Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
52. The Great Turnaround, the Order of the Sciences and Preview of Book Nine
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[0:00] Now there comes what I sometimes call the great turnaround for the fundamental way of calling it, and I point out a kind of interesting order here, which, if you understand, you can see kind of the order of the whole of the metaphysics to some extent.

[0:26] In the premium to wisdom, the very beginning of Book One, Aristotle shows that wisdom is about causes, and at the end about the very first causes. And then in the beginning of Book Four, he shows that wisdom is about being as being, and the one and the many. And then after that, he shows that wisdom is about the axioms.

[0:56] And then in the rest of Book Four, he takes up the axioms, but especially the first axiom of being and non-being. And then in Books Five to Ten, he takes up being as being, and the one and the many. And then in the last four books, eleven to fourteen. He investigates and finds the truth out about the first causes.

[1:26] So, putting kind of formal terms, we learn that wisdom is about A first, then we learn it's about B, then we learn it's about C, and then what do we do? We take up C, then we take up B, then we take up A, right? I call that for the fun of it the great turnaround, right? But why is the order in which he shows what wisdom is about exactly the reverse of the order in which he takes up the things it's about?

[2:01] If you can understand the or answer that question, you can see the order of almost the whole fourteen books, but especially the premium in books four through fourteen. I'm going to explain in general the whole order of that. Is it related to going towards most

[2:22] known in itself towards most unknown? No. Because all that order is in our knowing. You see, the whole order of the fourteen books is in the or is in our knowing. So he has to be proceeding in both of these things in showing what wisdom is about and actually taking those things up. He has to be proceeding from what is more known to us to what is less known to us.

[2:45] Otherwise, he's not proceeding as he should. Just because dialectic moves in the opposite direction as discovery or as demonstration does. Well, stop and think. When you consider the axioms, as you do in book four, last part of book four, before you consider being as being and the one and the many in books five through ten, and you consider them before you consider the first causes, are you going from what is more known to us to what is less known to us?

[3:29] Well, it's very clear if you go from extremes, right? That the axioms, being the statements known through themselves by all men, are more known to us than the very first causes, right? And being as being and the one the many, being the effects of the first cause, are less, are more known to us. We generally know the effect before the cause. Okay, but yet being as being and the one the many are less known to us than the axioms.

[4:05] And so we reason from the knowledge of the axioms, as well as from other things, to a knowledge of being as being and the one and the many, and we reason from a knowledge of being as being and the one and the many to a knowledge of the first causes. All the time proceeding from what is more known to us towards what is less known to us, right?

[4:29] But in showing that wisdom is about those same three things, we proceed in just the reverse order. And at first, it seems like a paradox, right? That what is most known to us is least known, but wisdom is about that. And what is least known to us, it's most known. The wisdom is about that.

[4:58] But if you stop and consider it, is it as much a paradox as it seems at first sight? When I come into class the first day of an introduction to philosophy class, I'm just sure ignorance they're facing me.

[5:21] And but I I try to start from what is I think more known to them, right? And they have a very hazy impression what wisdom is. I say to them, Do you think wisdom comes in the beginning of our knowledge, or in the middle of our knowledge, or do you think it comes at the end? And almost everybody in class, if not everybody, will say they think it comes at the end, right?

[5:49] Okay. Now, if wisdom comes at the end, and we also would probably say, if you ask them, "Do you think wisdom is about things that are easy to know that everybody knows? " No, things are difficult to know, right? And few men know, and that's why we honor people for being wise and so on. So the last thing you think wisdom is about is what everybody knows, right?

[6:21] Since the axioms are what everybody knows, at least in a confused way, right? That's the last thing you think wisdom is about. But that wisdom is about the first causes, huh? Or people might, you know, be in doubt whether they can know the first causes and that sort of thing. But they're not in doubt that a man knows the first causes that he should be called wise, right?

[6:55] And it's interesting, you know, if you looked at the way Aristotle reasons, even in the *Premium*, he reasons that art or science is superior to experience, huh? And he points out two differences between art or science and experience. One is that experience is a knowledge of the singular or singulars. By art or science is a knowledge of the universal, and the other difference is that wisdom, excuse me, art or science, perfected knows why something is so.

