Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
51. Books Two to Four: Truth, Dialectic, Being as Being and the Axioms
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[0:00] Now he comes to the two last questions, and these should be divided against the other what? Twelve, right? The other twelve were about Plato's position that there are universals separated from matter, and other positions were brought in because they're opposed in some way, right, to one of these or the other. And two of those first six were subjoined six questions about how these things are, right? But four as as far as one and many, two as far as act and ability.

[0:37] But now the other unique position of Plato was that there were these mathematical things, maybe mathematical substances, in between, right? The forms and the earthly ones. Here he raises two questions. Pro statutois, in addition to these, whether numbers and magnitudes and figures and points are substances or not, right?

[1:07] Now the Platonists and the Pythagoreans before them seem to be saying that they are what substances, huh? But the other Greek philosophers would think of no, no, substances are earth, air, fire, water, you know.

[1:26] But if they are in some way substances, whether separated from sensible things, as the Platonists say that there's a mathematical world in addition to the world of forms and the sensible world, or only existing in these material things as the Pythagoreans apparently thought, huh? So Pythagoreans made the substance of these material things something mathematical, but their substance being mathematical is nevertheless only in the sensible things, right?

[2:03] I got your number right. You're not an abstract number, existing by itself, but that's what you are. Your number. Now if you look at at say Descartes, Descartes identifies the substance of material things with their extension. So he's identifying substance with quantity or substance with continuous quantity, huh?

[2:34] To some extent, the man in the street might be wiser than Descartes because if you asked him, is what a thing is and its size the same thing? He say, what do we say? What a dog is and the size of a dog the same thing? But Descartes seems to identify the substance of material things with their extension. So he's in regard to the first question. He's saying, "Yeah, the quantity is the very substance of things.

[3:05] " If you were to compare Descartes and the Pythagoreans, would you say that they're alike in saying that the substance of things is quantity, but they differ in that Pythagoreans thought it was discrete, whereas Descartes thought it was continuous. Well, perhaps, perhaps, but they agree with the Pythagoreans as saying that it's in things, right? He doesn't have a mathematical world apart from the sensible world. I don't think so, anyway.

[3:30] Descartes, right? But in that way, he's like the Pythagoreans, right? For whom the mathematical substance is in the material things, as opposed to Plato, for which it's outside.

[3:47] Now, incidentally, you know, make that theological footnote there. If you identify the substance of material things with their quantity or extension, you can't really understand the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, the quantity of the bread remains, and but the substance of the bread is changed into the body of our Lord. So, but if you identify the substance with the extension, then you're going to either not have, you can have problems with how the body of Christ becomes there, but you'd have coexistence and so on, right?

[4:29] And you'd have heresy. So, but notice the before and after there, right? We don't say Descartes' philosophy is false because it doesn't fit with the doctrine of the Eucharist, but we say the reverse. It doesn't fit with the doctrine of the Eucharist because it's false. So I playfully say about Descartes, "you never grow up. " If your quantity was here, what substance, right? Then you never grew up, because the only way you can grow up is for you the substance to have different quantities at different ages.

[5:10] So he never grew up in physical sense, although mentally. So that's the end. You see how these twelve, these fourteen questions, I should say, were arranged by the philosopher around the two positions of Plato, really. That their universe was separated from matter, and then there his mathematical ones. But he brings in the other opinions by their opposition to one another, aspect of Plato's thought. So you see the great respect shown to Plato for this part of philosophy.

[5:49] His opinions, most of all, seem to be talking about a world in addition to just the material world. And therefore, it's appropriate to use him to

[6:01] distinguish and. Order the the questions of wisdom. What is the last thing about? It's not able to doubt easily to doubt well. Now he's making a remark that in this book, not only is it difficult to find the truth about these questions, right, but it's even difficult to doubt well about them, right? To attain well to the reasons why they are so doubtful, right? Is that so?

[6:41] You think that's universal, or just the last thing he was talking about? Well, it's the last thing he's saying about about these questions, anyway. The mathematical, or the whole, but the whole, the whole, the whole, yeah, the whole. Because remember, he said when he's talking about the one in in Toan, right, Kalaputatan, the most difficult of all, right? So it's difficult. Reminds me a little bit of what he says in the fifth reading of the second book, where he says it's not the same thing to possess knowledge over a road and to know what that road is, right?

