Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
53. Aristotle's Proemium: Wonder, Liberal Knowledge, and the Most Divine Wisdom
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[0:00] of act. But you go through there, you see the universality of this for the whole philosophy. Do you have translation? What? Do you have translation? Oh yeah, yeah. Some translation of it, yeah. Do you want to? Son of The Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illuminate images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor.

[1:00] Greatly bless us. Help us to understand all that you've written. In the name of. The Father, the Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. The logical, and understandable division of the premium is into two parts, and we have completed the first part, which is about the skopos, the aim of wisdom. It's aiming at knowing causes, but at last in knowing the very first causes.

[1:35] But in the course of showing this Aristotle teaches us an awful lot in addition, huh? But it behooves the philosopher to kill two or three birds with one stone. Now the third reading is the second part of the premium. Aristotle is going to consider the kind of knowledge that wisdom is,

[2:01] and he's going to talk about four. He's going to attribute four things to the kind of knowledge it is. But as you go through these four, you'll see that there's a certain order among the four,

[2:18] and not necessarily can you deduce the second from the first and the third from the second, and the fourth and the third, although in some cases this is true. But one kind of naturally leads into the other, and we'll see that as we go along. So the philosopher has, as usual, well ordered these things.

[2:47] Dion asked me one day, without paying attention to it, sort of professor, I said, "Was not as well ordered as you, in the time.

[2:57] So never said anything after that. Now the first thing Aristotle wants to show about wisdom is that it's looking knowledge, right? That is to say, knowledge for the sake of understanding, it's not for the sake of making or doing, huh?

[3:19] And the way he goes about showing this, there's two ways he shows it. First, from the desire that gave rise to philosophy, and secondly, when it is that men first begin to philosophize. And from both of them, he'll draw the same conclusion, the fundamental conclusion here, that philosophy or wisdom is looking knowledge, huh? It's not practical knowledge. So he says that it is not poietike huh? It's clear from those first philosophizing.

[3:59] For due to wonder, thaumazein, men, he says, both now this time and the first begin to philosophize, huh? Let's stop there, huh? I had a professor in graduate, school. not in graduate school, undergraduate from the University of London. Very good chess player, not very good philosopher, but anyway, happened to have him in a course in Plato, and he says everybody quotes what Aristotle says that men begin to philosophize out of wonder, but he didn't say it first.

[4:37] Plato said it first, and he might make a point about this. For all the better that Plato said it first, right? That the two greatest philosophers both agreed and both see that men begin to philosophize in their own time and before out of wonder. It's in the great dialogue, the Theaetetus, right? That we mentioned before, but I would just recall it to you. In the dialogue, like many of the dialogues, it's named from the chief person with whom Socrates converses, huh?

[5:09] And Theaetetus is an historical person and made important contributions to mathematics, as you learn in Heath's notes there to Euclid, huh? And very often the man with whom Socrates talks

[5:29] and the subject of the conversation are connected, right? So he talks to Gorgias, who's a rhetorician, about the nature of rhetoric. He talks to Laches or Laches about courage, Well who's Laches Well he's an old soldier, right? Old general. Presumably, an old general would know something about courage. So it's an appropriateness that he talk about this with that person, huh?

[6:02] Now, the Theaetetus, he talks about the nature of episteme, of reasoned out knowledge, reasoned out understanding. But who would know more about reasoned out understanding or knowledge than a what mathematician is most apt to have it? And so he talks to Theaetetus, but about this. Now Theaetetus is a young man at the time, and he's under his teacher Theodorus, and when Theodorus introduces his great pupil, Theaetetus, his prized pupil, to Socrates, he mentions, among other good or interesting qualities of his prized student, that he's something of a philosopher.

[6:45] Okay. And then, in the course of the conversation, at one time, Theaetetus breaks out in wonder, and he wonders what these things are. And Socrates then stops at that point and observes that his teacher, Theodorus, has guessed rightly about you, Theodorus. You are something of a philosopher. And then he says, "For there is no other beginning of philosophy than wonder. Period. That's it. So if you don't have wonder, you are not a philosopher.