[7:36] And experience merely tells you that it is so, right? But Aristotle doesn't reason from art or science knowing the universal and experience knowing the singular that art or science is superior to experience. In fact, he argues that in some way, because of that, experience is superior to art or what science. Um, that's very striking, right? But then when he reasons that art or science is superior in knowing and in being wise to experience, he reasons from its knowing why.

[8:24] That's interesting, right? Now, if you think of wisdom as being the highest knowledge of all, you're more apt to think of it in terms of knowing the cause and knowing, you know, cause as far as you can go. The first causes, then in knowing the universal.

[8:47] And again, as someone you know says that wisdom is about being as being, that's about universal as you can be, right? Does that seem to be wisdom? No, that's like saying you know, I'm drinking something, right? Well, it's very sure I'm drinking something, but that seems to be imperfect knowledge compared to say I'm drinking wine or water or beer or something, right? So that doesn't seem to be wisdom to know being as being.

[9:17] It's like knowing that thing is a thing. so big deal, you know. At first sight doesn't seem to be wisdom at all, does it? But knowing the first causes, that's most known to be wisdom,

[9:31] isn't it? So Aristotle is going from what is more known to us to what is less known even there, and that's why he can also reason well from its being about the first causes to its being about being as being, and he can reason from that to its being about the what axioms, huh? So in both orders, it's perfectly ordered. Now, once you see that, you see we've got to go from what is more known to us to what is less known to us.

[10:01] You see the order of almost all of the 14 books, at least the order of the of the premium and books four through what 14, right? And you see that it could not be otherwise,

[10:18] because you have to go from what is more known to us to what is less known to us. And as you examine it more carefully, you find out.

[10:29] Say when Thomas divides the books, huh? He'll make book five, where Aristotle is distinguishing and ordering the meanings of all these words that are equivocal by reason and that are used in naming the subject and the parts of the subject of wisdom, and in naming the causes or in naming the effects and so on.

[10:55] When he does that, he's also, in a way, completing the defense of the axioms, because you can't defend the axioms completely without distinguishing and ordering the senses of the words right used in the axioms. So book five could be, to some extent, considered as not only as Thomas says it is the beginning of the consideration of being as being, where you have to distinguish all these meanings, you don't not know what you're talking about, but it's also the end of the what consideration of the axioms, and that shows you how tight the book is, right?

[11:38] If the end of one is the beginning of the other, there can't be anything in between. And likewise, the the knowledge of being as being, and especially the knowledge of act and ability, as we see, gives you the premises for reason to what the first clause is. So the end of that is the beginning of the next part, right? So nothing can come in between, right? Right.

[12:07] I'm the son of my father, and I'm the father of my son Paul, right? So can't nobody else in there, right? You know. So the end of one generation is the beginning of the next one, right? And that's why these things are completely tight, man.

[12:27] So what I facetiously call the great turnaround between the order which those three things are shown to be what wisdom is about, right? It's not about them the same way. It's about the first causes as its very end or goal or purpose.

[12:50] What Aristotle calls the scopos, what we're aiming at finally, right? But it's about being as being and the one and the many as its subject.

[13:02] Well, it's about the axioms insofar as it's not just an episteme, but it's about wisdom, right? So if you go back to Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle would distinguish natural understanding and episteme or reasoned out knowledge, and then sophia, right? And sophia, he says, is the head of both of them. It's a perfection of natural understanding. And perfection of reasoned-out understanding.

[13:33] Yeah, yeah, in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics. And wisdom is the perfection of both natural understanding and reasoned-out understanding, because reasoned-out understanding, you know, arises a knowledge of the causes of its subject, right? But wisdom knows the causes of the cause, right? The very first causes. And the natural understanding knows the axioms, but doesn't know distinctly the words in the axioms and their their meanings and so on.

[14:06] Alone is natural understanding able to defend them against these sophistic objections. So wisdom perfects both of them. So insofar as it's a wisdom, it perfects natural understanding as well as reasoned understanding. So it's about the first causes. It's about being as being and the one and the many. And it's about the axioms, but about each of them in a different way, right? But the order which Aristotle shows, it's about those three.

[14:33] And the order which he takes up those three is just the reverse, right? But it has to be that way. I sometimes make a little comparison to our friends here, the trees.