[7:14] And it's not easy to get either one, right? Okay. And here he's saying something like that. He's saying it's not easy to answer these questions that arise from discussing dialectically these things, but it's even difficult to dialectically discuss them.

[7:35] It's difficult to see why the answer to these questions is doubtful, right? Why men think opposite things about these things, right? As well as to what find the answer to the question, I think we would be inclined to agree with the philosopher about that, huh? The causes, and then there are these mathematical substances.

[8:13] It struck me that it's as difficult determining that the universal in predicando is not not a cause, a formal cause. of the thing. You see, You could say, you know, for Plato's position about there being something apart from the sunolon,

[8:32] that he could be proceeding from the not not just what Thomas often says he's proceeding from thinking that the way we know must be the way things are, right? And that his belief that we truly know in mathematics, we truly know the definitions, right? Therefore, the way we know must be the way things are. But as far as the forms are concerned, maybe he could think of what he's famous for, and since Aristotle gets it from him, that the through itself is before the through another, right?

[9:07] And there's something through another; there must be something through itself, right? If something is sweet, but not through itself, there must be something besides it, which it is what sweet, whereby it partakes the sweetness, huh? And of course Aristotle uses that when he talks about reason and the emotions, huh? If the emotions can be reasonable, strange as they seem, but they're not reasonable through being emotions, then there must be something through which they are reasonable, other than themselves, right?

[9:44] And that would be something that is reasonable through itself and not through another. So now you come down, you say, what about Socrates? Is Socrates a man through being Socrates? Well, then I'd be a man through being Berquist huh? And so on, right? Wouldn't be one cause as such.

[10:09] So Socrates, it seems, is not a man through being Socrates. Otherwise, I'd have to be Socrates to be a man, right? If it was through being Socrates the one who's a man, then everybody's a man must be so through being Socrates, and that's not true. So it seems that Socrates is not a man to himself, right? But to another, so there must be behind Socrates and Plato and the rest someone who is man to himself, and that's the form of what man, right?

[10:48] And that's the way Plato speaks of it. I see it in the Greek. You know, he's almost redundant. The man himself to himself, you know, you know, himself or itself in there, you know, the man himself to himself. Maybe there's a third self in there too, but you know, so. Behind we men that are not men to ourselves, there's a man to himself, right? That would be.

[11:16] It seems right. That makes some sense, but his position runs into other problems. But it's kind of Plato who got Aristotle thinking about to itself, and to itself is one of the word or words there in the fifth book of of wisdom. But also, is a prominent place part in in what in logic, right? I mean, Brother Mark used to point out in Euclid, you know how you'll

[11:46] turn around a theorem like the fifth and the sixth theorems. Say the first time he turns them around. So it's through having two sides equal, right, that you have two angles equal, right? But vice versa, if you have two angles equal, you must have two sides equal, right? Or like the forty seventh, the forty. I think the forty is really interesting, huh? Because the forty seventh theorem is is really the Pythagorean theorem, and says so if you have a right angle triangle, the square on the side opposite the right angle will be exactly equal to the squares on the sides containing the right angle.

[12:27] Well, then forty eight says if in a triangle that's true that the square on the side of on one side is exactly equal to the squares on the other sides, then that square which is equal to the two will be exactly will be opposite a right angle, huh? And he shows that right. So that shows that it belongs kathauto, right? To this, huh? So Aristotle was gotten thinking about the kathauto through Plato, right?

[12:59] And maybe Plato had something of that, huh? When he said there must be a man himself to himself, huh? And and in the man himself to himself to be nothing other than what a man is.

[13:20] And one is a man to what a man is. So it's only if you are nothing other than what a man is that you are a man to yourself. If if Socrates is not identical with what a man is, if he were, he'd be the only man there is, right?

[13:41] And Socrates is not identical with what a man is. The only something that was identical with what a man is would be a man to itself, right? Because one is a man to what a man is. Now we got the forms, huh? Proving them.

[14:00] Don't have to don't have to say yes to the central question of human thought, right? To get there, but it's one way I might get there. Plato got there, huh?

[14:12] But perhaps another way is simply saying that there's a distinction to see between through itself and through another. And if there's something through another, it must be before it through itself, right? And the next step was to see that you and I are not altogether the same as what we are, and therefore there's a little ambiguity to say that we are what we are, a man through ourselves, right?

[14:43] Because I am a man, or anything is a man through what a man is. If I'm not just what a man is, then it's not to myself that I'm a man. So I'm a man to another. If I was a man to myself, everybody else would have to be a man to me. Yeah, yeah, you'd be the only man. See? So, so says obviously one is not a man to being Socrates, and then Socrates and no other individual man is a man to himself.

