Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
47. The Six Marks of the Wise Man and the Universal 'Said of All' vs. Cause of All (Hegel, Plato)
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[0:00] So, you gonna make out a list or grocery list for this man or what? I did. To keep our priorities straight here. Let's say our little prayer first. In. The name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor.

[0:37] Great Christmas. Help us to understand all that you have written. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Now, at the beginning of the second reading here, Thomas, kind of or rather Aristotle, enunciates what he's going to be chiefly interested in. The second reading, since we seek, he says, such a episteme, this ought to be investigated about what causes and about what beginnings. He's using beginnings here almost in the sense which is synonymous with with causes.

[1:22] Sophia is a what Episteme, right? It's an episteme about which causes and beginnings? Is it a in particular? And notice here you're calling Sophia an episteme, huh? Well, in the Nicomarckian Ethics, you distinguished episteme against Sophia. We've talked about that use of words before, right?

[1:51] And if one were to take the opinions that we have about the wise man, perhaps this would come to be what clear, right? And notice that in this,

[2:06] hypolepsis these opinions about what the wise man is. He's going to have about six of them, and kind of description of the wise man, or you could say it's a description of what wisdom, right? And he may say sometimes the wise man or wisdom. Wise man is a little more concrete, huh? But if you say say that the wise man knows all things, for example, This is what he's going to say.

[2:32] in some way, then you can say wisdom is a knowledge of all things in some way, or vice versa. If he said wisdom is a knowledge of all things in some way, then the wise man must know all things in some way. So it's almost the same thing to say this is a description of the wise man or of wisdom.

[2:59] So if we take you know the things that we think about the wise man, you work out kind of a description or encircling of the wise man or wisdom. Maybe to become clear from this, what kind of beginnings and causes wisdom is about. We know it's about beginnings and causes from the first reading, but maybe this will help us.

[3:21] And to some extent, each of these is said by people in general. To some extent, about the wise man. Let's look at the six numerates. We think first, right, that the wise man knows all things in the way that is possible, o syndicati Not having what In particular or kathekiston in knowledge of all these things. So this is the first attribute, you might say, of the wise man.

[4:00] The wise man knows all things in some way. Now is that a common opinion about the wise man or not? Yeah, I think so. Even in the majority sense, when they say wise guy or know it all. Yeah. I often use that. The majority sense: "Are you a wise guy and know it all?" But you see that the wise man is thought to know all things in some way, right?

[4:31] In ways possible, and not in particular, right? We have expressions, you know, about a man who's practically wise. He's got it all together, whatever that means. But in some way, he sees the whole, right?

[4:48] When Socrates reasons with the Athenians that they shouldn't prefer the goods of the body and outside goods to the goods of the soul, he's in a way thinking about all the goods of man, isn't he? There's a kind of universality about that. And when the natural philosopher talks about motion and place and time, he's talking about what's common to all natural things, right? So if the men who are wise in some area know all things, right, well then the man who's wise simply must know all things.

[5:26] Period. And of course, when the the dialectician and the sophist assume a likeness to the wise man, we see in them this universality of dialectic, where he can be about anything. Ah, has a dialectic conversation, and the sophist pretends to be what knowing everywhere and refuting people everywhere. No matter what you say, he can be refuted by the wise by the sophist. So he pretends to be, you know, wiser than you about all things.

[5:58] Anything you say, he's going to show you he's wiser than you by refuting you if he possesses art fully. So that's the first attribute of the wise man. He knows all things, in some way, right? Not having a knowledge of them in particular, in some general way at least, he sees the whole picture.

[6:24] The second thing about the wise man, he's able to know things that are difficult to know, and not easy for man to know, huh? This is what it means to be wise, huh? Of course, we admire the wise man for his knowledge, and would you admire him for knowing things that are easy to know? No. So you admire the wise man for knowing things that are difficult for man to know.

[6:56] So that seems to be kind of probable thing, huh? That's what he said before that the last thing you think wisdom would be about would be about those statements that everybody knows that they would seem to be easy, right? And when Aristotle talked about the knowledge of truth being easy, the third thing he said was that "Who misses the door?" From the Greek proverb. So everybody knows the axioms, huh?

[7:28] So that's the last thing you think the wise man is talking about, huh? You think he's knowing things that are difficult to know, right? Not things that everybody knows.

[7:41] Aristotle says in our obvious example that to sense is common to all; hence, it is something easy and nothing wise, huh? Of course, he reasoned before, remember, against wisdom being a knowledge of the singular, and the that is so that this would mean then that sensing is wisdom, and nobody thinks that.

