Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
42. Custom, the Modern World, and the Mercantile City, Mathematical Science and Democracy as Its Sources
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7b-wisdom-2006-colorado/042-custom-the-modern-world-and-the-mercantile-city-mathematical/

[0:00] if not, we'll anticipate a bit the the proemium to wisdom. Okay. Some things. Okay. Should we say our prayer? We're all technicians. Are all ready to press their buttons? There you go. Name of the Father, the Son, 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 carefully. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Doctor.

[0:35] Help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen. So we saw in the fifth reading from the second book of wisdom Aristotle talking about the force of custom, and of course it has influence upon many things. You know, what we want to eat, for example. But he was talking there about the influence. Of custom upon the mind,

[1:08] and I mentioned, in particular, the influence upon how we think. Okay, and I mentioned how Thomas in the Summa Contra Gentiles, in the first book, there talks about the influence of custom, and especially from youth that you grew up with, with your mother's milk, as they say, upon what you think. And Thomas, in that particular text in the Summa Contra Gentiles, says that what is not obvious, what is not per se known, what is not known to itself, can appear to be known to itself because of what custom.

[1:52] And of course, custom is so strong it can even make what is false seem what seem true. And when Socrates discovered that men think they know what they do not know, and there's perhaps more than one reason why men think they know what they do not know, but it seems to be a rather common phenomenon according to Socrates' experience. Perhaps one very common cause of this is custom.

[2:29] When you're accustomed to something, you think you what know it, huh? Warren Murray tells me a humorous story when he was studying at the University of Wisconsin. He had to take some English course, and the English professor was making fun of the ancients for thinking that the sun goes around the earth, when we all know that the earth goes around the sun, huh? And of course, we don't all know that.

[2:58] We all are accustomed to think that, but Warren decided to have a little fun with him, you know, and Newtonian physics and so on. So Warren said, "Well, according to Newtonian physics, no more does the what Earth go around the sun than the sun goes around the Earth. " And I guess the thing is that they go around a common center of gravity. You see, so he had the guy all, you know, befuddled.

[3:22] But I mean, center of gravity is inside the sun, though. Well, yeah, I mean, what's kind of you know, I give an example of a kid, you know, being swung around by an adult, you know, and if you watch their feet, they're actually going to go around a common center, but it'll be closer, of course, to the to the adult than to the kid who's being swung around, you know, and that sort of thing.

[3:42] But anyway, that's just a humorous aside about the fact that people, when they're accustomed to something, they think they know it. So that's one major thing, and you may even be accustomed to something false. So I just say that by way of touching again upon the great force of custom, and as far as the modern philosophers are concerned,

[4:17] I think they are more influenced by custom than the Greek philosophers. I don't deny that the Greek philosophers are going to be, or any man for that matter, is going to be influenced by the customs of his age and so on. But as philosophers, I think the Greeks were less subject to the tyranny of custom, as Shakespeare refers to it, because of the fact that they were always trying to go back to what is natural, and they saw nature as the measure of what is good or bad in custom, and they were trying to distinguish between nature and custom.

[5:04] While the moderns are more apt to deny that there is anything natural, and therefore they don't seek to distinguish between the natural and the customary as much as the Greeks. And of course, moderns have a kind of anti-religious trend too. So you know how Chesterton remarks in his book on conversion that the Catholic Church is the only thing that keeps one from being a slave of his own age.

[5:35] But if you've given up the church on the one hand, and you've given up nature also as a standard, what can you go back to? I mean, there's nothing really that you have to resist custom very much. I always mention the example there of Plato or the Athenian Stranger, as he's called in the in the Laws, proposing a law against homosexuality, which, as you know, was you know customary vice, I suppose you could say in the Greek cities.

[6:09] In fact, sometimes when they got overpopulation, they would encourage it. The government, right, as a way of cutting down on population. So, but the Athenian Stranger proposes a law because it's against nature, huh? contra physin, it's against nature. So the Greeks, going back to the Greek philosophers, as to say, they rise above the customs of their age,

[6:37] more or less, because they go back to nature as a what standard, right? And a thinker like Thomas Aquinas goes back to nature, but also has the church, so he's not going to be subject much to to custom. But I think the modern philosopher is more so.