[14:49] And you know, Thomas says the trees are the greatest of all the plants. And one thing that impresses us about the trees is that they what? They're taller than all the other plants, right? So the bushes are taller than the grass, but the trees are tallest of all, right? That's what's most known to us about the trees. They're taller than all the other plants, right? But they're also lower than all the other plants, right?

[15:18] And at first, that's kind of a paradox, right? That what is higher than all the rest is lower than all the other ones. But then, when you think about it, it's not so much of a paradox because the taller you're going to grow up into the sky, the more you have to sink your roots down into the what? Ground.

[15:40] So the taller the plant, usually the deeper the what roots? Kind of proportional. So wisdom is like that, right? It's the tallest of all the plants, going all the way to the what? First causes, but it goes down into what's most fundamental, the axioms and their parts, more deeply than anybody else does, because it goes all the way down to the what?

[16:04] Meanings, right, of the words in the axioms, and seeing the distinction of those meanings and the order or connection of those meanings. So it's perfectly ordered he's done that, right?

[16:26] Why aren't the first causes part of the subject. in the science thing Well, the subject is that whose causes are that of whose causes you are looking right Or I should say. huh? Mm-hmm. They're just known as causes in that science. Yeah, the subject of the science is the one whose causes is that whose causes you are seeking to know, right? So the first causes are the causes of being as being, right?

[16:59] One minute. Okay. But by reason of the universality of of being, there might be some way in which it can be said of the first causes too, right? We'll see that with act and ability, right? Okay. Um. So what I call the great turnaround explains the order of the premium. And book what four through fourteen, and shows that they're perfectly ordered.

[17:34] But you have to bring in some other reasons why you have the rest of book one, right, and book two and book three, as we mentioned before, right.

[17:47] Another order you see kind of in the work as a whole too. And it's helpful if you know the Nicomachean Ethics. If you look at the Nicomachean Ethics,

[18:03] you notice that in Book One, after the premium, there is a consideration of happiness, right? And then, in Book Ten, there is another consideration of happiness, right? Okay.

[18:21] And you say, well, why that? Why doesn't he finish the consideration of happiness? Well, you have to go in and consider the virtues more in detail, right? And before you can see which virtues are what greater and so on, and therefore see more perfectly what wisdom is. I mean, what happiness is. Okay. So you know from Book One that happiness is man's own act according to human virtue throughout life, right?

[18:56] But you find out that there are many kinds of human virtue, moral virtues and the virtues of reason itself, and many kinds of moral virtue, many kinds of virtues of reason. So you go through all these intermediary books, right, and study their nature and what they are and so on, and now you can come back and say more exactly. You know, is happiness activity in accordance with some virtues more than others, right?

[19:22] And so on, and so it's kind of interesting what Aristotle does there. Thomas doesn't do that in the *Prima Secundae*, right? Consideration of happiness is completed, right, in the first part of the *Prima Secundae*, and then he takes up the virtues, right? But Aristotle's order there in *Nicomachean Ethics* makes a lot of sense for us as beginners, right? So there is two considerations of happiness: one that's sort of incomplete, right, and not as distinct, and then a more perfect one that's made possible by what goes in between.

[20:03] So it's perfectly ordered, right? Well, in the metaphysics, there in the first book, in the *Premium*, we learn that wisdom is about the first causes and so on. And then in the rest of Book One, we learn that there are four kinds of causes. It's a little more distinct knowledge, right? And then in Book Two, we learn that in each of these four kinds of causes there are first causes.

[20:36] So now we've arrived at the first causes, in a way, but not in the very perfect knowledge of them. But a way that Thomas will come back in the Summa, right? He'll go back to Book Two when he's trying to show that God exists, right? So Aristotle, in a way, has arrived at what not only there being four kinds of causes, but in each kind there is a first cause.

[20:56] So he's arrived at the first causes in some imperfect way, at least, by Book Two. But then he has to make this long consideration of being as being and the one the many before he can come back in the last books to a more what perfect, right? Knowledge of what the first causes or causes are. So it's a little bit like the order there in the *Nicomachean Ethics*, but that's when you look at the subplot there.