[8:09] Now the third thing he says about the wise man, just in the next three words, huh? And the one having more certain knowledge, huh? Now, do we think of the wise man as being more certain or more sure than other men?

[8:31] Yeah. When you're in doubt, right? You go to someone you consider wiser than yourself, and because you think he's more sure about these things than you are,

[8:46] I used to go out particularly back there, Thanksgiving time and Easter time, the academic break there at those times, see my Indian, right? Check out what I'm thinking, huh? Okay. Could you think of him as being more certain, huh? If he'd agree with me, then I'd be confirmed in what I was thinking, huh? If he disagreed, I'd rethink what I was thinking.

[9:15] So if a doctor is not too sure, I mean, he says he's a general practitioner and he's not too sure about the particular thing in you, then he will what? Go to an expert, right? My wife had a problem with the eyes there, and the the optometrist, you know, I think he knew it was wrong, but he sent her to Boston, right, to an expert, right, to check this out, huh?

[9:37] So you go to someone you think is is wiser in these things when you're not so sure. That's a sign that you think of the wise man as being more sure about these things.

[9:49] That's the third thing that he says about him. Now the fourth thing. The man who's more able to what? Teach causes, we think is wiser in every knowledge. I notice that goes back to something we saw before. We all think of the what? Teacher, right, as being more knowing than the student. Or if he's not, like maybe Thomas was wiser than Alfred the Great. Well then, Alfred the Great arranges a debate, right, in which Thomas wins, of course.

[10:32] But we think of the teachers being wiser, and he's we saw before that a man is more able to teach if he can explain what? Why the cause, huh? So we think the wisest man is a man who's most able to teach, right? He may be most able to teach because he can explain the what? Causes, right? So this is something comes out of what we we saw before.

[11:02] But everybody would think that the teacher is or should be wiser than the student at least as regards those things that he's teaching. Okay.

[11:14] And so then, you see the superiority in knowing of the teacher. Then the wise man must be most capable of teaching. That's the fourth one that he's right out on.

[11:34] Now the fifth one is a little more difficult for us moderns. But he says, and now he's talking about the sciences. But as we say, you can turn what he said about wisdom, right, into the wise man or vice versa. And the sciences, the one for its own sake, right,

[11:58] and for the sake of what? Just knowing, huh? Is more. More wisdom, huh? Than those that are for the sake of some, than the results from them.

[12:20] We talked a bit about that there when Aristotle was had shown that the man of art or science is wiser than the man of experience. And then he started to talk about the different what arts or sciences, and there are some arts that are ordered to the necessities of life, right? And then there are some arts ordered to pleasure and relaxation after your day or after your labors, right?

[12:51] And they seem to be more like wisdom, right? So we think of Shakespeare as wiser than any carpenter or cook or that sort. And even to some extent, we saw that in Einstein, say, or in the scientists, even though a very practical thing, we honor Einstein or Time Magazine at least honored Einstein as the man of the century, right? Huh? Okay, but certainly the most honored scientist, right?

[13:24] And but Einstein is admired for having understood the universe, huh? For having understood more than anybody else, not because he made something that no one else could have made, but because he understood something nobody else could. And Bohr was admired there at the that thing I was mentioning, the Bohr Festival, because he seemed to be the man who understood the atom more than anybody else in the world, and that's why they were so enthusiastic about the series of lectures he gave there in Germany that they nicknamed it the Bohr Festival.

[13:58] You know, just glorious thing, huh? And okay, but that one maybe is a little harder. For us to see as moderns, who think all knowledge should be practical, right?

[14:22] Well, it's the description of the wise men by six attributes. We're down to the sixth now for the last one. Ready? Okay. And the one that is more architectonic, that is chefer, than the one that is subordinated, seems to be more wisdom. For the wise man ought not to be commanded, but he ought to command or order others. And he ought not to be persuaded by another, but by him the less wise should be persuaded.

[15:15] Of course, that comes out of what we saw before too—that the in all the arts, we think the art that commands is possesses more like wisdom. The man who commands is wiser than the men who what obey, right? So therefore, wisdom seems to be in the fullest sense the one that is commanded by none, persuaded none, but commands and persuades all the rest. So this is a pretty convincing six-part, right?

[15:55] Description of the wise men or wisdom, and as we said in the beginning, can be taken as a outline or description of either the wise men or the wise, just by changing the words a little bit, making it more abstract or concrete. That's where Aristotle says at the end there, nineteen and twenty. Such are in so many the opinions or the thoughts we have about wisdom and the wise, right?

