Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
44. Freedom, Equality and the Moderns: Nature as Measure, Self-Rule of the Mind, and Discussion
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7b-wisdom-2006-colorado/044-freedom-equality-and-the-moderns-nature-as-measure-self-rule/

[0:00] in the bad way as well as a good way. Now. What about the influence of democratic customs upon our thinking? And if you take those two loves, the love of equality and the love of freedom, well, you have this—you know, like the Straussians say, there's a kind of aristocratic bent there in the Greek political philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. But you go to the modern political philosophers, and you have this democratic attitude.

[0:40] my brother Mark was always amused. Was it Locke who says, you know, since we're all more or less equal, right, the greater intelligence must go with the greater what? Number, right? You know, if we're more or less equal, all our minds, and there's ten of us, and nine of us think one thing, and one day thinks the other. Well, it must go because there's nine times as much mind there on the side of that.

[1:13] And when I wrote that little thing for the vault to the Rector Monsieur Dionne, right, you know, they didn't proofread it, didn't give me a chance to proofread it. But I was trying to quote Heraclitus, right, in the fragment of Heraclitus where he says, "One man is to me as ten thousand if he be the best," right, and so it's a compliment to Dion, right? One man is to me as ten thousand if you be the best, but we're all equal.

[1:37] Obviously, one man is not equivalent of nine thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine. There it is. So you see this tendency in the in Locke or in Rousseau and so on. That's fairly obvious, and in the more recent things that we won't speak of further, the being character.

[2:04] But it seems to me in thinkers like Hegel and take a 19th century and Sartre in the 20th century, Hegel very influential, you know, and Sartre is to some extent. There, you seem to have more the love of freedom than the love of equality. Kind of an exaggerated love of freedom.

[2:34] Now, for for Hegel, in the philosophy history, there the end of all history is what? Liberty, right? And I suppose liberty is the more noble thing than equality, and so the philosophers are some of them anyway more attracted to the idea of liberty than equality, but they're still being influenced by democratic customs. As I tell students, it would fall rather flat to say the end of history is equality.

[3:04] It would look ridiculous to say that. Although as de Tocqueville says in democracy in America. Things seem to be moving in the direction of equality, and it's almost providential, right? And de Tocqueville says we can't doesn't think we can stop this, and we have to learn how to live with it. That's what what he's trying to teach us, right? How we can avoid some of the excesses that will come with it, huh?

[3:30] But if you if you know history and know about the 18th century, the 19th century, the 20th century, to me it's pretty clear that the 19th century is much more democratic than the 18th century, and just you know things I know the best like English history or something can see the 19th century is much more democratic than the 18th, but the 20th is much more than the 19th, right?

[3:52] So we see it moving that way, right? As I say it would fall over the fact to say you know and wouldn't ensure the immortality of Hegel and his system if the end of history was what equality, right? So he makes the end of history what liberty, huh? And of course he goes so far as to say liberty is that, but which man is man? huh? Not reason anymore, right?

[4:20] But liberty, huh? So I say to my students, what should we call this man? A lover of wisdom or a lover of liberty? We call a man a lover of what he loves most, right? So would it be more accurate to call him a lover of liberty or freedom, a lover of of wisdom? So if we call him a philosopher as we do, right? We're using the word equivocally.

[4:50] Is someone who is not a lover of wisdom? Is it by chance we call him a philosopher? Or not? But sort of equivocally a philosopher.

[5:17] Now you go to Sartre, and liberty or freedom is the supreme thing, and it's not really what you choose, but that you freely choose, right? That you recognize that you're freely choosing this, and you don't pretend you haven't chosen it when you have chosen it. So although he defends in some sense, but not too well, the freedom of man, the man is free, he makes that the absolute thing, huh?

[5:44] And it's a hard time he's spending why his system doesn't lend itself to certain ethical things, and he he makes a attempt to try to get out of this, but he doesn't really get out of it, I don't think. So there, I think you see the influence of democratic customs, huh? Just as you see in the love of power, the influence of the second major source,

[6:12] the first one maybe the love of wealth. But I don't want to accuse Marx or Adam Smith as being a lover of wealth. But after he says the wealth of nations, and not his own wealth, it's common good, right? Plus, they got a little bit of elevation.

[6:37] But I would say the Greeks would say, you know, the love of power, love of freedom. Well, power and freedom are good if used wisely, huh? Just like wealth is good if used wisely, like this man who's given this land here, right? It seems to be using his his his wealth wisely, right? Huh. But wealth and power and and liberty, if used foolishly, are what harmful, right?