[7:01] So, it's helpful to understand modern thinkers to some extent. To know what the customs are of the modern world, and what are the major sources of the modern world and its customs.

[7:24] And this is enables you to understand a lot of other things. About the modern world as well, in the philosophy class, when I talk about the major sources of the modern world and its customs, I do so before I look briefly at some of the modern philosophers, where you see something of the influence of this upon them.

[7:51] Now, I think that there are three major sources of the modern world and its customs. Three major sources that made the modern world something different, say, from the Greek world and the Greek philosophers, and even from the Middle Ages.

[8:14] And I don't try to reduce one of these three major sources to another one. I think there is some connection between one and the other. I don't try to say one is the cause of the others. I think, in in many ways, one reinforces the others or prepares for the others. But I don't want to try to reduce them to one or to be that way. And I distinguish the three in the order that they become manifested in time, and they start to stand out.

[9:06] And not in the order necessarily their importance, or as far as modern philosophy is concerned, in the order of their influence upon the modern philosophers. In fact, I think some influence them more than others, and some influence these philosophers more than those.

[9:29] So, the first major source of the modern world and its customs is the mercantile origin of the modern city. In the late Middle Ages,

[9:49] the modern city was founded by merchants, and this gave the modern city from the beginning a kind of mercantile, or you could say, commercial stamp. A mercantile or commercial character that the Greek city didn't have to the same extent.

[10:16] Now, one historian that I think is very good on this, the man who wrote perhaps the the best world history in the 20th century, William McNeill of the University of Chicago. The one called the Rise of the West. If you've seen that,

[10:37] he's obviously looking at history from a secular point of view. He's not seeing the importance of the incarnation, but I think he understands how to divide world history.

[10:54] As a child, we were accustomed to the division of world history into ancient, medieval, modern, and I think that distinction makes some sense as a division of European history: ancient, medieval, modern. But if you look at the whole of world history, I don't think that distinction is the best.

[11:22] McNeill divides world history also into three periods, but the first period of world history is the period of Middle Eastern dominance until about 500 BC.

[11:44] Civilization began in the Near East there, Sumeria, irrigation, so on, and then spread to Egypt and so on, and then that kind of spread out, but the Middle East kind of dominated it.

[12:02] But the second period of world history, which is roughly 500 BC to about 1500 AD, he speaks of as the Eurasian cultural balance. The Middle East no longer is the dominant center, spreading out, you know, its civilization from its base, but there are at least four major centers of civilization developing somewhat independently of each other. Sometimes one is expanding more than the others, but no one dominates the world seen in the way the Middle East had done up to about 500 BC.

[12:51] So in this 2, 000 year period there, from 500 BC to about 1500 AD, and incidentally, McNeill has a beautiful phrase for those dates. You know, he speaks of the fictitious sharpness of these historical dates or date periods. I think it's beautiful. Said beautifully, huh? So there's an idealization there, huh? Fictitious sharpness.

[13:23] One major center of civilization is now Greece, and later on Rome. Another one, of course, is the India, which is developing. A third one is in China, basically, and the fourth one is in again the old Middle East, which vies with Muhammad and so on. Now, there's some other civilizations not as developed as much as these four, and he will describe those too. But he calls this the Eurasian cultural balance,

[14:02] and then the third period of world history, you know, from 1500 AD to the present, which gives its name by synecdoche to the whole book, The Rise of the West. But he uses Synecdoche to name the whole work. The subtitle is a history of the human community here, but he does that to you know to contrast with Spengler, you know, because everybody knows that if you're a historian, Spengler's work, the decline of the West, right?

[14:29] This is called the Rise of the West, and of course, the West gets ahead of the rest of the world technically and so on. And then you have this great colonial period where the Western world is kind of dividing up the world, but even when the colonial period seems to be coming or has come to an end, Western technology dominates the world. You either adopt Western technology as they do in India, somewhat, and China, and so on, or you go under.

[14:58] That's it, right? You're going to be, you know, completely dominated by things. So, I think that makes more sense as a division of world history. And myself, when I divide the history of philosophy, I suppose I'm dividing history, philosophy in the West, where it's really developed. I don't think the division into ancient, medieval, and modern is the best division of the history of philosophy, because I think the only sense you can make out of that division is by something outside of philosophy, namely revealed theology.