[16:26] You can Take it either way. So just to review it, you can say the wise man knows all things in some way, not in detail, right? The wise man is what?

[16:43] He knows things that are difficult to know. The wise man is more sure than other men. The wise man is more able to teach causes than other men. The wise man has knows things that are better to know, right? And then other men, and the wise man orders all the rest. Okay. And you can say the same six things about wisdom, just change a little bit. Wisdom is the knowledge of all things, right?

[17:15] In some way. Wisdom is a knowledge of things difficult for men to know. Wisdom is a knowledge that's more certain or sure than others, right? Wisdom is knowledge most of all causes. Let's say, wisdom is the most desirable knowledge. Wisdom is a knowledge by which everything is ordered, huh?

[17:42] I noticed there's a little paradox there in the second and third things because we think of the wise man as knowing things difficult to know, and we think of the wise man as being what more certain, yeah. And Aristotle doesn't clarify that paradox here, but you have a similar paradox. I was teaching the De Anima this summer, and the paradox that De Koninck had explained.

[18:20] Aristotle says that all knowledge is desirable, but one knowledge is more desirable than another because it's more certain, or because it's about a better thing. And then he says, and the knowledge of the soul we place in the front ranks, huh? For both of these reasons, huh? Okay. I'm not concerned about showing here that a knowledge of the soul is a knowledge of a very wonderful thing.

[18:51] That's true. But now when he says that this knowledge also excels in certitude, and then later on you'll see, you know, to know what the soul is is one of the most difficult things in the world. There's a kind of paradox there, and as De Koninck said in the explanation of this, it's most certain that we have a soul,

[19:20] but what the soul is is what's most difficult to know, huh? And just like in Descartes' famous cogito, I think therefore I am, huh? Because of your inner experience of thinking, you're very sure that you're thinking, but exactly what thinking is might be very difficult to know. And whether thinking is something material or immaterial, most people have a very great difficulty in seeing that thinking is something immaterial and so on.

[19:53] But that you are thinking is very clear, huh? And I used Beatrice's words there in much ado about nothing there in illustrating this or talking about this in class. You know how Hero is falsely accused, huh? And her cousin Beatrice. is sure that hero is innocent, right? And Benedict said, you know, was asking her about this, you know, and she says, "I'm as sure, you know, of her innocence as I have thought in the soul."

[20:28] So you got the the both of them there. But what thought is, and what the soul is, might be very difficult to know. And in that respect you're not saying that this is what you're most certain about those things. So it may not be in exactly the same way that the wise man is more sure of what he's talking about than anybody else, and that he's talking about the most difficult things.

[20:58] So, for example, the most difficult things in this knowledge would be the first causes at the end. But the wise man also knows the axioms and knows them better than anybody else, right? And is able to know them distinctly and to be able to defend them. What's more certain than the axioms?

[21:22] So he might be more certain in that aspect of his knowledge, right? More so than in his knowledge of the first causes, which are most difficult to know. So you could maybe

[21:43] untie this kind of paradox here, like a little bit in imitation of the way De Koninck untied the paradox about the soul. How can the knowledge of the soul excel

[21:56] most of the rest of our knowledge in certitude, and yet it be one of the most difficult things in the world to really know what the soul is? Well, maybe it's not in the same way; it's most certain, and it's about the most what difficult.

[22:13] And certainly, even for the wise man, the axioms are more certain. He's more sure of them than what he says ultimately about the first cause. That's extremely difficult to know the first cause.

[22:27] See that? Okay. So we sometimes touch upon that little paradox. Now, Aristotle has announced at the beginning of this reading that his main intention is to find out what causes, in particular, is wisdom about. We know it's about causes and beginnings. but so is natural philosophy, so is the other parts of philosophy about causes and beginnings. So, what are the causes or beginnings that the natural philosopher is about?

[23:10] And Thomas, to some extent, in the commentary, takes the reasoning is going to take place next, right? As all being ordered, to seeing that it's about the very first and most universal causes. Let's see in the commentary.

[23:31] I think you can say that's the principal intention. Nevertheless, in in reading this over the years, I notice what Aristotle is doing when he reasons now from the sixth part to some conclusions. He reasons from the first three attributes of the wise man

[23:58] to one conclusion about what wisdom is about, and he reasons from the last four to another conclusion about what wisdom is about. Okay, another conclusion of what wisdom is about. It's interesting that he does this.