[7:27] That's that's it. It's very clear about that. And then he gives that interesting statement. I think I explained before. There was not a bad genealogy. The man who said that Iris is the offspring of Thalma. And he goes on, right? And so, kind of subtle Plato, right? To put a statement that at first sight is not understand or understood, to see maybe if you wonder about what that means.

[8:02] And of course, the subtlety of it is, Thauma is from the word like thaumazein. Thalma is wonder personified, right? But Iris is both the messenger of the gods and the rainbow personified. And you have to first understand why Iris in Homer should be both, right? And as we explained, I think before, the rainbow unites heaven and earth, the place of man, the place of God, and the messenger of the gods unites man with God.

[8:36] So Socrates is saying subtly that wonder unites man with God. How's that? Wonder makes you you want to know what and why, and therefore to know the cause. And if the cause has a cause, to know the cause of the cause, and so on until you get to the first cause. The first cause is God. Therefore, wonder unites man and God on the side of his reason.

[9:09] Okay. Not necessarily on the side of his will, which might unite us even more with God, but on the side of his reason, it does. There's a beautiful way of Socrates or Plato indicating the importance of wonder.

[9:29] And I believe if I remember right there, Socrates says now do you begin to see why these things are so. So you get the two key questions, what and why. So you see, wonder is a desire to know what and why, basically the wonder of the philosopher. And then Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics shows that both what and why are answered by knowing the cause. So you could say wonder is a desire to know the cause, and that's why it unites man with God.

[9:58] It's a beautiful text. And Aristotle is making the same observation here that men in his own time and the first men to philosophize did so in wonder, right? And we have even a fragment of Democritus, which is, I think, expressing the wonder of the early Greeks, where he says, "I would rather discover one cause than be master of the kingdom of the Persians." Now, the kingdom of the Persians was, of course, the greatest kingdom in the world that the Greeks could probably know about.

[10:40] So, if I was master of the kingdom of the Persians, I would be the most powerful man in the world, the richest man in the world. I've read that the Persian kings had a thousand chefs to prepare dinner every night. You think your friend up here has got some help? But a thousand men to prepare a dinner, and if dinner was not good, off of the heads, right?

[11:00] You know, so. And I'm sure the Persian king had a harem worthy of the sort. So, all the things that men seem to want, the Persian king has got to excess. He'd be worshipped like a god. He'd be worshipped like a god. That's pretty good. But he says, "I would rather discover one cause than be master of the kingdom of the Persians." That's the confirmation of what Plato and Aristotle, or Socrates and Aristotle, say here.

[11:31] And a fortiori, if they prefer to discover one cause, how much more the cause of the cause and the first cause? So Aristotle is going to use this fact that men begin to philosophize out of wonder as a sign that this is looking knowledge, because the man who wonders thinks himself ignorant and he wants to escape his ignorance. So he's seeking knowledge just for the sake of knowing.

[12:05] If philosophy had begun in hunger or in thirst or the desire to get warm or something, right, or the desire to be rich or something, it would have given rise to a more practical kind of knowledge. But the fact it began in wonder means it is going to be and is, in fact, looking knowledge. But Aristotle also here touches a bit upon the order of wonder, and you wonder about things that are closer to your senses.

[12:41] So from the beginning, the things are at hand, right? Wondering about them, right? And then kata mikron, bit by bit, going forward, they begin to wonder about the greater things, as about the what, undergoings of the moon, and those of the sun and the stars, and finally begin to wonder about the origin of the whole universe. So you see, there's an order in wonder, right? You wonder about things that are closer first.

[13:15] So you don't wonder about being as being to begin with, right? You wonder about sensible things before that, and mathematical things, and maybe before that you wonder about singular things, huh? And Aristotle talks a bit about the order of wonder again later on. We'll talk about that later on.

[13:39] But in general, you say the philosopher began wonder, but the one wondering or questioning, wondering, thinks himself not to know. And I'm going to come back now to that thing that some texts have parentheses, so that is due to what, fleeing their ignorance, or was to flee their ignorance that they philosophized, right? Hence it is clear that an account of understanding they sought episteme, and not for the sake of some use they're going to make of this knowledge.