[15:44] And so, ancient philosophy is philosophy before revealed theology. The medieval philosophy is philosophy subordinated to revealed theology, and modern philosophy is philosophy in revolt from revealed theology. I think that illuminates some things, right? But you're kind of dividing philosophy by something outside of it, namely revealed theology, and how you are towards revealed theology. Either you're before it and have no connection with it, really, or you're you're seeing it as a higher wisdom to which philosophy is reasonably subordinated, or else you're going to be revolted to it, and and this reveals a lot of things, I think.

[16:33] Because you find the modern philosophers who are in revolt, they'll do some things in philosophy, it's philosophy anymore that they're doing, that the Greeks would never have done. Obviously, for a Marx, the essence of Christianity would never appear among the Greeks, for a number of reasons. But they also try to do sometimes in philosophy what was done in theology, or find at least a substitute for what they revolted against.

[17:04] The Greeks aren't looking for a substitute for something they revolted against because they never had it, and they never revolted against it. So that division is important to see because some people think you know that the modern philosophers are going back to the Greeks, you know, and philosophizing without theology. Well, it's not exactly that way. The Greeks are philosophizing without revealed theology, but the moderns are philosophizing or trying to philosophize in revolt from revealed theology, and perhaps in an attack mode too, in in many cases, as you can see in Hegel and people of this sort.

[17:50] But the division that I would think would be more intrinsic to the history of philosophy would be not into three but into two, and I would divide it into the Greek philosophical tradition,

[18:05] because the philosophy of Boethius or the philosophy of Albert the Great or the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. And even the philosophy of Avicenna, of Averroes, and so on, is more a continuation of Greek philosophy and building upon it. So, looking intrinsically at philosophy, you don't have that break with Boethius or Averroes or people of this sort with the Greeks that you have with the moderns. So I divide it into the Greek philosophical tradition, roughly 500 BC to 1500 AD, or more precisely from 600 BC to 1300 AD, and then starting in the 17th century to the present, you have modern philosophy.

[18:55] 14, 15, and 16 is kind of a muddy period. here. There are anticipations of modern philosophy, and there is sometimes Greek philosophy living on in kind of decadent form, but. But so this division of the history of philosophy corresponds to the second and the third parts of McNeill's division of world history, because Greek philosophical tradition is more or less in that middle period from 500 BC to about 1500 AD.

[19:30] I might make the dates slightly different now: 600 BC, Thales to about. end of Thomas, where it's really vibrant that period, and then modern philosophy corresponds to the third part. The first part, you don't really have philosophy in the developed sense. You have, you know, proverbial wisdom. You know, you have the book of Proverbs, and you have things, something like that in the in the the other cultures there at the time. But now, just a little bit of praise there, McNeill, for his understanding of world history.

[20:08] And of course, you realize when he takes around 500 BC as the end of the period of Middle Eastern dominance. That's the what time of the Persian War there in the Greeks, and therefore you have to realize Herodotus has realized something significant is going on here in the Greeks stopping the Persians, and that's probably as good a date as any for saying this is where the break is.

[20:34] It's some fictitious sharpness, obviously, but that's the end of the dominance of the Middle Eastern dominance. If Persia had conquered Greece and gone on, you know. But as far as Greece and later on Rome being more or less independent of the Middle East, and even later on expanding somewhat into the Middle East, that's a good date. So you have to admire the great Herodotus, whom I think you gentlemen are acquainted with, that modernist historian.

[21:03] Okay. But coming back now, I said that the first major source of the modern world in its customs was the mercantile origin of the modern city. And McNeill, in this book, *The Rise of the West*,

[21:27] he contrasts the origin of the Greek city with the origin of the modern city, and that the origin of the Greek city was aristocratic. The landed aristocracy settled down around the seat of government and formed the city. And he said this aristocratic origin of Greek city; it was never entirely lost in the ancient cities. And he says even in the most commercially active cities, it's still kept this aristocratic stamp.

[22:06] And then he talks about the influence of this upon the whole civilization. And he observes correctly that, as the word "civilization" suggests, right, taken from the word for city, *civis civitas civis is what citizen. Civilization, at least in its higher aspects, whether it be scientific or philosophic or theological even or artistic and so on, is chiefly a result of the what cities, huh? So music and you know painting; these things are all developed in cities, and science and philosophy, and so on, and even theology, the University of Paris, and so on.