[24:21] He's going to reason from the first three attributes of the wise man that he has a knowledge of the most universal, but most universal in the sense of what is said of all. Okay, you see that? He's going to reason from the last three

[24:49] to wisdom being a knowledge of the first causes. What is a cause of all, right? So he's going to reason in a way to two conclusions: that wisdom is about what is said of all, as you see, especially in the very first

[25:12] attribute. He knows all things, but not in particular. He knows all things by knowing what is said of all of them. He knows all things in some general way. Okay, he's going to argue from the second and the third as well that he has a knowledge of what is most universal.

[25:34] What's most universal is said of all. He's going to reason from the last three, four, five, and six, that he knows the first causes. What is a cause of all? Now, as we'll see, especially in the the second of the first three, you could reason from wisdom being about things that are difficult for man to know that it would be about the first causes, but he doesn't do that.

[26:13] He just reasons from that to its being about the most universal. He wants to, it seems to me, keep those two distinct in our mind—the distinction between what is said of all and what is a cause of all—and don't confuse those two. It's not the same thing to be said of all and to be a cause of all. Sometimes in Latin you see this term "universale in praedicando," universal in being said of, right?

[26:49] And that's what the said of all is. It's universal in that sense. And then the "universale in causando," which would be the cause of all.

[27:03] And if you read Hegel, Hegel begins the whole system with being, right? And that being that he begins with is the being really said of all. But since it's so universal and so confused, it seems to say nothing about things. So then Hegel goes from being to none being, huh?

[27:38] Just like if I said you asked me what is a chair, and I say what chair is a thing, you might say you haven't told me anything. Well, I really have been saying thing. It's not nothing. I said something about the chair, but it could hardly be more general, right? What is a chair? It's something. You might say you haven't answered my question. You haven't told me anything.

[28:05] So it seems to pass into nothing. You see, Hegel of a sudden. I suppose you have the confusion there between ability and non being again, like with matter and lack of form, because being is very confused and therefore very potential, and therefore it seems to be nothing. So you get the system going from being to non being, and then then you have the the synthesis there of becoming, right?

[28:35] But which involves contradiction and so the rest of it. So the being that Hegel begins with is in fact the being which is said of all things. If you look at Hegel's logic, he will say this is the being that you talked about in Scripture. I am who am.

[29:00] Now that's confusing the "I am who am," who is the cause of all, universal in causando, with the being which is said of all. Universal in predicando, and that's one of the most what greatest mistakes you could possibly make in thinking. It's like David of Dinant saying that God was prime matter. Oh yeah, yeah, that yeah that similar.

[29:31] Now in the Summa contra Gentiles, after Thomas shows that the substance of God and His being are the same, and we'll bring in Scripture, "I am who am," and so on, right? This is the meaning of this. Then he has a whole little chapter, capitulum they call them little chapters. They're all they're all capitula,

[30:00] showing that the one who says "I am who am," God Himself, is not the being said of all things. Huh? There's a whole capitulum just devoted to the mistake, the great mistake of Hegel,

[30:19] as if he foresaw right that some dimwit would confuse the being said of all with the being who said "I am who am." Somebody did namely Hegel, right?

[30:42] But again, you have a little bit of this in Plato, because as you know, Plato thought that the way we know when we know truly must be the way things are, and therefore, since we truly know by definition the universal in separation from the singulars that is said of, then the universal must truly exist in separation from the singulars, and this is the world of forms, huh?

[31:17] The capital F, huh? The forms that Plato talks about, but the forms are in a way causes of other things, huh? Kind of universal causes. We all know by partaking of the form, right? So we know what what a dog is by partaking of the form of dog, and all those little doggies out there somehow partake of the form of dog. So he's making, in a sense, the universal what is said of many, right?

[31:46] The cause of those same many, huh? Okay. It's a little bit bit like when Marx is making fun of of Hegel. He says, "This is what Hegel does. Huh? He's got an orange there, and an apple, and peach, and so on, and then he abstracts the idea of fruit in general." And then he tries to say, all these fruits are the unfolding of the idea of fruit, you know.

[32:17] One unfolding is the apple, and one is the orange, and one is the lemon, and you know. But in a sense, Plato is a little bit in that problem too, right? Because he separated in his own mind the universal from the singulars, and he's truly understanding the universal. But he thinks if he truly understands it, it's got to be in reality the same as the way it's in your mind, separated.

[32:43] And then he projects right universal out there and makes that kind of the origin of things. Okay. Now this other teacher of mine named William Shakespeare, right?