[7:09] And perhaps the more wealthy a man is, the more harmful it is if he uses that wealth foolishly, like people use money to support the communists or using wealth now to support the terrorists, right? Well, this is a foolish use of money. Support the terrorists, but got so much money because of oil and so on that there is rather dangerous things resulting from this, huh? The same way with power, right?

[7:39] Huh? If you use power foolishly, like Hitler, Stalin, or wherever it may be, then it's a terrible, harmful thing, huh? And the more power a man has, the more harmful it is, huh? Sometimes I talk to the students. You know, what if Hitler had gotten the A bomb, right, before us, and New York City was gone, Chicago was gone, Los Angeles is gone? Okay, okay, okay, all be how Hitler, you see?

[8:07] And if you were not, you know, I said you were not hesitant to use it. No question about that. And what would we have done? Or if he had gotten the A bomb, you know, and bang, England—I mean, London—is gone. You know, Birmingham or Manchester or whatever is next. I don't know. Gone, you know, all the big cities. England was was was weak, you know. I mean, there was there was some there are people who wanted to to make a deal with Hitler.

[8:39] You know, you can have the continent and let us keep the British Empire. You know, and this sort of thing. And how long that would have lasted? Not probably not too long, but but now if they had destroyed the cities, that would have been.

[8:55] So I mean, power is is good if used wisely, and the same thing with freedom, huh? Um. You can do the greatest good and the greatest evil as freely, right? So how how can they make this, you know, the ultimate thing? Doesn't seem to be reasonable, let alone wise to to love power most of all, to love freedom most of all, and that they seem to be in that position a bit.

[9:35] Because if you make freedom the end of history, then that's the supreme good. And Sartre, takes that idea over in in the twentieth century, and says that exactly, you know. So I usually give the students, you know, some little passages from each all these guys or most of these guys, and just to kind of illustrate, right, and just to kind of raise the question, really, you know.

[10:00] The fact that we call them philosophers doesn't mean necessarily that they are philosophers in the original sense of the word, and maybe the word is being used equivocally here, and so on.

[10:17] But as I was saying, they seem to be more influenced by custom and in a bad way, because they've given up the church, which is one thing that would help them, as Chesterton says, to avoid being a slave of the customs of their age. And the other thing is they've given up nature as a what standard, right?

[10:44] So there's nothing naturally understood, and nothing naturally good or bad that is going to be something whereby you you measure custom. I mentioned how how the godlike Shakespeare, when he's talking about the. Play there in Hamlet, and as Kittredge says, well, this has always been taken as Shakespeare's own understanding of what the play should be, huh? And you know the way he begins there, and the advice that Hamlet gives to the players, he says, "o'erstep not the modesty of nature, for anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, was in both in the beginning and now was, and is to hold as 'twere to hold the mirror up to nature, to show virtue, virtue her own face, scorn her own image, and the very age

[11:35] and body of the time his form and pressure." Well, he gives them in a certain order, doesn't he, huh? You know Shakespeare, as you know, looks before and after, right? He's urging us to look before and after. He puts nature before virtue and scorn, right? And virtue and scorn before the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, scorn, as I've mentioned before, is a metonym for pride, because it's an effect of pride, and Shakespeare often teaches us that in the other plays.

[12:12] He always points out that scorn, which is like a word for contempt, proceeds from pride, huh? And pride, as you know, is the queen of the vices, huh? So he's he's talking about virtue and vice there, right? But he doesn't say that because I want to be too pedantic, too too much like a teacher. So he's saying we hold the mirror up to nature first, virtue and vice, and then the very in third the very age and body of the time.

[12:45] Well, the order is there. that virtue is a measure of virtue and vice, huh? Because virtue is a habit in accordance with nature, in harmony with nature. Vice is opposed to nature, right? So the distinction of virtue and vice is based upon an understanding of nature, and then virtue and vice are the measure of the goodness or badness of the age, huh? Because the age is characterized by the virtues or the vices that predominate in it, huh?

[13:20] So Shakespeare's perfectly ordered there, but there he's in the tradition of the Greeks, where nature is the measure, the standard, huh? And that's why all kinds of places you go through the plays you see this. I refer to As You Like It there, where the there's a disorder in the city, right, and the country there, where the younger brother has usurped the throne of the older brother, and another pair of brothers, the older brother has mistreating the younger brother, and treating him like a kind of slave, and absorbing it.

