Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
41. Likenesses for Method: Tools, Senses, Food and Fiction; Learning One Word at a Time
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7b-wisdom-2006-colorado/041-likenesses-for-method-tools-senses-food-and-fiction-learning/

[0:00] That the way of proceeding should fit the matter, right? Aristotle himself gives us one of these analogies in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, where he compares the matter of a rational knowledge with matter in the ordinary sense and the practical arts, and the practical arts can't proceed in the same way with the same tools in different matters. So if I'm working with wood, or my brother-in-law is working with wood as a carpenter, he's going to use a hammer and saw and things of that sort.

[0:38] But if my wife is working with cloth to make a dress, she's going to use a scissors and a needle and thread or a machine that does it. But my brother-in-law doesn't try to cut the wood with the scissors and sew it together and so on. My wife doesn't try to, you know, saw away at the cloth and nail this part to that part to make a dress.

[1:04] So you can't work cloth and wood in the same way, right? And then I take the example of the glassblower, right, who has different tools. He's out there, you know, with a hammer and saw, working with glass. It just doesn't work, you know. So that your tools and way of working with different matters is not the same. You need different tools and different way of working the matter.

[1:31] Or I? Take the example from my father's factory that when I work in the forge shop, maybe you heat the metal and then bend it, right? Go to the wood shop to heat the wood and then bend it, huh? No, You've got to get all kinds of trouble doing that, I guarantee you. And

[1:49] don't have the exact passage. Shakespeare talks about it in one place too, but anyway. Well, you could say that the the tropos, the the the way of proceeding, is a tool for knowing the subject, right? And it's got to fit, likewise, the matter, right? That you're considering. That's one likeness that Aristotle has in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, when he's talking about certitude. Now you can't have the same certitude in different subjects, any more you can have the same certitude in matter.

[2:28] So you know yourself, if you cut wood, you can't have the same precision as you have if you're cutting a piece of paper with the scissors. And a fortiori, if you're out there in South Dakota, you know, making busts of the presidents, you know, and you're blasting stone, or even chipping away at stone, you know, can you have the same precision chipping away at stone as you can?

[2:49] You're cutting a piece of paper, you know, making a silhouette. And all of a sudden, they make a silhouette. People, you know, you've seen those sometimes. They take a little chad and do a silhouette of the face or the side. But you can be more exact with this than you can with stone or marble. We have to chip away, and you know, you can't be quite as precise.

[3:13] Now, the other example I gave was a very obvious example, that of the senses, right? Where now the senses are are means of knowing, right? And comparing them now to the road to follow or the way of proceeding, which is a way of knowing too. And obviously, the senses—if you want to know the paintings of Titian, you've got to use your eye, right? Why do you use your eye rather than ear?

[3:38] Why? Because you are trying to know a painting, huh? If you are trying to know the music of Mozart, you are going to use your ear rather than your your eye, huh? If you are trying to know Barbera or something, huh, or Chianti or something, you are going to use primarily your taste and smell, right? Maybe your sight, a little bit maybe taste and smell, right? But I wouldn't go and try to taste or smell a painting, and if it's you, the music of Mozart, huh?

[4:05] I wouldn't try to, you know, listen to the sound of the wine going into the glass. Well, it could be kind of nice sometimes, but that's not really the way you know a wine for what it is. So you can see in that likeness there that the senses are ways of knowing, right? Just as the methods or ways of proceeding in the different sciences are ways of knowing, but the principle is that the way of knowing has got to fit what you are trying to know, huh?

[4:38] Now another likeness I take, which as is not so much a way of knowing, but it's like Aristotle says in terms of custom, and you can take either food or you can take fiction, right? And you've probably seen how people are accustomed to certain foods and eating certain things, right? And sometimes because of that, they can't appreciate so much food of another nationality or something like that, huh?