[14:18] Now that's the first sign, and a very good sign, that philosophy or wisdom is looking knowledge, right? The kind of desire from which it arose, namely wonder. If it began in the desire to be, as you said, warm or hunger or thirst or something like that, it would have led to something practical, like the art of hunting or farming or fishing or digging wells or making beer or something, right?

[14:51] Or the art of carpenter, you know, to have dwelling or something of this sort. Aristotle brings in another additional sign in this discussion of wonder, and he says the philomythos is the philosophos pos. Now we met the distinction between what, simply and not simply, but in some imperfect way. He's saying that the philomythos is a philosopher, secundum quid, to use the Latin term, right? In some imperfect way, not simply without qualification, he doesn't want to identify the two, right?

[15:32] A philomuthos, again a compound word like philosophos, which means the lover of wisdom, but philomuthos means the lover of the myth, right? And the first meaning of mythos in Greek is is myth, and we have maybe more fairy tales and myths, but something like that, and then mythos takes on the more general meaning of story, right? And in Aristotle's book about the poetic art, mythos is used to mean precisely plot, right?

[16:07] Okay, so he may be thinking of first of all the lover of myths, the lover of fairy tales, but in general the lover of stories who wants to know how they turn out and so on. So he has a certain wonder, and you know at the end of Hamlet, where

[16:26] Fortune Fortinbras comes on the scene, and what do you have? A dead king, a dead queen, a dead prince, da da da, and he says, "If you want to see awe or wonder, you've come to the right place, right? " But that phrase "war or wonder, " which is an alliteration, there, I saw there as the title of one book. There, awe or wonder, the emotional effect of Shakespearean tragedy, so an an epic even more so in some ways arouses this wonder.

[16:56] So, if you see the philomuthos as kind of in some way a philosopher, right? The philomuthos is filled with wonder about these stories. That's a confirmation that the philosopher begins his work in what wonder, right? And as he says, the the mythos is composed from wonderful what things, right? ex thaumasion. Now, I used to point out a text of Albert the Great about this passage where he says that poetry or the mythos, dat modum admirandi, it gives us the way of wondering, and it seems to be indicating that you have to have the wonder, the philomuthos, as a stepping stone to the wonder of the philosopher.

[17:57] Of course, one aspect of that suggested by Aristotle's famous remark in the book of the poetic art that poetry is more philosophic than history.

[18:10] The reason he gives there is that history is about the singular, and philosophy is about the universal. But the great work of fiction is more about the universal, maybe the universal singularized, as they say, or the singular. Universalized, but sort of in between, a wonder about the singular, like in the supermarkets where you wonder about the movie actors and who's attached to whom or un or unattached to who.

[18:44] But that's very far away from the wonder of the philosophers, about the universal. When you go to the great works of fiction, like Homer or, or Shakespeare or Sophocles, you seem to be kind of wondering about the universal, and so you are rising above that wonder about the singular, and you are going towards the wonder about the universal. So that's one way in which it's a stepping stone, right?

[19:07] So when you read the great play, there Romeo and Juliet, you don't think, well, this is an historical pair of young lovers in Verona in the 14th century, whatever century it was, but this is young lovers, right? You see something universal, and kiddo, they're talking about the downfall of, Oedipus says, when the chorus comes in after his downfall, it doesn't say, oh, Oedipus, but it says, oh, you generations of men, you see something universal in the downfall of this great man, Oedipus.

[19:44] So, that's a very interesting observation, and Monsignor Dionne said that there would have been no Greek philosophers without Homer, so that Homer had to come first, and Homer was such a great poet that he aroused the what that wonder, of the Philomuthos. You know how Socrates, when he banishes Homer, talks about how he delighted him as young. Well, that wonder that Homer aroused was a stepping stone to the wonder of the philosophers.