[33:03] I think I mentioned before he puns on the two meanings of general. And if you say, for example, you've got an army there, and soldier is something general. Everybody in the army is, in general, a what? Soldier, right? Soldier said of everybody in the what army, huh? And that's one sense of general, right? But when we say that Douglas MacArthur is general of the army, we don't mean he said of everybody in the army, right?

[33:40] We mean he commands the whole army, right? He's the universal mover. He's universal cause. So two senses of general, right? Well, in Troilus and Cressida, when Cressida comes over to the Greek camp, there I don't know if you know the story, but Cressida is exchanged for another prisoner because her father has done favors for the Greeks. He wants his daughter over here, and so on. And Cressida is a little bit loose, as you know, and

[34:14] Chaucer's account of it, and Shakespeare's following that. And she comes over to the Greek camp. Agamemnon, now who's the general of the army, gives her a kiss. You look at the girl, say, and then Ulysses sees this, you know, and he says, "Well, she's been kissed by the general, but she hasn't been kissed in general." And he gives her a kiss, and then everybody gives her a kiss.

[34:38] Where Shakespeare is punning on the two meanings of the word general, right? When general Agamemnon, you might say, kisses her, and then when everybody in the army, you know, sends a kiss to general. So Hegel is confusing those two kinds of universal: the universale in praedicando and the universale in causando, right? But speaking more English. He's confusing what is said of many with what is a cause of many, right?

[35:12] Or ultimately, what is said of all, and what is a cause of all? One of the greatest mistakes you can make. Now, Aristotle wants to show here.

[35:26] He wants to conclude that wisdom is both about what is said of all, right? And about what is a cause of all. And eventually, we'll see that wisdom is about the first causes, which are the causes of all, right? And eventually, in Book Four, we'll see it's about being as being, and the one, and so on, and being and one are said of all. But even here, when he reasons, he wants to keep the three distinct, or the two distinct rather, and he reasons from the first three just to its being about what is said of all.

[36:11] And he reasons from the last three to its being about the cause of all, which would be the first cause. Okay. And Thomas doesn't kind of bring it out, I don't think, distinctly in the text there, because he's respecting what Aristotle's main intention is here, right? To see that wisdom is about the what first causes, which are in some sense the most universal cause, and they extend to to everything that comes under what is said of all, right?

[36:45] But Aristotle and Thomas wouldn't either confuse what would mean to say you're the most universal cause, you're the universal, the most universale in causando, with your being the most universale in praedicando, right? Okay. So I sometimes like to emphasize here, in in the light of Hegel and others, that Aristotle is clearly distinguishing between the two, and he doesn't reason from all six to one, but from the first three to it's being about what is said of all, and from the last three to the cause of all.

[37:25] Do you see that? Okay. So, and you think the basic reason for that is identifying the way we know with the way things are. Well, I say that was a problem with most philosophers, right? They think that truth requires that the way we know be the way things are, right? Because truth is a conformity to the mind with things. Aristotle would say, what's got to agree with things is what you say about things, right?

[37:57] But your way in which you know them doesn't have to correspond. So I can know universal and separation from the singular because it's truly knowable without the singular. I can know the more universal in separation from the less universal because it's truly knowable. Without that, the mistake would come if I said that's the way they are in things that they're separated in things because they're separated in understanding or because they can understand cube apart from ice cube and wooden block and plastic cube and so on.

[38:37] Therefore, there's a cube outside my mind in separation from ice cube and any other material cube. Okay, and so Plato, being convinced from his great teacher Socrates that definition is a way to know things truly, then he thought that because when you're defining, you're defining the the universal in separation from the singulars. Therefore, the universal must truly exist in separation from them, and that was a great mistake.

[39:12] You can remember the past now, right? Are you false in remembering the past now? Yeah, but but the past is not now. The falsity, or I would say, would come if you said that the past is now because I remember it now. But now refers to what? You're knowing more, and the past to what you're knowing. Okay, and of course, you know,

[39:49] God knows the past and the present and future in His eternal now, and that's why Boethius, if you read the great work there, the Consolation of Philosophy, in the beginning of the work, Boethius announces himself as a member of the Academy. The Academy is the school of what? Plato, right? But when he gets to the fifth book of the Consolation of Philosophy, where he's going to be talking about the eternity of God and how God knows things, right?

[40:25] He can't follow Plato because God's way of knowing is quite different from the way things are, and the past and the present and the future of time are all present to God in His eternal now. And that's extremely difficult to understand, but you have to follow Aristotle in order to understand that, huh? And the Consolation of Philosophy, if you if you read it, it's written in the form of a dialogue, right?