[5:15] Well, it seems to be an influence of custom, and sometimes I like to take the example of drinking wine and say drinking soda pop, where you have to, in a sense, learn how to drink wine, huh? If you try to drink wine like you drink soda pop and so on, like you drink water, you'd probably be spitting it up and you know, you know, and and and too much, right?

[5:46] So you have to be taught, in a sense, how to drink wine and sniff it and so on. But you see the influence there of custom upon food, huh? But sometimes you can overcome custom, and you can get to like the food that you didn't like earlier, right? Now, a better likeness maybe is to fiction, where people are accustomed to certain forms of fiction, and they can't appreciate other forms of fiction, huh?

[6:17] And you really have to be taught how to appreciate this form of fiction that is not familiar to you, like Aristotle says, you must be educated, taught. And I always refer to certain books, say, like C. S. Lewis, huh? The Allegory of Love, which I think is a very good book, huh? But the Allegory of Love is largely about forms of fiction that are not so customary anymore, huh?

[6:44] Medieval Allegory of Love and so on. And he says, as C. S. Lewis says, forms of fiction that were enjoyed immensely by people for a longer time than the novel has been enjoyed by us, huh? But that we have a hard time reading because it's not, we're not something we're accustomed to, and so we have to, in a way, be taught how to read this form of fiction.

[7:09] And the Allegory of Love does this very well. C. S. Lewis has a a little book called Preface to Paradise Lost, right, where he's instructing us that you can't read Paradise Lost the way you read lyric poetry. Otherwise, you'll miss the sweep of the thing, and so on, huh? And Aristotle himself had spoken about something a little

[7:41] different this, but somewhat the same, there in the Poetics, that the one should not expect from tragedy the same pleasure you get from comedy. It's a different kind of pleasure we're seeking, or should be seeking, from tragedy, and that we should not seek in tragedy the pleasure proper to comedy, which you know people want to make the tragedy have a happy ending or something, right? Well, the pleasure proper to tragedy is from the catharsis of pity and fear.

[8:13] And regardless of whether that pleasure is greater or lesser than the pleasure, or better or worse than the pleasure from comedy, it's a pleasure that is appropriate to that work, right? And people sometimes, because they were not accustomed to these things, and because they're accustomed to another one, will seek the pleasure of the kind they're accustomed to, and they they can't, you know, do do do the the they can't appreciate this work, huh?

[8:46] My friend Jim was teaching high school, and he had to teach Macbeth, right? And he couldn't get the People to read them, you know. So he told them it was a mystery story or a detective story or something like that, you know. Well, you know, he's given up, in a sense, trying to make them appreciate Macbeth in the way that that kind of a play should be appreciated.

[9:14] And I know people in this prosaic age that can't read poetry, right? And they just go numb when poetry or something like that comes up. And yet, when you look back in you know the 18th century or even the 19th century, the way people read poetry, huh? And maybe you, you know, your your grandfather or grandmother, right? You, if you knew them, maybe they they read poetry kind of regularly, thing to do in the evening, you know, and so on.

[9:42] And they enjoyed these things. You go back to 18th century, and a man writes a magnificent poem, and he gets a pension from the king, you know, and people are just, you know, so you can see there is a form of fiction, a form of poetry that we're not accustomed to, and

[10:02] but that people may be enjoyed greatly, huh? So you must seek in different forms of fiction the the pleasure appropriate to that one, and you may have to be educated if it's not one to which you are accustomed. Some people I know read only mystery stories or whodunits, you know. That's all they can read, and there is some pleasure in reading those things, yeah. But there are many other forms of fiction, and they can't appreciate them, and they're seeking the wrong pleasure, right?

[10:33] You know, I was bringing that example from the advice column to the teenagers. Did I tell you that one? When the girl is complaining about her boyfriend wanting her to wear candy flavored lipsticks, you know, like they have for little kids, and she wants to wear adult lipstick, of course. And what do I do? This is her problem, and the solution was very brief: buy him a lollipop'cause he's seeking in a kiss the pleasure proper to a lollipop, you see.