[15:17] So they're all man to another, and they can't be to another without it to itself, right? Before every through another, there's a through itself, right?

[15:29] Aristotle uses that principle all around, right? You know, if there are statements known to, they're not known to themselves. There must be before them a statement or statements known to themselves. There's something rational by participation, right, through another. Must be something rational through itself.

[15:54] It's a very convincing Plato, right? And and it's really very important when he points out. You see how much use Aristotle makes of that, huh? You know, when he's distinguishing the three kinds of friendship there, and why does he put the the friendship based on virtue above the friendship based on pleasure and

[16:18] usefulness, right? Is it because it's through itself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in the highest friendship, I'm loving you through yourself, huh? But the other kinds of friendship, through the pleasure you afford me, or through the usefulness that you're use that you have for me. So that that's based in that virtue is more you.

[16:45] Well, it's because of what you are that I'm loving you in this case, right? I'm not loving you because you you please me, although you may, or because you're useful to me, right? But because of what you are in yourself. So Aristotle will argue that the through itself is what more so than what is through another, right? Therefore, this friendship is greater, more friendship. It's kaphaltoia.

[17:13] Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice and could have been distinguished, her election has sealed before thyself, for myself. Now, spending one suffering all suffers nothing. A man that fortunes, benefits, and rewards is tamed with equal thanks, and blessed are they whose blood and judgment are so well commingled; they are not a pipe for fortune to play with. You know, stops you please. Give me that man that is not passion's slave.

[17:38] You know, it's not the same. Give me that man who is useful to me. Give me that man that pleases me. You know, that would be not kathauto, but give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart, he in my heart of heart, as I do thee. Something too much of this. Didn't talk about love that much. So he's loving him to himself, right?

[18:03] For he is the man that is not a slave of passion. Which is the virtuous man, right? Kind of man he's in himself. I love you for what you are,

[18:22] rather than because you're useful or pleasing or pleasing. It is like a second nature. What? Virtue is a habit. It's like a second nature. Yeah. Yeah. Or it perfects what you are.

[18:42] So, what? What's wrong with Plato's argument? Yeah. So, so pretty good to me. You say, you know, pretty good to me, right? You say that it's rather being through itself than man through itself, and it's an exemplar cause. Well, you're getting too far behind me right now. Or ahead of you, something.

[19:16] See, Plato discovered that in these material individuals, even in mathematical things, the thing and what it is are not identical. That was a great discovery, huh? But then, later on, you study immaterial substances, you realize that the thing and what it is are the same. And so, when Plato came to the forms, he's kind of thinking that each form and what it is are the same. That's true about immaterial substance, except that what a man is involves matter, and that's where the problem arises, right?

[20:01] Because if the forms are the forms are material, then they don't contain the nature of man, which is material. And if they're material, then they wouldn't be universal, right? They'd be back in the synolon. So what he says is strictly true of the angels. Yeah, yeah, it's more true about them than the others, huh? So you can see a person could see some certain reasonableness in what Plato's saying.

[20:36] You know, Albert the Great says, "You know, to be complete in philosophy, you have to know Plato as well as Aristotle." Thomas says that Plato and Aristotle are the chief philosophers. Considering

[20:51] the whole period from Thales to Thomas, huh? Plato and Aristotle are the chief philosophers. Maybe Aristotle is the philosopher, but but they both he says they are the sophoi kyriōs Thomas says, huh? Boethius says. I mean, Boethius would say the same thing too, right? Maybe not Augustine. I don't know if Augustine had access to Aristotle, but Boethius had access to Plato and Aristotle. Would be in agreement, I think, with with Albert and Thomas saying.

[21:21] But I don't think you'd point to anybody quite in the modern period who is like Plato and Aristotle, even in the modern period. Everybody seems to lead up to Plato and Aristotle, and then the later ones to build upon him in some way. So they're really the chief philosophers, because the moderns don't build on each other so much.

[21:47] No, I was telling my teacher Saint Jacques Monsieur Saint Jacques, you know, I was joking about Descartes and his title, the Father of Modern Philosophy, but he has no sons.