[22:57] So, given the what diverse origin of the Greek city. And the modern city, and given the central role of the city in the whole civilization, he says this colored and influenced the whole what civilization.

[23:22] And of course, you know how our our own country and so on, and how the modern world and so on is, in some sense, very much dominated by the commercial, in a much greater sense in which than which the ancient cities were. I often think of the great dramatists of recent tragic dramatists, Aeschylus and Sophocles, Euripides. And as you know a little bit about how these plays were performed in kind of religious festivals, they had a kind of origin, right?

[23:57] And of course, you look at at our movies and other things today, how commercial all these things have been made. It is dominated by that commercial aspect.

[24:13] That's the the first major source of the modern world, and it's what customs, huh? And of course, when he speaks of the of the merchants in ancient China and how they're almost slaves of the aristocrats, quite different, huh? From their dominant role in the modern city, but whose origins go back to the to the late Middle Ages, and this, of course, grew in importance as time went on.

[24:46] But they had that mercantile stamp from the very beginning. Now, this, as I say, is the first one in time because it already starts. You might see in the late Middle Ages, but it becomes stronger as time goes on.

[25:06] Now, the second major source of the modern world and its customs was the mathematical union of natural science or natural philosophy, and what Thomas would call the mechanical arts. If you look at that distinction of reason's knowledge there in the proemium to the Nicomachean Ethics, where Thomas says we can distinguish reason's knowledge by the order it considers, and there's the order which reason does not make, but only considers, and that's the order which natural philosophy is about.

[25:52] And wisdom is continuation of that, and then there's the order which reason makes in its own acts, and that's the concern of logic, and then there's the order which reason makes. In the acts of the will, our choices and so on, and consequently our actions, and that's the concern of ethics and domestics and political philosophy. And finally, there's the order which reason makes in exterior things, like in a box, Thomas says.

[26:22] And that's the concern of what Thomas calls the mechanical arts. They were called mechanical arts or the servile arts, huh? Okay. And I've seen books even in Shakespeare's time, you know, where survey of the liberal and the servile arts, huh? But servile arts and mechanical arts were kind of almost synonyms on those two phrases, huh?

[26:47] Well, as Aristotle points out in the book about the art of rhetoric, a rhetoric is actually an offshoot of two of these four. It's an offshoot of political studies and of what logic. And so, if you study rhetoric, it's not purely logic, huh? Because you learn how to what move people's emotions, huh? To influence their judgment in the courtroom or in the political assembly. And there are things about the different kinds of government and speaking in a way that's in harmony with the kind of government that you're trying to persuade people to write.

[27:38] I was struck, you know, one time, and I was doing a little reading of Demosthenes, huh? Who's regarded great, maybe the greatest rhetorician of of Greece, huh? And Plutarch, I believe, has Demosthenes and Cicero write the parallel lies, so Demosthenes stands out. I'm going to learn a little bit about rhetoric, right? And I was reading one of the speeches of Demosthenes. He's making fun of his opponent.

[28:07] He scrubbed benches when he was little, you know. I said, "What lousy rhetoric this would be." And then I, you know, reflected, you know, but if you had scrubbed benches, huh? When you were a boy, you're lowly born. You're you're you're not noble born, you know. You're you're trash, huh? But if we're speaking in America, we'd admire somebody who is self-made, huh? Somebody who began without anything, huh?

[28:40] As we're talking last night there about people born, you know, with the wealth, and then those who make it. So we admire a man who starts off in a very poor station in life and worked his way up and became successful and so on. So you realize that in order to be persuasive, you have to understand what is in accord with the kind of government under which you're trying to persuade somebody.

[29:06] And so, Aristotle, the Greek word is parafoues, which we I think translate fairly well by calling it an offshoot, right? But it's not; it doesn't have a unity of beginnings or principles like logic has, or like political philosophy has. It's an offshoot of the two, huh? And it's very interesting in ancient times to see that that offshoot had a tremendous influence. And if you think of,

[29:41] oh, even Christians like Jerome, you know, who Christ is supposed to appear to and say you're a Christian or a Ciceronian, or somebody like Augustine, who was a teacher of rhetoric, huh? And when Aristotle is giving the history of the origin of the art of rhetoric, it apparently began in the Greek cities in Sicily, and it began when they cast out the tyrants, huh? And you got a more democratic form of government, and now it became very important to be able to convince the crowd to vote for this or vote against this, right?