[11:05] Well, that's the mistake that Aristotle is talking about, and when Henry Fielding, I think I mentioned that before, Joseph Andrews, right? In the preface to Joseph Andrews, he says he's attempting a form of fiction that the reader may not be aware of, right? And therefore, he may seek a pleasure not intended by the author, and he tries to explain, you know, what the poetics of Aristotle, some of the distinctions are the kind of form of fiction he's writing, huh?

[11:33] Comic, epic, and prose, and he calls it, and it's kind of interesting, huh? Here is a here is a fairly famous novelist who wrote Tom Jones later on and so on, but who realizes the form of fiction that he is attempting is one of the first early novelists is not so familiar to the audience, and they need to be educated, right? As to the kind of work this is, and the sort of pleasure they should be what seeking, huh?

[12:03] But you could say, you know, over all these arts that are to pleasure, you may be in need of being educated more or less to seek the pleasure that is appropriate to that thing. So I'm not going to put ice cream on the steak tonight, because that would be to seek from steak a pleasure proper to ice cream, right? I might put a little bit of this and that on there, then be appropriate, right?

[12:34] And it's not a question which pleasure is greater, ice cream or steak, but you just don't look for the same pleasure in in both, you know. My father-in-law, he's colorblind, so his wife prepared him a pea soup, and he thought it was tomato soup. He took it, bit of it, and he spit it out because he wasn't expecting it. Yeah, yeah. So that that's pretty important, what you expect.

[13:03] Yeah, yeah. But this is something analogous to what Aristotle was saying, right? Just as you shouldn't try to proceed in the same way in every science, but find the way that fits that, right? So you should not seek the same kind of pleasure from every form of fiction, or even every kind of food or drink, right? But the one that's appropriate to that, huh? And that if it's not a pleasure to which you are accustomed, right, then you must be educated, right, huh?

[13:33] You see. And it's a commonplace, you know, in in in wine tasting and things of this sort, you know, you you Have a an audience that maybe is not educated, right? That they will appreciate a wine that is white, say, before red, right? And maybe a sweet wine even before a dry wine, right? But as a man, you know, experiences wine more, he tends to get more pleasure out of a red wine and out of a dry wine, right?

[14:02] And a sweet wine, huh? But you have to be educated as to how to drink these things, and of course, when people first start to drink these things, they look for kind of these these things are a mixture of soda pop, almost and wine, you know, and and they're kind of seeking still the pleasure of soda pop, trying to hold on to that in drinking wine, and you know, the pleasure of root beer or grape soda or whatever it is, orange soda.

[14:37] In wine, and regardless of whether the pleasure of wine is greater or not than that of orange or soda, it's a different kind of pleasure, and you've got to adapt to that, or else you're going to miss it. And so, there's really an analogy here between what you're being taught when you were educated as to how to appreciate this form of fiction or this kind of beverage or food,

[15:04] and you have to work against kind of the force of custom. So that's another likeness that I take, but it's a little different, huh? But in some ways, more intellectual and reveals the force of custom even more than the eye and ear, going painting and music and and food.

[15:25] Okay, so we can rest there, right? I was going to ask something. Oh, and in metaphysics, in wisdom, yeah, he doesn't consider the subject until book four, really, right? Right, it's in the beginning of book four that he shows that wisdom is about being as being and the one and the many, and he he reasons from his being about the first causes as his goal. That it's subject to his being as being, right?

[15:56] And through that he shows that it's about the one and the many, kind of, you know, but that's basically the way he goes. But does he get the subject, and after he determines the method? No, the first thing I mentioned in the private road is the way you define, huh? And this is not brought out until book six, huh? In the first reading of book six, there he distinguishes wisdom from all the other sciences and from all the other parts of looking philosophy, and then he brings out the way of defining here, huh?

[16:34] So, um, it's only, uh, after he knows the subject and has considered the subject, right, and even the codification of: the words that he gets down more to what the the method is, right?