[22:01] And everybody tries to do his own thing, right? And they don't—they kind of take off, you know. Their lines being different. Second, Brother Mark was doing, you know, was it liberalism? Kind of making a takeoff on Spinoza, who has, you know, Ethica More Geometrico Demonstrata. Marcus had liberalism More Geometrico Demonstrata, right? And different theorems like at any point in an argument to construct a tangent. No theorem.

[22:41] And the first theorem, instead of the equilateral triangle, was on a flattened Federal Republic to construct a pyramid of total power. Or what he says, you know, the parallel theorem was a liberal's mind in reality extended to infinity will never meet. It's kind of

[23:05] funny because if you have, you could this kind of humor that arises because I was reading Smollett, you know, the 18th century novelist. And one of the novels, a young man goes abroad for his, you know, European tour, whatever it is. He's accompanied by his tutor, and the tutor is trying to keep him from, you know, going off the deep end and so on. And the young man's mind and discretion, you know, extended, you know, they never meet, you know.

[23:29] He's using Euclidean language, and it's kind of like that's a natural humor if you're a man who knew Euclid, he would tend to make this kind of a joke. Well, you got to

[23:46] go hear confessions, or the nuns, or who? Not visiting my business, begging. Yes. All right. Yes. Retreat. Sisters are giving that retreat day day of recollection All right. So, but the misogyny, or for the people, people here. Okay. Okay. Okay. So. Life, you can't miss truth entirely. Even if you make McDonald's hamburgers all your life, you're gonna see some truth about hamburgers, right? That they contract when you cook them, or something, right?

[24:20] And whatever your occupation, life, or whatever you do in life, you're gonna discover some truth about something, right? You can't avoid truth in that sense; it's easy. And that may not be a very big part of truth, right? A very significant thing. And then he says, through the efforts of many, even a large amount of truth becomes easy. So if I discover one theorem of geometry in all my years, right?

[24:50] Not a big deal, right? But if you discover one, and he does, and we put it all together, we got, you know, every graduate of TAC discovers one theorem, and we got, you know, hundreds of theorems, right? So in some ways, even a large amount of truth is easy. Like my mother would say, many hands make light work, you know. And and then finally, he says that there's some truth that's like the proverbial door.

[25:16] Who misses the door. You know, a big proverb, you go down the street. You all see what the door is like, but you don't know what's beyond, right? So everybody sees that a whole is more than a part, huh? So there's some truth that everybody sees the same truth, huh? And then in addition to that, by reason of what you do or are exposed to, you're bound to see some little bit of the truth, huh?

[25:43] Sugar sweet, you know, so on. Okay, that's my little bit of truth. And then he talks about how one man helps another in knowing the truth, and so on. Yeah. Now,

[26:03] why should it belong to the wise man to consider how man is towards knowing the truth? Because that kind of influences our thinking about everything. Well, then in the middle of Book Two, Aristotle gives the reason why. And he reasons from the wise man knowing the first causes, and the first causes being what most true. And actually, goes in a number of steps. He'll say consideration of truth belongs more to looking knowledge than to practical knowledge, because it's the very end and purpose of looking knowledge.

[26:48] And it's not the end or purpose of practical knowledge to do something. And the practical man is interested often in things that are true temporarily, right? Not very true. Like in politics, right? Where France is the friend of England during this war, but the enemy of England in that war, right? So these things are not so true; they're sometimes true, sometimes not. But those things are important for them, right?

[27:16] The stock market's going up, and now it's going down, and now it's going up, and now it's going down. Okay, but it's good to know when a man is doing which, you know. So even he is concerned about truth very often, some truth that is not very true. And then among the looking sciences, he reasons that wisdom must be most of all about what is most true, by arguing that the cause is more true than the what effect.

[27:45] And there you come to that famous proposition that when the same belongs to two things, but to one of them because of the other, belongs more to the cause. So if true is said of the cause and the effect, but of the effect because of the cause, the cause must be more more true, and therefore the first cause must be most true. And therefore, as things are in being, so they are in truth, he says, and so on.

[28:12] So if wisdom is about the first causes. The consideration of truth belongs most of all to the what wise man, and therefore it's appropriate that he talk about how man is towards knowing the what truth.

[28:29] But this is also preparing the way for the fourth. Excuse me, for the third book. Now, books three through fourteen could also be divided into two, and in a way proportional to the play Romeo and Juliet. Because a good play, as Aristotle explains in the book on the poetic art, should be divided into two parts: tying the knot or knots, and then untying the knot or knots.