[13:56] And at one time, both brothers are contemplating. The unjust brothers killing the other brother, right? They're having him killed, but eventually they end up in the forest, and everybody's reconciled in the forest, right? So the place of nature, you know, is place of

[14:19] reconciling, you know, yourself back to the good. I'm quoting the words of of Romeo and Juliet there, Friar Lawrence, uh, for not so vile that on the earth doth live, but to the earth some special good doth give. Nor not so good, but strained for that fair use, revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse. What a beautiful phrase, huh? Shakespeare moves the word what birth, like the word nature, from birth to what a thing is, right?

[14:49] So he says revolts from true birth, from true nature, right? Stumbling on abuse, huh? So you see, you know, over and over again, Shakespeare that he sees how nature is the what measure of what is virtuous or vicious, huh? But once you give out, give up nature as a measure, you have no measure really, unless you have the church or something, but they've given that up too.

[15:14] So you'd expect them to be more subject to the force of custom, and their reason is more, much more, a slave of the customs of their time than the Greeks were, huh? All the more so the medievals who had the church as well as nature to correct custom, huh?

[15:44] So. Once gave a division of philosophers into two, as those who think nature is wiser than us, and those who think more wiser than nature. Yeah, that's yeah, and the Greeks think that we that nature is wiser than they are, right? And like I quoted the fragment there of the Central Thinker there. Moderation is the greatest virtue, huh? And wisdom is to speak the truth and to act in accord with nature, giving their ear there too, right?

[16:22] So, like nature is a teacher, so nature is wiser than us, huh? Whereas for the moderns, they're trying to correct nature all the time, huh? And they're interfering with nature, huh?

[16:38] I think Protestantism. How's that? Well, you can talk about about Protestantism there. De Tocqueville, there in the beginning of the second volume of Democracy in America, he compares Luther with what? Descartes and talks about

[17:06] this idea of wanting to think for yourself and not believe somebody else and you don't entirely escape belief, he says, because you end up believing the crowd. But

[17:25] he sees, you know, this thing is progressively increasing, right? That's characteristic of democratic times to reject belief in another or you know put yourself under another believing him.

[17:40] And to some extent, Protestantism is tied up with that because it's everybody for himself, right? And that's why it keeps on multiplying, you know, and subdividing and and so on. Everybody's his own theologian, huh?

[18:03] You know, one thing I've noticed in these horrible events known as graduations, where usually they have a valedictorian, somebody will give a little speech, you know, before the main speaker, you know, that's invited. And one thing I remember from the valedictorian speeches is um, he praised the faculty, they taught us to think for ourselves, right?

[18:30] So that's kind of you know what they talk about, right. This is a democratic custom, right? Think for yourself, and my idea is as good as yours, right? You know, good idea. My thoughts as good as yours, I guess. Or people say I got as much much a right to think what I want to think is as you have to think what you want to think. One of the things that's probably well chosen in there.

[18:54] You see, you get the over and over again autonomously, right? That's obviously democratic customs, you see. And of course, one place where I stab at it is when I'm teaching the great fragment of "On the Mind by Anaxagoras. And Anaxagoras first says that the mind is unlimited, and we've talked about that before. And the second thing he says about the mind is that it's self-ruling. And I say to the students, "What part of philosophy?

[19:31] " You can take a course in here at assumption. What part of philosophy is a sign of the truth that mind is self-ruling? Logic. Logic.

[19:41] Once a while, you get a student who comes up with the logic, right? So I say, logic is a sign that it's true that the mind is self-ruling. But vice versa, the truth of what he's saying that the mind is self-ruling is why there can be the art of what. Logic, okay. Then you come to the third thing he says about the mind. That's not mixed with anything, huh?

[20:10] With the material world, huh? But then he gives a reason for the third thing. In the text we have, huh? We don't have him giving a reason for the first two, although in class we supply one And. He says that if it were mixed up with things, it couldn't rule them. And so we develop this reason that the ruler must be separated from the ruled. And one example I take is that of a man who's going to decide between people who are in dispute, right?

[20:44] He's going to be the judge, so to speak, huh? Between the contending parties. And the first thing we expect in a judge is that he'd be impartial. And I say, what does the word impartial mean? Literally, not a part of, huh? So if you're my brother-in-law or something, or you're, I have an interest in your company or something, right? I shouldn't be deciding between you and another businessman or something like that in a controversy, right?