[16:54] Now, of course, when I first had Laval there, when Monsignor Dionne was talking about the private roads, and he was talking about it from the De Trinitate,

[17:05] and we mean it's in text, but in the De Trinitate, among other things, Boethius, following Aristotle, distinguishes the three parts of looking philosophy by the way they define. So Thomas will make whole questions and articles about these things, and then later on, Boethius will attribute to natural philosophy that it precedes rationabiliter right, and mathematics, disciplinabiliter and then wisdom, intellectualiter And Thomas, will have a whole article at least on each one of these things, and you know, objections and questions and so on, clarify these things.

[17:52] So that's one of the, you know, that's one of the classical texts, right, for seeing that you can't proceed in the same way in mathematics and in natural philosophy and wisdom.

[18:08] And then later on, when when I was kind of out in California, Dionne was talking more about logic at the time, right? I came back, and he was talking more about the natural world, those sort of things, and last course I had from him was on the dispositions of will, necessary in philosophy. So,

[18:32] so he said that Monsignor was proceeding, you know, according to, setting the particular after the more general, right? That was kind of good to see that.

[18:44] But but Dionne, you know, really really understood those texts in the in the De Trinitate, huh? There's a lot there. People write doctoral thesis, you know, and one of the senses of rationabiliter because Thomas distinguishes three of them, right? And one of the senses of rationabiliter, is the sense in which natural philosophy precedes rationabiliter, and one is the sense in which logic, especially, proceeds, and but wisdom also to some extent.

[19:21] Most people are kind of overlooked at that in the text there, and Dionne had a very good understanding of that. And then the other sense of rationabiliter, is is a sense in which ethics and political philosophy, especially, precede in a reasonable way, huh? But again, you have a word here which is equivocal, by reason, huh? That's a beautiful text, but it's another whole. A couple lectures in itself there,

[19:52] and the explanation of what sense wisdom would see as intellectuality there. What's related to that thing we said about large discourse, you know the one from the many and the many from the one. The wise man especially does this. He sees something simple but universal importance for many things, and he sees things that are beginning, from which you can draw all kinds of conclusions and all kinds of things like that.

[20:21] You can you can see that you're reading you know the ninth book on act and ability, how those things have almost infinite consequences on conclusions on The wise men from these things will see all kinds of consequences. That's what you mean by brevity is a soul of wisdom, right? You see something short, but it extends to all kinds of things, just like Max Planck said. You know, the more universal a theory is in physics, the simpler it is.

[21:00] So we had come to the end of book two of wisdom, right? I would have been Do you want to do that. We can do that, yeah. Do you have enough wisdom, for the time being?

[21:27] Premium Hmm. We could do the. uh You keep mentioning book five. Yeah. Well, some used to do book five at Laval there, That's the whole semester course, right? But you could do some words in there, you know.

[21:51] But you'd have to select them, you know. Thing I I do myself a lot of times in the book five. Sometimes I'll pick out a word that for some reason is of interest to me and really try to understand that word, right? And and then you start to see all kinds of uses of it because these words appear everywhere. really, there's no common enough. And uh you go through every word at the same time, but when you try to understand it.

[22:21] you get kind of indigestion almost, huh? But uh I think the word part, for example, the word part there. Something that shows up quite often, Not just in wisdom but everywhere, right? huh? And to understand the word part is very useful huh? For all kinds of reasons, huh? And I I mentioned before how um It's not done here, but in in the fourth book of natural hearing, where he distinguishes the eight senses of in and out.

[23:01] huh? And Thomas orders the eight senses, and how in my early teaching there, at Assumption, I was teaching logic all the time, and I got thinking about this phrase "thinking out," right? To think out something, to reason out something, right? And well, this I suspect it had more than one meaning: to think out something, to reason out something. And then went back to the eight senses of in and out, and all of a sudden they all start to appear.

[23:33] And it's almost at least one sense of thinking out corresponding to almost all the senses of in and out. And also a thing I discovered was that we tend to think out things in the same order that the senses come. So the sense of thinking out a definition, which would correspond to the third sense, say of in and out, comes before, say, thinking out a conclusion, which would correspond to the seventh sense, right?