[29:20] And that's the logical and understandable division of a play, not into five acts. Does that make any sense? And so books three through fourteen are divided into two parts: the tying of the knots, book three, and the untying the knots, books four through fourteen.

[29:48] But you could say book three is dialectical, and at the beginning of book three, Aristotle will talk about the importance of dialectical reasoning for discovery. This is what the ancient logicians call the discovery part of logic, dialectic.

[30:12] Now, this goes back to something about reason, huh? An interesting before and after about our reason. And one of the interesting before and afters is that reason guesses before it knows.

[30:35] And even in geometry, before the geometer knows some theorem, he guesses that it is so. And if he hadn't guessed that it was so, he would not have looked for the reason why it must be so.

[30:52] But in geometry, do you have to have dialectic to discover? No. But what's interesting about geometry and discovery? A couple of things we pointed out, and that is, before you know in the strict sense, before you possess the demonstration that it must be so, right?

[31:27] For the most part, men would guess the same thing. Take a very simple example. Take the fifth theorem in Book One. In a triangle, if you have two sides that are equal, what about the angles opposite them? Wouldn't you guess they'll be equal?

[31:53] Or then, in a equilateral triangle, wouldn't you guess that the three angles are equal? Before you see the demonstration, right? You wouldn't have some men guessing that it is so, and some men guessing that it is not so.

[32:21] And secondly, if you study discovery, you'll find that imagination has a lot to do with discovery. Being able to imagine things, right? And geometry is the reasoned out knowledge that is closest to the imagination. In fact, even the demonstrations of geometry go back to the imagination. You have to see these things in your imagination. So, geometrical things lend themselves to discovery by the imagination much more easily, right?

[32:57] Than other things. And you don't find this disagreement among men, where there's reason to think it's this way and reason to think it's that way. They'll usually guess the same thing, right? There's a few interesting theorems where you might guess the opposite, but for the most part, that's true.

[33:19] But why, in wisdom, do you need to have dialectical reasoning, pro and con, before you can discover? Why do you need to go through all that? You don't have to do that in geometry. Reason, you know, the angles will be equal, and reason they're not going to be equal, and then you know.

[33:40] And in natural philosophy, you're trying to investigate motion or place or time. You have to reason that it's this way, and reason that it's not that way, and reason for and against

[33:53] and so on. And why is it that men, in fact, think opposite things in natural philosophy before they know? And in wisdom, they'll think opposite things before they know, right? Why don't you have this, huh? Well, you've got to see that there are difficulties in natural philosophy and difficulties in wisdom that there aren't in geometry. Now you go back to the beginning of Book Two, right? How is man towards knowing the truth, right?

[34:28] And one way it's easy, one way it's difficult. But what is the cause of difficulty? Is it either in the thing, right, or in us? Natural philosophy is more difficult than geometry, but the cause of its being more difficult is in the things, huh? They hardly exist.

[34:49] Does time really exist? You know, the past doesn't exist, the future doesn't exist. There's no time in the now in the strict sense. These things are hard to know. And in wisdom, it's the reverse difficulty. It's a difficulty due to the weakness of our mind. These things are too far above our mind. So you have to see, in some way, that there are difficulties in things like wisdom or natural philosophy, that there aren't in geometry, to see part of the background, to see the need for dialectic as a way of what discovery.

[35:27] And then in the last part there of the second book, Aristotle is considering how you should or should not determine the way of proceeding in any science. He says you shouldn't determine by what you're accustomed to and follow what you're accustomed to just because you're used to it, right? But he points out that's in fact how most men do it. And then he says, "Well, how should you do it?"

[35:53] And he says, "You have to find what the matter is of that reasoned-out knowledge, and then find the road that fits that matter. Just like in the practical arts, you have to find the tools, right, and the way of working that fits wood or cloth or plastic or whatever.

[36:17] And so. He says it's not easy to get episteme or reasoned out knowledge, or even to get the way of it, and you shouldn't try to consider both at the same time. But you have to really know the way of doing it before you can really acquire the reasoned out knowledge.

[36:42] And so the dialectic of Book Three involves problems about the things to be considered in wisdom, mainly the causes, but also difficulties about the way of proceeding. But difficulties that go back to the question of what wisdom is really about.

[37:04] And so the division of the dialectic of Book Three depends upon the last reading of Book Two, but the need of dialectic at all depends upon the first reading of Book Two. So there are subtle ways that Book Two prepares the way for Book Three, and what comes afterwards.