[40:56] Again, you see the Italian influence there, but he's having a conversation with Lady Wisdom, right? And in the beginning of the fifth book, Lady Wisdom introduces Aristotle as her true follower. And that's kind of a subtle way of the great Boethius saying. Now, although I belong to the school of Academy, I can't follow Plato anymore. Here, I've got to follow Aristotle, and he's doing that that way.

[41:25] So it's beautiful. Shows the greatness of Boethius He's perhaps the greatest Christian philosopher between Augustine and Thomas, right? Yes. Okay, so he's going to reason now from the first three to the wise man, the philosopher, knowing the most universal. Because, as you already hinted with the first one, the wise man can't know all things in particular, right? And so he can only know them by knowing what is said of all of them, and that would be the most universal.

[42:15] And you can see in a more in a more simple example, some might say, "Well, how can you know all things? There's like an infinity of them." Well, even in the science of arithmetic, when you say no odd number is an even number, you are in some way making a statement about an infinity of things, aren't you? Because there's an infinity of odd numbers, huh? Infinity of even numbers, huh?

[42:40] Or when you say no prime number is a composite number, right? That theorem in Euclid there to show that there's an infinity of prime numbers, and obviously there's an infinity of composite numbers. So you're making a true statement about an infinity of things, but you can't do that by knowing them all in particular, can you? But you know something that is said of them.

[43:06] So likewise, if our reason knows all things in some way, even though there's infinity of them, it's because it knows what is said of all of them.

[43:23] So he says, of these, the one knowing all things in that he what has a knowledge of what is malista huh? Most of all, katholou huh? Most of all, universal. For this guy knows in some way, not simply right, but in some way, so in a perfect way, all the hupo keimena, all the what subjects that come under the universal. Okay. So he reasons from the wise man knowing all things in the way that man is able to know all things.

[44:07] They must know what is most universal, what is said of all the things. Do you see that? So to know all things belongs to the one, knowing what is most universal, and that's why we said following the great Shakespeare, we said that wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, and reason's ability for large discourse. And one meaning of large discourse would be a discourse that covers many things, right?

[44:45] And the largest discourse of all would cover everything, huh? So the discourse of the wise man, in that sense of large, right, is the largest discourse that there is.

[45:03] You know, beside the theologian, right? Okay, you don't know anything about him. Okay, okay. But in general, you could say that the discourse of the philosopher is larger than that of other men, right? So when Socrates says that his discourse, his conversation with the Athenians, was chiefly about their preferring the goods of the body and exterior goods to the goods of the soul, and Socrates was having a discourse about all the goods of man, either the goods of the soul or goods of the body or exterior goods, huh?

[45:45] Aristotle has that same discourse in the seventh book of the Politics, right? Where he brings out that. So you could say that the discourse of the practical philosopher

[46:00] is larger, right, than the discourse of the doctor or the carpenter or something like that, right? Extended to some particular good, huh? But they don't really have a discourse about all the goods of man. The discourse of the wise man is about all things, huh? So it's the largest discourse there is.

[46:28] Now the second attribute is going to reason from the second attribute. Okay. But notice how the that he writes schedon that means what? Perhaps, right?

[46:47] These most universal things are most difficult for men to know. Tamalista what? Kathalu, right? He's saying perhaps Tamalista Kathalu, the most universal, right? The most universal are what is said of all, are the what? Kalaputata, the most difficult to be known by men.

[47:16] Now, why does he say schedon? Maybe to know the first cause is is even more difficult, right? Okay. But in some sense, right, most universal, most difficult to know, for the reason that he gives next. For they are porotato, they are furthest away from the what senses? Okay. We saw that in the first part of the premium, and the first part of the first part, the first reading, that our knowledge begins at the singular, right?

[47:52] Now, what seems to be furthest away from the singular? The less universal or the most universal? The most universal, huh? So, in some way, it seems most difficult to know what's furthest away, right? Don't you think intellectually the most universal or personal, some way? Okay. Now, there's a problem that a person might raise who knows the first reading from the physics of Aristotle. Right? Aristotle argues that the confused is more known than the distinct, and therefore the more universal is more known than the what less universal, right?

[48:33] Okay. Well, you can answer this a couple of things. One is, as you know from your study of the ninth book of wisdom, we have to ascend from the less universal to the what more universal, huh? And it's easier for us to consider the act and ability as they are found in motion, huh, in the first part of Book Nine, than to ascend to the what most universal consideration of act and ability in the second part of the ninth book, huh?