[24:04] So I'm getting all kinds of things out of understanding the senses in and out, but then I'm teaching Anaxagoras, and he says you can't get something out of nothing, and so to get something out of something's got to be in there. Yeah, but in what sense is it in there, right? And maybe he's got them in there in the wrong way, right? And

[24:25] then I go back to the senses of in and out, right? So in understanding one word, which involves understanding the many senses and their order and so on, I'm getting all kinds of help in Natural Philosophy, even in places other than Book Four, right? Not just talking about place, and I'm getting all kinds of help in logic, right? And not just there, but that was going to show up elsewhere, right?

[24:54] So you're understanding something that is of you know kind of universal importance, and you start to appreciate it after you understand it and start to see some of the applications, and all of a sudden you see another one, right? And you know what I get out of thinking about the senses of before and after, right? It was important to know them when you came to the ninth book, huh?

[25:26] It's important, as they say, when you talk about good and better in ethics and about the goods of man, right? So you keep on seeing consequences of one thing understood well. So don't try to chew too much at a time, but chew something basic and chew it well. And then you're going to start seeing one thing after another, huh? I mentioned, you know, this thing about when I went to Laval and I was going to study mainly with Kassarik, I mean, De Connick and Dion.

[26:07] and Kassarik said. I don't know if I was going to study. I don't know if I was going to study. When he was a student of Leval, he thought he'd learned more from De Koninck than from Dion, but he'd learned a lot from both. But after he's out teaching a few years, he realized he'd learned more from Dion, right? Well, how can that be? That's your impression. Well, it might be that the higher the mind, right?

[26:32] And De Koninck even regarded Dion as higher than himself. It's interesting when Mary Shea came to Leval, and she was going to stay with Mrs. De Koninck. This is

[26:52] after he'd after De Koninck died, yeah. And and Mrs. De Koninck was most devoted and most admiring her husband, right? But De Koninck had made crystal clear to her that Dion was the greatest mind here, and she communicated this to to to to Mary Shea, you know. And Mary, tell tell me about this, you know. And I know myself, and I was I don't know if I told you this, but when I was working my doctoral thesis, and there was a question there that I I was thinking about and so on, and a difficult thing, and I had some thoughts about it.

[27:29] I thought I'd go check see what De Koninck thought about it, you know. And I went to De Koninck and asked him. He says, "Grand, he says, you know, you know, why are you asking me when you got Dion?" And so I won't ask you anybody. He says so. He told me what he thought, you know. But it's kind of amazing to see that, right? And I guess Deconic, before he published his articles, he had Dionne look him over, you know.

[27:52] That's true humility, not false humility, huh? and but the higher the mind is, the more true is what Shakespeare says: "Brevity is the soul of wit," right? So he's going to give you something that, when it's given to you, will seem smaller, right? Something small and smaller in size, but greater in power, right? And so as you get out teaching, and you remember this, and you start to see applications from what he sees, you get more out, right?

[28:26] You know, it's like the Chinese say: you know, teach a man to give a man a fish, you feed him for one evening, and give him teach him how to fish, right? But you know, if you give a guy a load of fish, assuming you like fish, and and a you know a rod and a thing, you know, what looks nicer? Well, I take the fish, right?

[28:43] You know, what's he giving me, you know? And yet, he's giving you something that will lead in the long run to more than this. You see, maybe make your living doing this, and

[28:59] so the. Greater the mind, the more it sees the beginning, huh? Beginning in the sense of something small in size but great in power. And so it's interesting, huh? When I was at Duval, I thought he said De Koninck or Kasurik said he thought he'd learn more from Deccanic. He learned an awful lot from him too. But he, unless and beyond, when he found teaching, he realized just the reverse.