[30:21] Or convince the crowd that is the jury in the courtroom to find someone not guilty or guilty, and so on, huh? And so, but the power, the power came from this fusion, right? You might say of two different things.

[30:42] So, now the other two, right, are natural philosophy or natural science and mechanical arts. And what took place, and it really got going in the 17th century. That's why I give this as the second one because I take as they appear in time.

[31:04] You had a union or an offshoot, you might say, of the mechanical arts and natural what? Philosophy, natural science, and this is a new animal now, right? Okay.

[31:22] Just like your your son or daughter is an offshoot of you and your wife, huh? And they have they bear some resemblance to you or your wife, but they're really a new individual, right? They're not exactly you or your wife anymore.

[31:41] So this this parafoues, this offshoot, right, of rhetoric is really something different from political philosophy, and you may have seen in the rhetoric where Aristotle says.

[31:58] One should distinguish between political rhetoric and political philosophy, right? And that men, out of boastfulness or lack of education, confuse the two, huh? And maybe even in Cicero a little bit that confusion, huh? Because I can persuade the crowd what to do politically. I'm politically wise. It's not exactly the same as being politically wise, huh? Well, likewise, this union of natural science and the mechanical arts produces something that is really different from either one, but it has some resemblance to one or the other, huh?

[32:37] And part of the reason why that offshoot is possible is because it's a mathematical union. And if you study the second book of Natural Hearing, you know that mathematics abstracts from the difference between nature and art. The four legs of the dog are by nature. The four legs of the table are by art. But four is what?

[33:11] The four abstracts from the difference between nature and art, huh? And to some extent, I can apply four minus two equals two to the four legs of the dog. If you lost two legs, you'd have two left. And the table lost two legs, you would have two left, right?

[33:37] And so maybe an equation we might use to talk about the movement of a planet around the sun might also be used in putting some rocket in orbit around the Earth, huh? Okay.

[33:54] You can recall also the words of Aristotle in the. A third book of on the universe that we referred to in a previous lecture, where Aristotle sees a likeness between the way we judge later on in natural science, where the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so to speak, the proof of the hypothesis is in the consequences, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

[34:24] That's the way we judge in art. Now this is the way to make an airplane. Okay, that sounds interesting. Let's make something according to your plan and see if it works. Right. What happens all the time in industry, right? That you make something and maybe when you use it you find certain defects, then you go back and redesign it and so on. But since similarity between that and what you have to do in the latter parts of natural science, where you might have an hypothesis or something, but you have to judge it by its consequences, and by consequences that are ultimately sensible, right?

[35:00] So that kind of facilitates, you know, the possibility of uniting these two, the mathematics and the fact that there is a likeness in the way that they they judge.

[35:13] Now this union of natural philosophy and the mechanical arts in modern science is seen in the oldest part of modern science, which is physics, and the oldest part of physics, which is called mechanics. Okay. So notice the word physics comes from the Greek word for nature, and mechanics comes from mechanical arts. So the oldest part of modern science is a part of physics called mechanics. So even the names there kind of you know give a little hint at what has taken place here, this union of natural science or natural philosophy and mechanical arts, as to use Thomas's names for these things.

[36:06] Uh, Werner Karl Heisenberg, right, talks about this union. His speech is this. He says speaks of the union of natural science, with technical science, okay. And sometimes people, you know, call it the union of science and technology, although technology is kind of a bad word. I like better just technical science, which would be another name for something like the mechanical arts. And Heisenberg talking about that in Gifford lectures,

[36:43] says that this changed our attitude from a contemplative attitude towards nature to a pragmatic one. One was not, he says, so much interested in understanding nature as it is, but in seeing what you could do with nature, right? And so you see that that fusion, and he says it's sort of turned natural science into a technical science.