[20:16] So the historians all put Homer some hundred fifty years before the first philosopher, Thales. So, this is a wonderful observation, Aristotle's part. He brings it in as a kind of confirmation that philosophy began in wonder, because the Philomuthas is a student like this to the philosopher, and the Muthas is composed of wonders. I mentioned the other day, I think, how it's interesting that Shakespeare's dramas are called plays, and a play is something you do for its own sake, and is pleasant.

[21:02] And so, in a way, the play is something you read for its own sake, and it's pleasing to do so. It's a good play, and Thomas in the De Humanis Bus, right, compares the life of the mind to play, quoting the Sapiential books where it says,

[21:24] "Run into your house and play with your thoughts." He says, "Well, why does the use this metaphor? Well." Because play is to some extent for its own sake, and is pleasant, and this is what you do when you philosophize, running into your mind, running into your room. So there is a similarity there between the, Philomuthos and the Philosophus. Notice he's not making comparison there between the poet, the maker of fiction, and the philosopher, is it?

[21:59] He's not seeing them as being like each other, but a connection between the philomuthas, the lover of myths or stories or plots, and the what? Philosophas. Now the likeness he sees here, and that he's concerned with here, is that in terms of wonder, right? But you heard me. Sometimes I go back to the statement that the philomuthas

[22:28] is in some way a philosopher. And I point out that the muthos, now more in the third sense, the lover of plots, is in a way a philosopher, and that a philosopher, a philomuthos, being a lover of plots, is a lover of what is a beginning, middle, and end, and the philosopher is concerned with what is a beginning, middle, and end, and that the plot has tying the knot and untying the knots, and philosophy is a bit like that, books three through fourteen, well, book three is tying the knots, and book four through fourteen untying the knots, so that's another way, right, that the philomuthos is like the philosopher, right, that the plot consists of tying a knot or knots and then untying the knot or

[23:21] knots, and philosophy does that at a much more difficult level, maybe, but there's a real likeness there. Aristotle doesn't point out that likeness because it's not relevant to his present purpose. His present purpose is to see the likeness between them in terms of wonder, because he's bringing out that wonder is the beginning of philosophy or wisdom, and therefore it must be looking knowledge, because of his desire to give rise to it.

[23:52] That's a very good way of doing it, right? What's also important for you, you're thinking of Euclid and Elements, or you're thinking of Natural Philosophy, because they are rising from wonder. Of course, in the dialogue with Theaetetus, Theaetetus is a mathematician, who's wondering about these things, but that's kind of a difference too between Euclid's Elements and some modern forms of mathematics, right, which don't seem to arouse wonder but are more of a practical orientation, as you'd expect in the modern world.

[24:37] Now the second thing he says, what happened also witnesses this. Now, you've got the word martyres, you know, our word martyr in English comes from the Greek word and means a witness, so martyr is a witness to the truth of the faith. But here he's saying that what happened, he's going to say what happened, witnesses this. He says all the things necessary

[25:04] for life, all the necessities of life being to some extent satisfied, and then also those towards what leisure, huh? Then this kind of phronesis, this kind of wisdom, begin to be sought. So the fact that men don't pursue philosophy until the necessities of life have been somehow Assured, right? And they don't have to spend all their time pursuing the necessities of life, right? And maybe some of the pleasures, you know, of the arts and so on, so that they can, you know, relax and so on.

[25:41] Then they begin to what? Philosophize, huh? Okay. Now I see that a bit in the life of my brothers who are myself who are all philosophers, but my father was not a philosopher, and my grandfather was not a philosopher. Now my grandfather, my father's father, came over from Sweden at the age of fifteen. He became the blacksmith in Parkers Prairie, Minnesota, and that's a rather rough job.

[26:23] I mean, exhausting job, right? And he was a blacksmith all his life, I guess. Now, what is he going to? He's going to philosophize, do you think, this blacksmith? No. At the end of the day, what does he do? If he's not exhausted, he probably drinks, right? But he's

[26:44] not going to philosophize, right? Now my father is one of many children, and there's no money in the family, right? They're not particularly well to do.