[21:13] So I can't really rule over you two guys if I'm mixed up with you in some way, huh? And then I talk about how they in the army there's a distinction between you know those who salute first and those who are saluted, right? And how they make a distinction between those in a separation between those who what

[21:36] command and those who obey, right? And how why do they have an officers' club where the noncoms can't go in, right? Because even in a social way, they don't want them to be mixing, huh? Because that's going to interfere with rule or command, huh? Then then I stop at this point and I say, what two things seem to contradict each other here?

[22:10] The rule and the ruled, ruler and ruled, have to be distinct, but the mind is self-ruling. Yeah. Yeah. How can he say the mind is self-ruling on the one hand,

[22:23] and that the ruler must be separated from the ruled because the mind isn't separated from itself? And say yet the existence of logic is a sign that that seems to be true that the mind is self-ruling, and yet we saw good reason to see that the ruler must be separated from the ruled.

[22:43] How do you untie this contradiction, huh? Well, I said we've got to imitate what Socrates there in the Republic. We got to blow it up, so you can see it, huh? So I blow it up. To a country that enjoys self-rule, and I say now, when the country gains independence, let's say from the it was a colonial status, let's say at first, and it was being ruled by the former country.

[23:21] When it gains independence and starts to enjoy self-rule, what does that mean? Does it mean that the whole country is ruling the whole country? No, one part of the country is ruling the other part.

[23:40] Now we go to the individual man, right, and we say that a man has self-control, which is kind of self-rule, right? What does that mean? That the whole man is ruling the whole man? No, it means maybe that his reason is ruling his emotions. So two different parts, right? Okay. Now something a little that's a little harder to see though than than the city, right? Because it's all within one individual.

[24:09] Why the the rulers and the ruled in the city are distinct men, right? Now you go finally to the the mind itself, and you can't say that one part is ruling the other part in the strict sense, because

[24:28] as he goes on to say, the mind is the thinnest of all things, right? If it had any parts, strictly speaking, then it wouldn't be the thinnest of all things, would it? Because these parts would be thinner than it. So what does it mean?

[24:46] Well, I say now there must be some distinction between the ruler and the ruled in the mind, otherwise it could not have self-rule, just like there was a distinction between the reason, the emotions, or the government and the rest of the city and enjoy self-rule. Well,

[25:09] I said the key to this is given us by what Socrates, huh? And of course they've already had the Apologies. They know a little bit about Socrates, huh? Socrates was going around trying to get men to see some distinction. What was it?

[25:31] Knowledge and opinion. Yeah, or or between what they know and what they don't know, right? Because as Socrates presents that in the Apology, the oracle Delphi had said nobody's wiser than Socrates, right? And Socrates didn't think he knew much. I mean, how can the Oracle say that truly? And there are men who have a reputation for knowing something, so maybe I should talk to these men and see what this is all about.

[26:02] And in talking to them, the way that Socrates talks to men, he discovered that they didn't know what they claimed to know. They didn't know what they had reputation for knowing.

[26:17] So that they had mixed up what they knew and what they didn't know. And Socrates, by his ability to see if what they say contradicts itself, right, was he able to point out the difficulty and get them to start to separate what they know from what they don't know, right?

[26:40] Well, now you got the key, now, huh? What is the distinction in reason that is the basis for the distinction between the ruler and the ruled?

[26:57] It's the known and the unknown, right? That reason is ruled, or should be ruled, in what it does not know by what it does know, huh?

[27:13] But before it can be ruled in what it doesn't know by what it does know, they've got to be what separated. If what you know is mixed up with what you don't know, and vice versa, then the mind cannot rule itself. It's only if you separate the two, which is very difficult to do, as Socrates shows in the dialogues. It's only then that the reason can be ruled in what it doesn't know by what it does know, right?

[27:47] I take a simple example. I say, if I know, if I don't know the area of this table, right, top, but I know the length and I know the width, I'm going to be ruled in what I say about the area, which I don't know, by what I already know about the length and the width and my knowledge of how to multiply and so on, right? So this is the solution to the apparent contradiction, right?

[28:15] There is a real distinction when the mind rules itself, and that is first of all the distinction between the known and the unknown, right? Now later on you can add more subtle distinctions, like Aristotle did, between the more known and the less known, right? And so we're ruled in the less known by the what more known, and ultimately we're ruled by the most known, the axioms of being and non-being, of course.

[28:47] But there's a real distinction there, right? But then I go back and I say, but the whole life of Socrates showed that most men had not separated the two. So are they able to think for themselves? See, to think for yourself means that your mind enjoys what. Self-rule, or is capable of self-rule, right? When you understand through untying this apparent contradiction that self-rule presupposes, right, that you separated the known from the unknown, and likewise the more known from the less known, right?