[37:14] I've remarked, I think, before how in the arts that are kind of an offshoot of two arts, like let's say opera, right, which is an offshoot in a way of drama and music, right, or ballet, which is an offshoot of music and the dance and so on. You find that the higher art is subordinated to the what lower art, huh? So as as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart said, in opera the words must be altogether the obedient servant of the music.

[37:48] And you might say the dramatic element, the plot and so on, right, as well as the words are there to set up the stage for some magnificent music. And I know Warren Murray and I have often talked about how people are sometimes impeded by the stupidity of the plots or the silliness of the plots or what it might be, right? As if that's what's supposed to be your main, you know, concern, right?

[38:15] No, the plot should be such that sets up the scene for an interesting piece of music, and the words are there, you know, to give an idea of what the music is going to what make interesting. And so

[38:36] the higher art in the drama, in a sense, is being transposed into something musical, and some of the writers have spoken about that, right? Or everything is by magic there transposed into something musical in Mozart. Likewise, in the ballet, in the ballet you have the higher art, the music, joined to the lower art, the dance, but the music becomes subordinated to the dance. The music is there, you know, to make you want to dance, to make to make the dance seem interesting, huh?

[39:13] And so you can't with the dance represent the emotions as subtly as music can. Love represented in a Tchaikovsky ballet is is more like puppy love, you know, in a sense compared to the subtlety of a Mozart love, aria. Well, something like that happens in this what offshoot of natural science and technical science, to use Heisenberg's words there, where Heisenberg says it changed us from a contemplative attitude towards nature, which you had in a purely natural philosophy, right, to a pragmatic attitude, which is that more of technical science, and natural science in a way was changed into a technical science.

[39:59] But it's not simply a technical science, huh? It has a power now from mathematics and from nature and so on, that. The purely technical science separated from natural science never had just that rhetoric had a certain power, right? Not a part to make you politically wise, but the power to what? Persuade, right? A power to persuade the crowd that a mere logician or a mere philosopher would not have, right?

[40:36] You know, people talk about Winston Churchill, and perhaps Winston Churchill has some political wisdom, but he also had a certain ability to rally the people and to give what speeches, huh? And if you read, you know, Churchill's speeches there, especially during the Second World War, you realize that they were very important in holding England together and supporting England, huh?

[41:09] Now, as I say, in the 17th century, and Heisenberg speaks of the 17th century, and the 18th centuries, huh, how this uh, union of natural science and technical science became so well established, huh?

[41:26] And this is probably a much greater influence upon the modern philosophers, and more proximate influence upon the modern philosophers than the mercantile origin of the modern city, huh? We will talk a little bit about the modern philosophers themselves later on, after we go through these things. Now, there may also be a certain connection here between the mercantile origin of the modern city and the commercial practical stamp it gave the city, even more so than the Greek city, and this union of natural science and technical science, which kind of turned natural science into technical science, and made us not so much concerned with with just understanding the way nature is, but in giving us power, right, to transform nature for our purposes and so on.

[42:34] The if you look at at modern say industry or modern government for that matter, there is a great deal of support from the part of business and and of government for scientific what research, right? They fund this a lot, right? My friend used to work in Minnesota mining, huh? And Minnesota Mining, big company with many plants around the country, would employ many scientists like chemists and so on, but Whatever ideas the chemist has belongs to the company, right?

[43:15] He's kind of a servant. The science here, the chemist who's working for missile mining, is kind of a servant, right? And and they're interested industry and government in what you can make technical things, you see. So it could be that the mercantile origin of modern city disposed the city and the customs of the city for this later what union of natural science and technical science. As I say, I don't want to reduce the second one to the first one, and the first one influences many other things besides the second.

[44:02] Now people were remarking about when on the baseball season, you know, where I'm in Massachusetts, where Boston and New York City, the New York Yankees are always in competition, and of course it was kind of phenomenal what happened in the last season, right? And the was it was it the Yankees won three games in a row, and you say, well, they're never going to win the seven game series, you know?

[44:32] The Boston come back and win four games in a row, but anyway, the season was over. One of our best pitchers was offered a large. He was free agent. He acted free agent. Offered a very large salary, but New York Yankees, right? I said that's the New York Yankees' strategy, right? You know, if you give a little trouble, they'll offer your best player, one of your best players, and of course the the famous example is Babe Ruth way in the old days.