[37:30] Now, when he's showing in Book Two that the consideration of how man is towards knowing truth belongs to the wise man, because the consideration of truth belongs most of all to him. In order to show that, he has to show, as we mentioned before, that the cause is more true than the effect, and therefore the first causes are most true, and we know that wisdom is about the first causes, therefore it's most of all about truth.

[38:05] But this supposes that there are first causes, right? And so he stops and shows that within each of the four kinds of causes that we confirmed that there were in Book One, right, in going through the predecessors, he shows that each of those four kinds of causes there are first causes.

[38:27] So I call that the subplot, okay? Because you learn in the premium that wisdom is about causes and it, in the end, about the very first causes, and then you learn in the narration of the opinions of his predecessors and so on, you get confirmation that there are just four kinds of causes, and now in Book Two that there are first causes of each kind of cause.

[38:56] So it's kind of an advance there. Now, in the beginning of Book Four, he starts to answer the questions of what wisdom is about, and the first thing he answers is that wisdom is about being as being.

[39:19] And he reasons from its being about the first causes to its being about being as being. And perhaps the simplest way of seeing a little bit of the way that reasoning goes,

[39:34] you can say that the more universal a cause is that you consider, the more things, therefore, to which it extends its causality. The more its subject will be said of.

[39:54] And I give a simple example here from practical knowledge. Suppose there's a science about the king, right? There's a science about the general chief of staff, huh? Whose causality the city extends further, the kings or the generals?

[40:18] Yeah, know it? Yeah, the king. His causality extends to all the citizens, right? The generals' causality extends only to those citizens who are soldiers, huh?

[40:33] So in the science about the general, you would talk about the soldier. In the science about the king, you talk about the citizen. But citizen is said of more than soldier is said, right? Taking you know the simple example, there's a citizen army, right? Every soldier is a citizen, but not every citizen is a soldier, right? So you see the the principle there, right?

[41:02] The science which is about a more universal cause, the science about the king, is about a subject said of more, more universal, namely citizen. And science is about a cause that's less universal, the general, right? Is about a subject said of less, right? Well, what then is a science that aims at the most universal cause, whose causality extends to everything, the first causes? It's going to have to be about something which is said of all, right?

[41:33] And that's being, which is said of all, right? Now there are problems about there being one reasoned out knowledge of being as being because being has so many meanings, right? And so Aristotle stops and explains, yeah, but there's a connection among these meanings, huh? And they all go back to one meaning, which is that of substance, huh? And other things are said to be being because they're the size of substance, or the disposition of substance, or the relation of substance, or something of that sort, right?

[42:12] Or the coming to be of substance, the coming to be of one of these things, or the lack of one of these things, right? But they all go back to substance, huh? And I make a comparison there to political philosophy. I say, what is political philosophy about? Well, it's about political things. But does political have one meaning? Well, the fundamental meaning of political is what the polis.

[42:40] That's we get the word. Okay. But you also talk about government there, which is not a polis. Well, how can you talk about government which is not a polis in the same science that talk about polis? Well, dummy, there's a connection between government and the polis. Yeah, yeah. The government rules the polis. So okay, okay. So it makes sense to talk about government in the same reasoned out knowledge that you talk about the polis, doesn't it?

[43:09] And then we talk about law, and Plato has a great work called The Laws, right? Was the law polis? No. Was the law government? No. But why talk about it in the same reasoned out knowledge as those two? Well, you dummy, the government rules the polis by laws. Oh yeah, okay, okay. But then Aristotle in the fifth book there, he's talking about revolution. Is that a government?

[43:36] No. Is that a polis? No. Is that a law? No. No, why talk about revolution in the same? Well, revolution, buddy, is a change of government, right? And you can't really talk about change of government without talking about government. Well, I guess you're right there, yeah. So the same science that talks about government ought to talk about what revolution. So notice, government is closer to polis than revolution is, but they all in some way go back to the polis, right?

[44:10] Whereas polis is in in political philosophy, substance is in what wisdom, right? Okay. Okay. But then Aristotle shows that one is really the same thing, more or less, as being. Don't go into all that. Okay.

[44:37] Then he takes up kind of a subtle question that was raised in Book Three, and that is, is wisdom only about the first causes, or is it also about the beginnings, not only of all things, but the beginnings of all our knowledge, or all the knowledge of our reason? Is it also about the axioms? Is also about the. Yeah. Parts of the axioms.

