry, you tend to go from the simple to the composed. Okay. Now you can't entirely avoid the natural road because, as you know, even in the great Euclid's Elements, we define the point as that which has no parts. And you might say, well, that which has parts then is more known to us, than that which has no parts, we define that which has no parts by negation of having parts.

[1:06:22] So we're knowing the the non-composed, the simple, through the composed, but nevertheless, Euclid rightly gives the definition of point first, because that's proper to geometry. There is a reason for doing that. If you don't, if you don't do it that way, you are not going to be able to understand geometry properly, because you have to imagine these things, you know, and so you got to get down to the point to imagine a line correctly, because you imagine a point by the motion of a line, and the point doesn't have any width, so that's why the line has no width.

[1:06:57] And then, you know, you imagine the circle by the rotation of the line around itself, and so on. So, because the way geometry proceeds, you have to start at the point. But it seems you're starting with the simple, and you define the line before you define the triangle, and you define the circle before you define the sphere. If you look at Euclid's definition of sphere, you rotate a a circle around its diameter, so you have to know circle before.

[1:07:28] So geometry of the three seems to follow the natural road, the what, least, right? And that's why when you meet the the great mistake there of Euclid, I mean not Euclid, of Descartes and Spinoza, right? That they want to proceed everywhere like you do in geometry, right? They're really going against what the natural road, right? And they're going against the private roads too, as Aristotle pointed out here, right?

[1:08:02] But in trying to make the way of proceeding in geometry be the way of proceeding everywhere, and they're kind of what going against the natural road. This is a terrible mistake, huh? Descartes, you know, starts with the cogito, which is okay because he's still kind of going from effect to cause. I think, therefore, I am. But then he jumps there to God, and then because God's the cause of everything else, then we can go forward, right?

[1:08:33] When Spinoza takes it over, and he says the order in thoughts and the order in things is the same. The cause is before the effect. Thought of the cause is before the thought of the effect. But just the reverse, right? The order in our thoughts is for the most part just the opposite of the order in things. I know the effect before the cause. I know the cause before the the cause of the cause, and I know that before the first cause, right?

[1:09:06] So the whole of human thought is disarranged by trying to what proceed everywhere like you do in geometry, because that's the one that least follows the natural road, huh?

[1:09:24] So you see the seriousness of that.