[29:27] And most men have done neither one, then most men are incapable of self-rule. So what do you mean you've been taught to think for yourself? You haven't even been taught to separate the known from the unknown, or the more known from the less known.

[29:47] Some way it seems like the nature of reason rules. What? Some way it seems like the nature of reason rules, like like you can't just think anything you want to. Yeah, yeah. You have to think according to the rules of logic. Right. I mean, what reason can't avoid thinking is what's most known, right? The axioms, that sort of thing. Um, but just as as Socrates discovered that most men had mixed up the known and the unknown, so De Koninck said you could do the history of modern philosophy as a denial of the more known by the less known.

[30:21] But in sense, people have mixed up what's more and what's less known, huh? And you see that all the time. But anyway, that goes kind of aside from the point you're making that, you know, I've got as much right to think what I think as you to think what you think. That's what people say to you every day nowadays, huh? And I think I mentioned before how Socrates says in the dialogues, you know, opinion without a reason is an ugly thing.

[30:54] See, but we're so equal that in democratic times that my opinion, which I have no reason for, or at least no good reason for, right, is has as much right to that as you have to your carefully thought out opinion. Well, that's not true. Do I

[31:18] have a right to think something that I have no reason for thinking? I think we're going to get some champagne in a minute here, right? Some, I don't know, they better come in a big tray of bottles of champagne and things, huh? Do I have a right to think that?

[31:40] Huh? I have no reason to think that anybody's about to shower us with champagne, huh? Am I right to think that? Do you think that's over? We're going to get champagne in a minute. Okay, but do I just as much right to think that we are going to have some as you have to think? Ah, because we're equal, right? You know, you know, you know, it's right to my body that they talk about, right?

[32:09] Um. Which is the right to the body of my child too, but they don't say that. This right to my body, well, because it's me, me. But if it's yours, it's me. You know what I think. You know, Warren Murders remarking about some student on some paper, you know, where Warren had, or examiner was, Warren had had criticized what he had said. You know, he didn't defend what he had said on the basis that what he had he had given good reasons for it, but that Warren in attacking what he had said had attacked him.

[32:46] You know, it's not what he said, right? I mean, you know, somebody attacks what he thinks, he's attacking us, right? And you shouldn't identify yourself with what you think. huh?

[32:58] He would do sometimes. But anyway, what I think belongs to me, and I get as much right to think I want to think as you have to think what you've got to think. Is that so?

[33:11] I want to think that two plus two is five. I get just as much right to think that two plus two is five as you have to think that two plus two is four.

[33:20] If I think the moon is green cheese, I get as much right to my opinion as you do that it's a bunch of dust and rock, whatever you think it is.

[33:29] Yeah, you know, you said people writing into the newspaper all the time, you know, you know, and saying this all the time. What? You have a right to think that, but you'd be wrong. I may disagree with you, but I'll defend your right, you know, to think that. I don't know if I want to defend everybody's right to think what they think.

[33:55] It might mean a political right or something that the government will not interfere with that, because human law can't extend itself to correcting every wrong. But you know, the Supreme Court defines the right. Everybody's got a right to think what he wants about the universe and meaning of life, and it can impose. you know sort of has a what? Science sort of has a rule on where that ends, because it's completely supposedly objective.

[34:23] The study's been done. Yeah, yeah. It's no one's private. Yeah, yeah. It's just, it's just the facts. So, this afternoon we'll we'll start to approach the proemium to wisdom, beginning of first book of wisdom, right? And we'll go through the premium to wisdom. It may take us a couple days. Father, Jaki says that

[34:55] the rise of technology and the union of of natural science, the mathematically union of natural science and technical science, is made possible through the incarnation, and then it's only it's only by reason of a culture informed by the incarnation that man can that man is able to impose himself upon nature.

[35:28] And it's a defect of of classical civilization that, among other things, for reason for the belief in the eternality of the world. Are you asking me if he has the right to think that? No, I'm asking you what you think. Opinion, and and also determinism. He sees the ancients as determinists, and and somehow that ancient man was trapped by nature, and that the incarnation and grace freed man from from the determinism of the ancient world, and that's how philosophy is freed from its sort of purely speculative basis and can be can purely speculative.

[36:13] Can flower? Can flower into a a practical science. Free man. Now you will think about the void. I heard that too because of Christian. Well, my first inclination is to eject what what he's saying there. If that's reported correctly, you know. Yeah, it seems false to me. And I don't know what evidence he has for that or reasons for saying that. Do you know? I haven't read Jackie that much.