[45:04] I went from Boston to to New York is supposed to be the greatest mistake, you know, in in baseball history of losing a good player. But you see how commercial these baseball teams are, the way they're being run, right? And I don't think that the Olympics there back in Greece were that what commercial, huh? You see how commercial sensation is, huh? So this mercantile origin of modern city includes a lot of things besides philosophy, even science, even things like sports, and and as I said earlier, it influences our our fiction and our plays.

[45:46] It's mainly a money making, you know, another form of money making business, you know. But nevertheless, it seems to me that I wouldn't want to say necessarily cause and effect, right? But that a mercantile city is more disposed. For this union of natural science and technical science, than a more aristocratic kind of society would be, because you've got the slaves to do the work, you know. So we just pursue knowledge for its own sake, and let the slaves, you know, provide us with what we need in the way of necessities of life.

[46:34] But I wouldn't want to simply say that the first is a cause and second. Now. Now the third and last major source in the modern world is customs,

[46:50] is the democratic revolutions and the social condition of relative equality, as opposed to this more aristocratic and this hereditary inequality that you had in Greece and in aristocratic societies. And I mention this now source third because it's the one that comes most to light last,

[47:26] and it really gets going with the French Revolution, and that's now the the major author here is of course Alexis de Tocqueville, right? Who wrote Democracy in America in the 1830s, I think it was, and especially in the second volume of Democracy in America, the first volume, as you know, is dealing more with American institutions and starting with the city and then going to the state and then to the federal government and so on.

[48:14] It ends with that famous prediction that the United States and Russia would come to dominate the world, the United States would stand for freedom, and Russia for slavery, which made a lot of sense during the Cold War. It seemed very great foresight foresight,

[48:35] but now the second volume of Democracy in America, which is actually a little bit larger, I think, the second volume is much more general, and it's about democratic customs and how they influence every aspect of our lives. And in that second volume, he's constantly contrasting democratic customs with aristocratic customs and how they influence differently how we think and how we act and so on. And there's four four parts to the second volume.

[49:22] The first one talks about the influence of democratic customs upon the mind, everything from science to to fiction, right? Even the influence upon religion or religious ideas, so it's magnificent. The second one is on the influence upon you know our desires, and then our manners. I guess you could say the third book. The fourth one talks about the influence upon government. Political life.

[50:00] That's the if you wanted to take just one one great book, "Democracy in America," and especially the second volume for understanding what democratic customs are. And the tremendous influence they have upon every aspect of our life, and the contrast between that aristocratic customs.

[50:28] Alexis de Tocqueville would be the single best, and it'd be hard to improve upon that. I think very much. De Tocqueville, in the second part of the second part of the second volume, there, he talks about the desire for freedom and the desire for equality. As especially characterizing the democratic customs, of course, Aristotle had already talked about that tendency in the Greek or democratic cities. But of course, democracy didn't mean you know everybody's free and equal in Athens, huh?

[51:17] But it's a relative term, right? Not this kind of universal democracy that we have. De Tocqueville talks there about those two desires, but he says and maintains that the desire for equality is what stronger with the common people than desire for freedom. And that they will interfere with freedom if it seems necessary to ensure more equality,

[51:52] and this is why you know there are books like Talmon's there, the you know the origin of totalitarian democracy, right? Where the certain way in which pursuing equality to a certain excess in opposition to freedom can lead to tyranny, huh? Like Kojève and people like that, you know, are often pointing out, fouling de Tocqueville.

[52:23] Of course, Aristotle talked about equality and tyranny. You know, where the famous story of advice of one tyrant to the other, and he asked for advice, and the other tyrant sent over a servant and with instructions what are you supposed to do. And of course, he went out in the field, and he what? plucked the grains that were sticking up above the other ones. That was the advice.

[52:49] Of course, that's what the communists would do when they took over, right? They pluck out the professors and the, you know, whoever were leaders, right? You know, just you know, level down.

[53:04] Because he said when they're going to, was it chop off the head of Lavoisier during the French Revolution? And and the guy defending him, he's a savant. And the guy said, "And the revolution n'a pas besoin des savants. The revolution has no need of savants."

[53:24] So, but let's go back to the first part of the second volume, which is relevant for our purposes here.