[21:35] I think it's interesting what Aristotle does there, so you don't despair. Because you might despair, you know, when you know from the *Premium* that wisdom is very difficult, and then everybody who tried to be wise failed, you must give up, right? But in narrating the opinions of these men, he gets confirmation that there are just these four kinds of causes. So you don't go away with just the idea nobody's arrived, but you know there are four kinds of causes, and in one or more of these you must look for the first causes.

[22:06] You've made some progress, right? And then in Book Two, in the subplot there, so to speak, he shows that there are first causes within each of these kinds of causes. That's a step forward, right? So it's not just you know things to be fearful about, but there's some hope that you're making progress towards the knowledge and the first causes.

[22:38] Now let's take another way of beginning here and talk about a little bit about the order of determination, as Thomas calls it, or the order of consideration, as you might call it, in the three parts of looking philosophy,

[23:02] in geometry, let's say, and in natural philosophy, and now at wisdom, right? I think when I wrote my doctoral thesis at Laval, all I said about geometry, as far as I remember, was the simple before the composed. That's kind of obvious if you say the parts of of geometry basically are plane geometry and solid geometry, and how is the square to the cube, right? Simple to the composed, and to some extent even within

[23:44] plane geometry, you take up the triangle before maybe the square or something, right? So you're going from the simple to the composed. But now with advancing age and advancing wisdom and so on, coming back again and studying Euclid again as my master there, really. Um I noticed another thing in Euclid that he also takes up the equal before the what? Unequal. It's kind of striking how even when he gives the definitions, he always gives the equal before the unequal.

[24:26] It's like if you're distinguishing the three kinds of triangle, you'll define equilateral triangle first, and then isosceles triangle, and then scalene triangle. When he's defining angles, he'll define what right angles first, right? And then when the line meets and makes unequal angles, they take up the acute and the obtuse. When he takes up the quadrilateral, square first, right? Trapezium last, right? And he goes to but the oblong and the rhombus before the rhomboid, right?

[25:05] Equality before what? Inequality. When he takes up even the axioms, the axioms of equality. Quantities equal to the same to each other equals subtract equals and so on, and then finally the whole is more than part. The equal axioms before the unequal. And then you go through the theorems, you'll find this to be true for the most part.

[25:37] And let's take this take an example in the first two books of Euclid. You'll get the Pythagorean theorem, right, before the theorems about the obtuse angle triangle and the acute angle triangles. Not only you take up the one where it's equal to the squares on the sides containing the angle, right, before it's being greater or less than, right, but you even show those ones in twelve and thirteen of Book Two through the Pythagorean theorem, huh?

[26:04] Use Pythagorean theorem to prove the one about the obtuse angle triangle and the acute angle triangle. So the equal before the what unequal. So these are two things you could say, for the most part. I don't think always, right?

[26:25] But in geometry you go from the simple to the composed. First you define as the point, right, and then the line, and then the angle, and then you get to the figures like the triangles.

[26:39] Ah, now what order does natural philosophy proceed? Effects to causes. Well, that's the order of demonstration, now. You see, in in the Premium to natural philosophy, Aristotle shows what natural philosophy is aiming at, right?

[27:24] But then he shows the order in which he's going to consider these things. And the first thing he shows is going to consider these things in general, before in particular, okay? He gives good reasons for that.

[27:42] But he also, not as explicitly there, but he hints at it, going to go. as the Latin says, "usque ad elementa." Going to go towards matter, huh? So the order in natural philosophy, for the most part, is from the general to the particular, not always, but for the most part. And then from going towards matter, right? And to some extent, those two will what fit together. But actually, it's kind of interesting.

[28:16] You looked at Thomas's more explicit commentaries there. In natural philosophy, we do this in a way twice, especially going towards matter. As you go from the eight books of natural hearing to the four books of the universe to the book of generation and corruption, you are going towards matter. But then, yet kind of out of matter when you go to the three books on the soul. But then, in the books after the three books on the soul, you again start to go down towards matter.

[28:54] That's part of the reason why these guys are accustomed to working only in the latter parts of natural philosophy. They're always going towards matter, so they have to be materialists. because that's where their mind is going, right? That's the way that the science goes.