[29:30] And it's interesting, right? In terms, you know, of evaluating a professor, right? Maybe you should evaluate him after you've been out of college for a couple of years and say, you know, you know, I mean, because your judgment

[29:46] may be more superficial, right? The immediate impression, huh? And that shows how really hard it is even to pick wisely. your professor. Yeah, one professor is maybe more expansive and saying all kinds of interesting things and so on. The other guy's giving you something more narrow, but something that is more powerful, and something that, in the long run, will lead to to more understanding than than the other, right?

[30:17] The other guy, he may, you know, if it's more like a finished product, you know. Aristotle in the rhetoric talks about that, huh? How the early rhetoricians they give all kinds of samples of speeches, and oh boy, you know, all these interesting speeches, you know, and so on. You kind of imitate those and so on, but they weren't giving you really the principles of persuasion. And therefore, in the long run, you would go as far as you know someone who goes down to the very principles of persuasion.

[30:47] Advent would talk about that as far as books on Christian spiritual life. Yeah. Some do principles, but others don't. He said it was a big problem with nuns to get them to pick the ones that have principles. Yeah,

[31:08] yeah, yeah. You know, something that feels more. Yeah. Well, if you read Plato and Aristotle, they're always quoting the Greek proverb: "The beginning is half of all." But then Plato will say, "You know," but I think it's more than half of all. Aristotle will say that, huh? When you say gravity is the soul of wit, wouldn't it make more sense to say wisdom is the soul of gravity?

[31:39] Soul is kind of the inner principle. of it Yeah. But what he's saying is that is that what unifies, right? Wisdom, right? Namely, the soul of wisdom, right, is something very small.

[31:57] Just like you might say in a circle, all the points around the circumference, right, are all united in the one point in the what center, right? If there were the source of all these, you know, these lines going out, huh? In brevity, one point is the soul of the what circle, right? Is in the is in the center of the circle, more the soul of the circle than the points and the circumference, huh?

[32:24] So brevity is the soul of wit in the sense of something brief. Yeah, something brief, but powerful, right? You know, and and Albert the Great and Thomas following Plato and Aristotle always compare the beginning to a what a seed, right? And a seed is small in size, like the acorn compared to the tree that comes from it, right? Small in size, but great in its what power.

[33:10] Brevity is the soul of wit. I used to used to emphasize it so much, you know. I walk on campus, somebody yells out of the dormitory window, "Brevity is the soul." I just didn't look. I always walk by.

[33:26] Probably so we didn't see the significance of it, you know. It's interesting how when Aristotle is comparing tragedy and and epic, there, you know, how the consideration of epic in the poetics is attached to the consideration of tragedy, and they have you know similarity in many ways, huh? But then finally he has to say something about which is superior, as a form of fiction,

[33:59] and he argues, basically that the tragedy is superior to epic as a form of fiction, because it gets that same effect, huh? But with fewer what words, words, yeah, yeah.

[34:20] You see that in Shakespeare's exhortation to use reason too. It's not so much poetry, but but the exhortation to use reason, how in fewer words than most men would take, it tells us what reason is, what it is to use reason, why you should use reason, you know, as well as reducing you to the ender purpose of man and so on, and you need to use reason even in our actions and so on.

[34:48] I mean, there you realize, in the same plane, which he makes the statement, "Brevity is the soul of wit," huh? But of course Shakespeare, you know, tries to avoid being pedantic,

[35:03] so he puts the words brevity and the soul. The soul wit in the mouth of Polonius, who's a fool that talks too much, right? And Hamlet himself refers to him as that tedious old fool, right? Well, fool is the opposite of wit or wisdom, and tedious is you know is the opposite of brevity, right? So in a man, so in a tedious old fool, he puts the the words, right?

[35:27] Brevity is the soul wit, and Shakespeare's party for amusing amusement, right? But also to avoid being what much like a teacher or pedantic and making his play seem that, so he sometimes does that, right? You know, puts great truth in the mind of someone who exemplifies. Is the opposite. That's kind of a question that I have when you're teaching that way, like you know when you're teaching principles that that

[36:07] are not that their their power isn't as evident as when you're teaching later things. Yeah, the finished prodigy, so to speak. Yeah. When you're teaching that way, and I think you spoke about this earlier, how do you manifest to a student the the the power of of the teaching in a way that makes them more? of a small portion? Well, what I was saying was a minute ago.