[49:11] Likewise, if you know the history of human thought about one and number and so on, you realize the extreme difficulty men had in ascending from the one that is the beginning of number to the one that is the beginning of number. But it's convertible with being, huh? And that's more universal, right? So, if you take the most universal, right, There's an extreme difficulty in that, um,

[49:43] when Thomas says sometimes that being is what is first understood by our mind, if he meant by being being in the universality that's considered in wisdom, that's not what's first known to us. And sometimes Thomas is more precise, and he says that the being that's first known by us is being considered in material things, which is less universal, right, than the being considered by the wise man.

[50:10] And it's very hard for us to rise from that to the what most universal one. And I think the the most concrete text for that is the one in the fourth book of Natural Hearing, the fourth book of the Physics. Aristotle is considering place, and he quotes the common opinion of all the Greek philosophers before him that whatever is must be somewhere. If it isn't somewhere, it doesn't what exist, right?

[50:44] Where their seeing is a property of being to be in some place. If it's not in some place, it doesn't exist. Now, to be in place is really a property of natural bodies, and so they're identifying what is with bodies and what is found in bodies. But you go out and talk to most people, and they will not what. They'll agree with that, right? See, and for them, it's extremely difficult to rise to this more universal consideration of being, huh?

[51:17] And this may be another reason why Aristotle says schedon right? Because he's already shown that in some way, right, the more universal, right, is more known than the what less universal, right? So it's not altogether true, okay? But there's a special problem in going to the most universal, because

[51:43] our mind is connatural to knowing what material things, huh? Yeah. You're assuming that you've shown there's some kind of immaterial being at this point. Well, you'd have to show that. That's extremely difficult to show, right? So that shows it's most difficult. Yeah, and men are always falling back upon the imagination because they don't think without images, huh? And so they think that everything must be in place.

[52:07] You talk even to, you know, orthodox Catholics, right, and have something of that idea. God must be somewhere, right? If he's not somewhere, he doesn't exist, huh? And they they can't really understand that. I know myself. I think I'm convinced by the arguments for the immortality of the human soul that my soul is going to continue to exist after my body is separated from my body, and I know this by the faith too.

[52:38] But it's kind of hard for me to to think about my soul not being anywhere and still being, right? I see. I just naturally want to, you know, think of my soul as being somewhere, right? You know, in Socrates' jokes there about the lovers of the body, right? And apparently the Greeks had ghost stories associated with their cemeteries, like we sometimes have ghost stories. And Socrates says, "Well, that's the souls of those people in this life who are not philosophers, but are lovers of the body, and they're trying to get back into their bodies, right?

[53:15] And so they hang around the cemeteries where the bodies are, but they don't obviously get back. succeed in getting back into their bodies. So, so those must be the kind of a joke, maybe a little bit, but there must have been ghost stories or something like that, and those must be the the souls of lovers of the body. But I mean, if you think of the of the souls as being there, then right, you're still thinking them as kind of an air-like body, huh?

[53:40] And that's what most people think of the soul as being, huh? So, part of the reason why the most universal, right, is most difficult to know, is because you have to ascend, right, from being considered in material things, right, to being in this most universal way. We saw a little bit of that in our study of the ninth book, right? But you have the same thing in the study of substance, where you kind of identify substances with bodies, and that's the only substances we know about in the beginning.

[54:19] And it's very hard to see the substance, to consider substance more universally than body. And you know, when Aristotle is is is considering that common opinion there in the fourth book about place, fourth book of the physics, he says, "Well, if this is true, place is a marvelous thing, right? Because if nothing can be except somewhere, then it seems place can be without other things, but nothing else can be without place, and so place seems to be the first of all things, huh?

[54:59] " Huh? And sort of fits with Newton a little bit. Yeah, the sensorium of God. uh that. You can see that influence in Newton, but

[55:14] now, in addition to that, we do have a difficulty going to things that are very universal because we can't, what? They're too far away from our senses and imagination. If you have some some experience teaching philosophy, you'll find students when they try to express, you know, the difficulty they have in understanding very fundamental things in philosophy. The common way they they speak of this, in my experience, is so abstract, you know.

[55:53] And even the average person, you know, when you give them one of these universal distinctions, oh, that's so difficult. It's so abstract, right? And what do they mean by abstract? They mean it's separated from the what concrete, separated from the singular, right? And philosophy is, as we said before, much more universal than any other part of our knowledge, and when people express their difficulty in understanding it, they use a word abstract, right?

[56:24] You see, and and that shows that it's what separated, and more separated from the singular, huh? So there's a lot of truth what Aristotle is saying.