[29:11] Ah, so this is quite different from the way geometry goes. Now, how does wisdom go, right? Yeah, towards the immaterial, right? And Masudian just points out. Now, if you look at natural and wisdom as kind of a whole, at least the consideration of being as being and substance and so on, and then the consideration of the first causes.

[29:48] Well, as pointed out, you consider things that can be in matter but don't have to be in matter, like substance, act, and ability, and so on. Before those things that cannot be in matter, like the separated substances that the Christians call the angels, right, and and God Himself, right. So you are going towards the what? Immaterial. And therefore, it seems to be even contrary to the way of proceeding in what natural philosophy, which is towards matter.

[30:30] Here you are going towards the what? Immaterial. Now, to some extent, you could also say, in wisdom, you go from the less universal towards the more universal. And this will be most clear in the ninth book of wisdom.

[30:58] Because in the ninth book of wisdom, in the first part of the ninth book of wisdom, you'll talk about ability mainly. But ability, only in reference to motion.

[31:15] Motion is the act that he has in mind there. And then, when you get to the second part of Book Nine, he's going to talk about act as found not only in motion, but also in form and in even immaterial things. Now you are going to see act in a much more universal way. At the same time, Aristotle says you are going to see many more senses of what ability, corresponding to these more universal senses of act.

[31:47] So it's very clear in the order of the ninth book that to some extent he's going from the what less universal to a more universal. But if you go and take the books on substance, say in books seven, eight, he's beginning from material substances and looking at them logically and naturally. But from that knowledge of material substances, he's starting to rise to a kind of a knowledge of substance in general.

[32:21] And this is necessary in order to talk eventually about the immaterial substances in the final books. So there is again kind of a movement from the particular, meaning the less universal, right, to the general, the more universal.

[32:39] And then, when you get to to the one and the many, you'll find Thomas often distinguishing between the one that's the beginning of number. And the one that is convertible with being, the one that's convertible with being is much more universal than the one that's the beginning of number, which is limited to quantity, really. But which is more known to us? Well, it's the the one that's the beginning of number, right?

[33:06] And the Platonists and most thinkers afterwards identify the two and can't separate them. They mix the two up, right? Even Averroes, I mean Avicenna does in some way too.

[33:22] Attribute what belongs to one to the other, right? So again, there we have to rise in a way from the one that is the beginning of number. To the one that's as universal as being itself. So to some extent,

[33:40] wisdom goes from the less universal to the more universal. So in a way, if you look at those two things, they're opposed in two ways that natural philosophy proceeds: the general to the particular, meaning for the more universal, for the less universal, and towards matter, right? The other is going towards the material. And to some extent, right, the less universal to the what more universal. That's very striking.

[34:15] Now, to some extent, this can be seen too in the movement in the main considerations of being as being. When you go to the fifth book of wisdom, Aristotle, of course, even the fourth book of wisdom is aware of the fact that being is said in many ways, right, and so on. But it's in the fifth book that he gives the most complete distinction of the senses of being, right?

[34:56] And the fundamental distinction that he makes there in book five is between being as such, or being through itself, and being by what happening, being accidental. And of course, what does he mean by those two? Right. Well, being by happening or being by accident, he means something like Christian geometer, right? The most accidental of things. Is there really such a thing as a Christian geometer?

[35:37] Well, since to be a geometer and to be a Christian could happen the same man as they happen to this man here in front of you, in some sense, he must be Christian geometres, right? If the Catholic Academy wants to hire Christian geometres to teach there, they could find one, right? So, to some extent, they exist, right? An affirmative action, so on, is based upon the fact that there is accidental being, right?

[36:04] There is a black magician, you know. I suppose you find a black magician somewhere, It is in some way, right? But that's not much really being, though, because because something by which you are a Christian, grace, and something by which you are a geometer. the science of geometry, right? But is there anything by which you are a Christian geometer? Well, if there is such a thing as Christian geometry, then there would be, right?

[36:37] But there ain't such an animal, so there's nothing by which you could be this, right? And there's a way in which you can become a Christian, get baptized, and so on. But you can become a geometer and read, Euclid, or something, right? But is there any way to become a Christian geometer? And since you weren't born a Christian geometry, there's no way to become one, so you aren't one in some sense, right?