[36:33] Yeah, I wouldn't try to go through the fifth book and do every word in there, right? But pick out a word that seems to you important, right? Understand that word, and then go looking, right, for applications of this here and there. In the same way, I say with the student there, I wouldn't try to give him too many of these principles, right? Because that would leave you no time to show the power of the thing,

[37:02] um. And obviously, you can't manifest the power of Piti, but you know, when I teach the the senses of before and after the categories in the introduction to philosophy, because we're doing the interpretation of Shakespeare, right? Well, then, as I think I mentioned this example later on, though, we're talking about the which better, the goods of the soul, the goods of the body, right? And as a way of catching them a bit, I say, which is better, philosophizing or breathing?

[37:39] And they all say breathing. Okay. And so I say now, why do you say that, right? I have to give any reason is if you're not breathing, you won't be doing anything else, right? And I say now,

[37:56] you've just shown that breathing is before philosophizing in the second sense of before. You can breathe without philosophizing. But you can't philosophize without breathing. But the second sense of before is not the fourth sense, is it? Better. Now, someone says, you know, Chaucer came before Shakespeare. Therefore, Chaucer is better than Shakespeare. Would you accept that argument? No, because Chaucer is before Shakespeare in time, but that doesn't mean he's before him in goodness, does it?

[38:31] This is obviously faulty equivocation, right? So, because you're saying that breathing is before philosophizing and being, therefore it's before in goodness. Well, that's obviously the same kind of mistake, right? I mean, so it's a little frustrating for them, but you know, they they've heard those senses, they know those senses a little bit, and and they realize that the other thing would be wrong, right? And then they say, well, I'm going to help you make your argument a little bit better, say, say.

[39:04] And I say, well, now, if the opposite of something is worse, then that thing must be better, right? You see. So I say, most people I talk to say they'd rather be deaf than blind, right? Well, if to be deaf is worse than, excuse me, to be blind is worse than to be deaf, well then to see or sight must be better than hearing. Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah, and which is worse, to kill a dog or kill a man?

[39:40] Oh, kill a man is much worse than kill a dog, right? Well, then a man must be better than a dog, huh? Okay. Yeah yeah yeah yeah okay okay now, which is worse, to stop philosophizing or to stop breathing? Stop breathing, and I agree too, right? Okay. So the opposite breathing must be better than philosophizing. It was worse to stop

[40:09] breathing and stop philosophizing. Yeah yeah now now we've got it that one now yeah yeah okay I say, unfortunately, however, There's an exception to the statement that the opposite of the worst is what better, yeah. And that is when one thing is before another in being.

[40:34] Because you get rid of everything Yeah, you get rid of everything, right? You see. When you do that, right? You see. And we already saw that breathing is before philosophizing and being, right? So the rule breaks down there, right? So the argument breaks down, huh? And sometimes to illustrate that, I give some example, and I'll say, now which is better, to live or to live well? Right.

[41:05] And they'll say to live well, huh? Okay. But now, if you stop living, you're not going to be living well either, right? It loses everything, so that's worse than to not be living well. Yeah, see, so they see the defect in the argument. But but notice, huh? I've used there twice, huh? The teaching of the senses of before and after, right? The first one was to point out that as they stared their argument, they're arguing from one sense of before to another one, and therefore committing the mistake for mixing up senses of word, right?

[41:46] In improving upon their argument and making it have more probability, but then showing the the the this is where the exception is, right? And therefore the defect in the argument, we had to go back to the sense of what, before in what, being again, right? And that that's where the rule breaks down, right? Okay. Which is better, man or water? I gotta say, water a man, yeah, man, right?