[45:09] Of course, the objection to there being a consideration of the axioms is that these are the statements what. Known by what? Everyone. Yeah, they're obvious to everybody, you know. So there's kind of a double thing you have to do there. One is you have to show that you can't just use the axioms, but you have to stop and consider them. There's some reason why you have to stop and consider them.

[45:42] And then second, you have to see why it is that the wise man is a man who stops and makes that consideration. Now, why is it necessary to consider

[45:59] the axioms and not just use them? Because if they're obvious to everybody, why just use them and move forward, right? Why is it necessary to consider the axioms?

[46:14] Well, perhaps the main reason is these guys called sophists, right? That the sophists make objections, right, to the axioms. Objections that most people can never answer. Now, as Aristotle points out in the second book of Natural Hearing, not only is it possible as Socrates showed that men can think they know what they don't know, right, but the reverse is possible: to think you don't know what you do know.

[46:53] And Aristotle, in a sense, reasons from the fact that you can think you don't, you know, what you don't know, which Socrates had shown pretty much that that's a fact of life. That the reverse is possible because if you make if you can make the mistake of thinking you know what you don't know, it's because you can mix up the two, right? Well, then you can mix them up going either direction.

[47:22] If someone can make the mistake of thinking Budweisers is Miller's, then someone can make the mistake of thinking Miller's is Budweiser, right? Because the original mistake was made because you can't tell them apart, right? If you can think a man is a woman, you know, Michael Jackson or somebody is a woman, then perhaps someone else can make a mistake, you know, and say some woman, you know, is a man, right?

[47:45] Because it's the inability to distinguish. So people can think they don't know what they do know. They can think they don't know what everybody knows, including themselves,

[48:01] because they've heard an objection against it, right? That they can't answer. Talking one philosopher, oh yeah, that principle of contradiction. that's taking quite a beating, hasn't it?

[48:15] You mean the argument you heard? You can't answer. And someone has to answer those what objections. Now, in answering those objections, there are many things sometimes involved. One thing you do discover, and Aristotle discovered this, also, is that the names in the axioms are all equivocal, equivocal, not by chance, but by what reason, huh?

[48:58] So, and in fact, some of the sophistical objections against the axioms are based upon mixing up those senses. I give you a simple example here. I say to my students, "The whole is always larger than one of its parts, right? " And they'll agree at first sight, right? And then I'll say, "Now, what's a man, right? Is a man an animal? Yeah, man's an animal. Is he just an animal?

[49:34] No, no, he's he's an animal that has reason, right? So, animal is only part of what man is, right? Okay, they all agree to that, and they say, "No, but animal includes besides man, dog, cat, horse, elephant, et cetera. " So sometimes a part includes more than its whole. Oh, yeah, yeah. Isn't always true that the whole is more than the part? I played the sophist there, right?

[50:02] Because I mixed up two different senses of whole and part. When you say that animal is a part of man, you mean he's a composing part of the definition of man, and that definition of man has other parts besides that.

[50:19] When you say that man is a part of animal, you're talking about the universal whole, and universal whole is said of more than one of its subject wholes or parts, rather. So I mixed up those two senses of whole and part.

[50:39] So, part, but only part of answering the sophistical objections involves distinguishing the senses of the words, right? But at the same time, that gives you a distinct knowledge of the axioms, what it means to say that the whole is more than the part, right?

[51:02] Because a composed whole is always composed of more than one of its parts, and a universal whole is always said of more than one of its parts. Is said of.

[51:15] So you could make a consideration of the axioms. That would give you a distinct knowledge of the axioms by distinguishing the words equivocal by reason in them,

[51:30] and this would be part of getting a knowledge of the axioms, whereby you could defend them against these sophistical objections. So it is necessary to reply to those objections because if somebody thinks he doesn't know what all of our reasoned out knowledge is based on, it's over for him, right? He thinks he doesn't have the foundation, right? So someone should consider this, right? Aristotle gives the reason why the wise man should consider that, and he points out that the axioms, the parts of the axioms, involve being as being.

[52:12] As you can see in the fundamental axiom, something cannot both be and not be at the same time, right? And you must either be or not be. To be or not to be, as Shakespeare says, right? That is the question, right? But it's a question because you can't both what be and not be, and you must either be or not be.

[52:35] So if wisdom is about being as being, and this is equivocal, and you have to distinguish the senses, and the axioms, right, are composed of the words that pertain to being as being, then it makes sense that the wise man should what consider the axioms.