[37:07] So that's not going to be a main consideration of the man who wants to know being as being. These things hardly are. And no reasoned out knowledge is about what happens anyway. So how can it be about this? Aristotle very briefly talks about accidental being there in Book Six, but then kind of sets aside as not being important, right? Um. Then Aristotle talks about being as such, and he gives three groups of meanings of being as such.

[37:48] It's actually incredible what he does there. And the first group of meanings of being as such, he says, can be distinguished by the figures of predication. That goes back to the categories, right? So you get substance and quantity and quality and relation, some lesser things, right?

[38:14] Then he talks about being as true, right? And this, in a way, is in some ways more universal than being according to the figures of predication, because being according to the figures of predication are found outside the mind and the world around us, but they can also be known by us and therefore have being in our reason. But then there's things that have being only in the reason, and don't have being out there, like to be a genus or to be universal, things of this sort, right?

[38:50] All these things that follow upon being universal. There's all kinds of these things, things called beings of reason, right? So in some sense, being a reason is more universal than what being according to figures of predication. And then Aristotle speaks as if being as act and ability was even more universal,

[39:19] because you can have act and ability in all these kinds of being. So in a way, even when he considers being according to figures of predication in Books Seven and Eight, and mainly substance, right? And then ascends from that to Book Nine, right? An act and ability. In a way, still is going towards the what more universal, right? So not only intrinsically in Book Nine, when he goes from the first and second part, is he going from the less universal to more universal, right?

[39:54] But in going from being according to the figures of predication to being as act and ability, he's tending towards the what more universal, right? Why

[40:06] is being as act and ability the most universal? Well, because in every genus you have. A built-in act, something able to be a substance, something actually a substance, something able to have geometry and actually have geometry, able to be a father and actually a father, and so on. Then things that are not in one of the genera, You can apply ability and act to them.

[40:33] But another thing you see too, and you see it in Book Nine here, that ability and act also illuminate the four kinds of causes in all kinds of ways. We'll see that in the very beginning of this,

[40:54] and do the division of being according to figures of predication, tend to illuminate the four kinds of causes and their distinctions and their roles. You know, so you see, kind of Book Nine in some ways is more universal than Book Seven and Eight, and so to some extent, going from Seven to Eight to Nine, you're going towards the more universal.

[41:27] But also, you can see from Book Nine how you reason to the nature of the first cause, why the first cause is not matter, or why the first cause is pure act, right? Namely, God. You see better how you can reason to that first cause from Book Nine than from book seven or eight it's more proximate to it. When. When I teach, you know, the metaphysics course, you can't do all these books, right?

[42:03] And so, I do certain parts of the other books and so on. But then, I tend to go to Book Nine, especially among the books on being as being, because you can see from that consideration of being as being how you can get from that to the first cause. You want to have them see some some some light on that.

[42:26] Um We'll see how we can interpret that better. Of course, you can see how, in going towards the more universal, you're also going more towards the material, because you see the way to reason yourself to those.

[43:04] Incidentally, if you look at the two Summas the Summa Contra Gentiles. Is more distinct about bringing out that God is pure act, because where is that really brought out in the Summa Theologiae? God is pure act Is there really a question, or rather an article in all the questions, whether God is pure act. Did you see that in the Summa Theologiae? No it's gonna divide it up isn't it What questions of whether he's immutable or not.

[43:50] Yeah, it's going to be involved. Yeah. Right. But but the idea that God is pure act, which is used to show a lot of these things, right? Where does that come in? Yeah. If I remember rightly. Thomas brings it out in the beginning of the first article on the composition of God, right? But in the Summa Contra Gentiles, there's a capitulum, a little chapter, right? The sixteenth chapter devoted to that.

[44:27] It's a really very interesting little chapter there. Six arguments he gives there, but in some sense he's closer to what we do in wisdom. It's more explicit that way, right?

[44:43] I gave a talk one time comparing the two, the two Summas, as far as the order in which they consider the attributes of the substance of God. Right. They both have the same five attributes basically, and

[45:04] in the in both of them, you consider the simplicity of God before His perfection, and you consider them and right next to each other, the simplicity of God and the perfection of God. That's common to both. Second thing they have in common is that they consider the infinity of God and the unity of God after His simplicity and perfection,

[45:37] but in reverse order. You consider the infinity of God in the Summa Theologiae before His unity, and in the Summa Contra Gentiles, the unity before the infinity.