[42:16] But which would be worse to have no men or no water? If you had no water, you have no men, you see. Which is better, bricks or a brick wall? We're going to pay more for a brick wall than for bricks, right? So a brick wall must be better, huh It's a monetary age huh And then, what should be worse to have no brick walls or have no bricks?

[42:38] If you have no bricks, you're going to have no brick houses, no brick wall. You know, see? Well, that's because it's before in in what, being, huh? So

[42:50] you gotta explain something to them, which is hard to do, but something important, something as the beginning of some sorry, and then something that you will use throughout the rest of the course, huh? Now, after you got through

[43:16] studying. The four senses of part there in the in the fifth book of wisdom. And I came back to the use of whole and part there in the first reading from in the physics there, right, in the proemium. Aristotle is making use of more than one kind of whole and part to bring out that we know things in a confused way before distinctly.

[43:48] And I noticed in the reading there he uses three of the four senses. One he leaves out. Any reason for that? Then I went. I was reading the the third book of wisdom. And Aristotle is talking about you know analyzing things and getting to the beginning of things, right? And he develops the various probable opinions. And again, three senses of whole and part comes in there. One is left out.

[44:23] Guess which one it is? Same one was left out in the other place, right? Just like noticing subtle things, right? And why is it one left out? It says something about that sense of whole and part, and that becomes the essential sense of whole and part later on that he develops at the end of the first book. So what's missing? The one of the four senses missing in the first three, right?

[44:47] In in the first reading, the other three are there. Is one that becomes the whole that you've got to see at the end. Otherwise, you miss the whole truth about the parts of mobile being. And the same way, the sense of whole and part that is not in the dialectic of you know probable opinions there in the third book is the one the twelfth book shows out to be the the principles of being as being, the intrinsic principles, huh?

[45:20] Say, say, wow, you know. But then if I go into logic, you know, you say, well, logic is the art of defining, dividing. Yeah, okay, but these involve different senses of whole and part, and so it's going to help me to understand logic, right? And so keep on

[45:43] multiplying the applications of that, but one word at a time. huh Don't be too wordy. huh One word at a time. But what shall we do next? Should we do the proemium to wisdom? You want to do the customs for the little comic relief or what?

[46:12] Well, maybe over the steak was pretty good tonight, and the carne asada which I'm sure will be good. We can find some truth about what should be done next, right? You know I like Max's No, I told you about Kierkegaard's symposium, right? You know, Now you know it's subtitled in Viva Veritas." and no one is allowed to speak in a moment until they feel the force of the wine, right?

[46:38] Well, maybe no one should speak, as to what should be talked about tomorrow until he feels the carne asada on top of a round steak.

[46:50] You guys going to the five o'clock thing or what? Okay. And he's talking about the orderly steps by which God brings us back, and so on. Everything through in the Greek is taxis kai akolouthia taxis is the Greek word for order, and akolouthia means like succession or following, right? Okay. So everything through taxis kai akolouthia, according to the careful art of Him that rules it, must come to partake of the divine nature.

[47:30] In another place, Gregory expresses the same thought. Thus, it is by hodos kai akolouthia. Now, hodos is what the the something of a hodos road, right? It is by hodos kai akolouthia that human nature comes to partake to participate in the divine. This was first the illumination of prophecy in the law, and afterwards the full glory of the light. Notice how he says in another place Gregory expresses the same thought.

[48:04] But the first place he says order in akolouthia, and then second place says road in akolouthia, right? The idea that you would right away think of road as a kind of concrete, sensible way of saying order, right? So I just mentioned that because Gregory apparently is writing in Greek. I know there's his native language that's the language he's writing in, right? And he? He knows it, and so we speak of a road in our knowledge, right away we think of of an order in our knowledge, which means a before and after analogy, for us.

[48:39] Okay. Now we're going to talk about the. I don't know if you were here. They wanted me to talk about the the three major sources of the modern world, huh? And its customs, right? Okay. I don't know if they take the whole time, but