[56:38] You want something you know concrete and get your hands on, huh? Just like the Anaximander, you know, you say no more concrete than the unlimited, right? That's a little bit too abstract, right? You say the unlimited is beginning of things. Let's get air or something like air, right? That is unlimited in some way, but it's a little bit, you know, concrete to us. You see? So

[57:06] Aristotle may be using the word schedon, right? Partly because there are things more difficult to know than most universal, and that is the first causes, huh? Partly because of what he says in the Physics there, right? Okay, but even apart from that, there is a difficulty. Anytime you go into something rather universal, people will will have this difficulty, huh? Because it's not something able to be sensed or imagined so well.

[57:34] Strictly speaking, you can't imagine the universal, and you know the problem the modern logicians have, where they want to substitute class for universal. They need something that's not really a universal, but a collection, huh? So you see the difficulty they have, right? They want to have these Venn diagrams and so on. They want to have have a continuous quantity in a sense in place of the what universal.

[58:04] Just can't do that, huh? And even Socrates there is representing the Parmenides as imagining the, you know, the universal is covering us like a big sail, so they try to think of of the universal in in the sense of a continuous what quantity, huh? Well, the same with modern logicians, right? The class is a kind of discrete quantity, right? But a multitude, right? Okay. In other words, they've got to talk about the human race, huh?

[58:37] Than than man, right? Because man is something, you know, kind of seems kind of unreal to him, right? But the multitude of men that that that cover the earth somewhat, that's more real, you know, more sensible, right? You know, look at a crowd, right? Rather than that something one that's separate from them, huh? You see that in in Porphyry there when he's explaining genus right, the first two meanings of genus is is a man right from whom many have descended right, or the many who descended from the one man.

[59:16] And the universal, well, it's not the multitude although it's said of the multitude right, it's not the one man right, but it's something one right, and you have to eventually come to it from the more sensibles like the individual. And you know the Israelites, you know, it's the multitude of men that descended from Israel. Israel Israel is like a genus in some way in being one, but not like a genus in being an individual right.

[59:48] The the Israelites, the multitude of men, are a bit like the genus which is said of many right, but the genus again is one and not a multitude, huh? So our mind has a great, you know, dependence upon the senses, the imagination, and things that are remote from that. It has a difficulty right, and so even the philosophy of nature, which is not so abstract right, not so universal as wisdom, students have a great deal of difficulty.

[1:00:20] It's so abstract, Mister Burgess. You know they're having so much difficulty right, just you know just so far away from my experience of, you know, we're talking about change, don't you experience change? Yeah, I know, but yeah, so universal.

[1:00:45] But you know what strikes me is that although perhaps you could reason from the second attribute even more to wisdom being about the first causes, Aristotle wants to, what, make kind of a distinction in the six attributes right, using the first three that came first right, just for showing that it's about the malista katholou the most universal right, What is said of all, and he wants to use the last three just to reason ill, wants to kind of help your mind to distinguish the two right, and keep in mind just one at a time, and to keep in mind just one conclusion from the first all the first three right, and then another conclusion from all the last three, huh?

[1:01:36] As if he has foresight that people will confuse the two, just like Thomas had foresight with that little chapter to refute in advance the mistake of of the famous Hegel. You probably heard it a lot from fellow students. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That same mistake I think in probably the Middle Ages too, huh? People who mix up the two universals. Where's that capitular? In the Summa Contra Gentiles, the first book actually shows that God is I am who am, right?

[1:02:09] Then he goes on to show that he's not the being said of all things, not the esse commune omnium You have to clear up some of those ambiguities that people have, sometimes, with Dionysius, right? Because Dionysius sometimes will say, you know, God is the esse omnium, and his way of speaking could be misunderstood, right? And Thomas says that's not the way Dionysius is understanding it, but you never know about these Platonists, right?

[1:02:42] Okay. That would be then everything would be God. Yeah, and you back in pantheism, right? And in a sense, as we said there, with Tocqueville pointed out, there's this inclination to pantheism, right, in the in democratic customs. You find that now in Hegel, but you find it in the 19th century, you know, Catholic theologians, right, in Germany. I just remember seeing so many references. You know, you're always correcting one of these guys, right?

[1:03:15] And and what is the name of that book there? By Cardinal Siri was it? Gethsemane, the one where there are passages in Rahner and people of this 20th century Catholic theologians that suddenly seem, you know, pantheistic. So you have that inclination, right, to pantheism, especially seen in the Germans. No.

[1:03:46] Does Anselm's argument also? Well, let's not discuss that