[45:57] But the biggest difference is where you consider God as being unchangeable, immobile, and in the Summa Contra Gentiles, that's considered first before all the rest. While in the Summa Theologiae, it's considered in between the infinity of God and unity of God,

[46:27] and there's kind of a reason, you know, in terms of the proofs of God, why this is done, perhaps, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, the arguments for the unmoved mover are much more developed than in the Summa Theologiae, right? Two of the five arguments of God are taken from motion, right? And in the Summa Contra Gentiles there's only one in the Summa Theologiae, and the ones in the Summa Contra Gentiles are developed, in like those three middle terms for each of the major main premises and so on.

[47:00] So it's almost like a whole summary of the of the eight books of natural hearing of the last books. of the Uh. And so Thomas almost, you know, takes it as a starting point that God is unchangeable, right, from what's been shown in the consideration existence of God, and then he goes to the eternity of God, right, and then he goes to God being pure act, and he develops some arguments for God being eternal and so on.

[47:33] Other arguments he develops, but you don't see it. Really kind of mars what he does there, but it's very explicit how it depends upon the ninth book, and I'll point out some things, you know, in comparison to that chapter here.

[47:59] And it's kind of interesting that he pulls out; it's not part of the treatise on the simplicity of God, but it's a separate chapter there, the seventeenth chapter of the Summa Contra Gentiles right after his being pure act, he's not matter.

[48:18] And and in the in the even the Leonine edition there, I think that the titles of the chapters there are not by Thomas in the Summa Contra Gentiles, and and they don't really name that chapter exactly correctly, right? Because they're saying there is no matter in God, right? But what he's actually saying is that God is not matter, and that's exactly what you kind of you know think coming right from the ninth book of Wisdom here, right?

[48:50] Because when he gets into the third part of the consideration of act and ability, he talks about the order of the the act and ability, and then he starts to see that act is what, simply speaking, before ability. Although in the thing that goes from ability to act, it's an ability first. But if you think ability comes before act, simply speaking, then the most potential thing is going to come first.

[49:19] It's going to be matter. But if you see that act comes before ability, simply speaking, then the first cause is going to be most in act. And so, you know, that's the most fundamental disagreement about the first cause: is it pure act or is it matter? And that's very explicit that he has chapter sixteen of the Summa Contra Gentiles that he's pure act, and then seventeen is not matter.

[49:44] It's kind of striking, but it shows influence of the ninth book of wisdom upon him, right? and and upon what that shows you about the first cause. So it's more explicit there, right? So we students of the ninth book, we kind of like that approach in Summa Contra Gentiles. But there is something to be learned in both, and things that are brought out by both.

[50:17] So you see, in a way, where the ninth book belongs now—a confused way, at least, huh? Okay. And so maybe tomorrow we can we can start to look at the, you know, first reading at least, and maybe get the second reading. There are eleven readings, right? Eleven lectures, right? Most we get to the first two readings tomorrow, you know, in our two sessions. But morning we'll look at the first reading, and then by the afternoon we get the second reading.

[50:53] Okay. Thomas is going to explain that Aristotle has at the beginning of the ninth book a little continuation of this book to the earlier books, right? And the transition now from consideration of being according to the figures of predication to being as act and ability. Then basically after that, which you could divide into the rest of Book Nine, that kind of a preamble thing. Then you have three parts to Book Nine, and in an oversimplified way that Thomas gives it there at first, the first part is about ability, the second about act, and the third about the order.

[51:35] But that's a bit of oversimplification, as Thomas of course knows. And we'll see what, in what way, that's oversimplification, right? But makes some sense in itself. It's like you are going to talk about marriage and say, "Well, part one is about what a man is, part two about a woman is, part three is about the the order or connection between these two, right? " You know. We're talking about the cowboy.

[52:01] You say we're talking about the cowboy, the cowboy or the horse is, and then about the connection between the two, right? And so it's kind of easy to see that that as a division, but it corresponds to what we're saying about reason, huh? that distinction is before order, right? And you have to understand distinction before order. So you have to understand the distinction of act and ability before you can see their order, right?

[52:27] But there's distinction among different kinds of ability, distinction among different kinds