[36:40] No, Warren doesn't have too high an opinion of Jackie, but as a someone. Well, I mean, he's he's he's he's making kind of a a really

[36:54] a very contentious claim that there that there's a that classical philosophy is essentially flawed that and that speculative philosophy, a purely speculative natural science, is flawed that somehow it's trapped in a deterministic view of nature. Aristotle was a determinist, though he rejected what Leucippus had said in the sixth book. He does so sixth book of wisdom. In the second book of the actual hearing, Leucippus had a deterministic idea, right?

[37:30] Yeah. And and perhaps the Megarians did, as Thomas suggests. The reason why they Aristotle's defending ability there, the passability against the Megarians. So you're not identifying. He's speaking of the Megarians or Leucippus or something like that. But this determinism was even stronger, you might say, in in modern science. It was the absolute principle of modern science until quantum theory and even as Heisenberg says, Einstein, revolutionary genius that he was, he didn't want to give up determinism.

[38:04] It was that sacred to the scientists. So it's just and that that's the result of of the mathematical union of natural science and technical science, the mathematical character that the physicists upon determinism was even stronger in in the moderns. As I was mentioning, there was about Claude Bernard or Freud and so on. When they wanted to make their disciplines more scientific, the one thing they could not at all question was determinism.

[38:31] That's the sacred principle, you know. And so, you know, Heisenberg begins the Gifford lectures there. He emphasizes that in one way, quantum theory was even more revolutionary if you want to use that word, although he denies it's revolutionary for very good reasons. But it was even a greater change, if you want to put it that way, in modern science than relativity theory. Because the relativity theories did not question determinism, and Einstein did not want to question determinism.

[39:07] But the quantum theory and the Copenhagen interpretation of the quantum theory did very seriously question determinism. And Heisenberg is most famous, and you know, for the principle of indeterminism. And there's still some physicists who long to aback determinism, but I think the better ones in the direction now is that Einstein was mistaken in trying to hold on to it.

[39:38] I mean, the people you know in the string theory now trying to unite it, you know, they take kind of for granted almost that uh, the Copenhagen people had had. uh, won their case, so. But at any rate, huh? I mean, why attack the the Greeks, you know, for determinism, when it's only the Megarians, maybe, and the Leucippus, people like that, and Aristotle, the the greatest ones, are rejecting it.

[40:04] And in modern scientists, even, you know, until quantum theory and even somewhat beyond that, we're even more involved in determinism, huh? One thing, one thing, Jaki points out, and I don't know, he says that Aristotle believed in eternal recurrence, that that mankind was trapped in the cyclical patterns of history, that history repeated itself, and that man, you know, that man wasn't free and. Aristotle considered man to be free, right?

[40:47] He had good reasons for thinking him to be free. Now, free will is much more characteristic of the modern world, right? How could they recognize? How could they reconcile free will with the determinism that they had? So the other people who were, it seems, men that protest too much, right? It's the moderns that have more of a problem there.

[41:15] Well, it seems to be modern and wanting to say that it's an elevation to make order to practical or not practical. To doing, not looking. Yeah,

[41:30] yeah. It's interesting, you know, you know how, when Thomas raises the question in the, in the first question of the Summa, right? The first question is ten articles, ten questions in the one in the one question. But you know, is theology theoretical or practical?

[41:50] And Thomas says two things of interest to us now. One is that the distinction between the theoretical and practical is in philosophy, right? There's theoretical philosophy and there's practical philosophy, and theology, as as faith itself, is like God's knowledge, huh? Where the same knowledge, right, is theoretical and practical, but he also makes the point that theology is primarily theoretical. It's primarily about God and so on, and so he's upholding the the the dignity of of the theoretical, right, in theology being primarily theoretical.

[42:37] But what's interesting in terms of the moderns seeking a substitute for what theology, right? They want a knowledge that is somewhat. Both, right, in this union of natural science, which is theoretical philosophy originally, and the practical sciences, trying to kind of unite them, right, in kind of a

[43:05] substitute for for this double this being both theoretical in some way and practical of theology. Well, the Greeks didn't try to do that, right? I mean, this is looking philosophy, this is the philosophy of doing, right? And when Lady Wisdom comes down to console, Boethius there, right? She's got a theta there and a pi and theoretical and practical, you know, and the theoretical is above the p.

[43:38] The symbols and everything is beautiful, but the moderns, in a sense, are trying to do what was done in theology.