[27:02] Water uh uh Parkers Prairie, Minnesota, at that time, he had no high school, so high school almost seemed to be out of the question, right? I

[27:15] think my father's going to be philosophizing. No, so he wanted to get a high school education, but no high school. in town, the. Father didn't have any money to send to high school. What did he do? So he went to Alexandria, Minnesota, which is a little bigger city, had a high school, right? And now he's got to work his way through high school. So he got some kind of a job there.

[27:43] Work his way through high school. Enough, I guess, to get food, but enough to get a room. So he asked the the boss of the shop he's working to let him sleep in the shop at night. Well, the guy felt sorry for him, so my father sleeps in the shop. So my father finally managed to get through high school, right? I think he's going to be philosophizing.

[28:06] Now he's thinking maybe working hard and maybe getting a little better off than my what his father was, right, huh? So my father started off in the lowest ranks, you might say, of industry and so on, but he gradually worked himself up, right? And he was to a managerial position, right? And he was kind of admired as a manager, and finally. The company he was associated with was, and the owners had died off, and the widows were going to sell it off, and so on.

[28:39] So my father started to start his own company, right? Well, people admired him as a manager, and they were willing to back him. But my mother said, "Don't do it. They'll run you, you know. They'll own you, right? " So he borrowed everything. They sold everything he had and he got 51%. And so he gradually worked up. Now the company was not a. My father was not a particularly wealthy man, but now the necessities of life are what somewhat assured, right?

[29:12] He insisted we work, you know, in the factory in the summer and so on, but but we had more or less leisure, and what do you end up with? Three philosophers, and my mother always said, "Hey, you know, they read all these articles about the Kennedys. They're all politicians, you know. Why we read an article about the three Berkshires? You know, three philosophers in one family, but isn't that an illustration of what he's saying here, right?

[29:33] You see, it doesn't mean necessarily if you're freed from the the rat race, you know, of trying to supply your your daily needs and so on, that you will be a philosopher, right? But the fact that it's not until they have been to some extent satisfied, right, and there's a little bit of of superfluity, you might say, right? My father's attitude about education was get as much education as you can, right?

[29:59] And he'd help you, but expect you to work in the summer and contribute towards it. But he had the idea, you know, get as much as you could, you see. So then you end up with this strange situation of three philosophers in the same family, and eventually one in the East Coast, one in the West Coast, and one in the Midwest. By the time they up, you see, but that's from my own personal life that seems illustrative of what Aristotle is saying here.

[30:28] That's the second sign that this is looking knowledge. No one pursues it until the practical necessities of life, and some of the maybe leisure of life, you know, some of the relaxation, the arts, and so on, have been satisfied, right? And then, right, only then do men begin to philosophize.

[30:51] So he says then in line twenty-four, it is clear then that not they sought it not for any other need, right? As men, okay, but now around the second part of that line twenty-five, there he goes to the second thing about this kind of knowledge, and that is that it is what eleutheran. Which means what? Free, huh? A little bit like the Latin word liberalis, huh? And this is tied up now with the term we still use, although we don't understand what it meant originally and don't really follow it too much.

[31:32] But it's called liberal education, right? Okay. Now, it's liberal knowledge. It's the second thing he says. Now you have to understand what the difference is between liberal and servile knowledge. And this is understood much better in the early centuries than our own. And I see now, in different editions, Shakespeare and things dealing with contemporary things, they refer to the book by so and so a survey of liberal and servile arts.

[32:05] And you probably wouldn't see a title that way today. But as Aristotle explains there in the text some knowledge is called liberal and some knowledge is called servile by a likeness of ratio to the distinction between the free man and the slave in the city of Athens or any other city, right? And the difference between a free man and a slave is that the slave exists for the sake of the master, the free man, but the free man exists for his own sake.

[32:46] And so, by analogy to that, we speak of servile knowledge as knowledge that is not for its own sake, is for the sake of making or doing something, while liberal knowledge is knowledge that's for its own sake, huh?

[33:07] So that follows like a conclusion from saying that wisdom is looking knowledge, right? That's a direct conclusion from that. It must be liberal knowledge and not what servile knowledge.

[33:30] Now, there's some connotation that servile knowledge is what the slave will have, and liberal knowledge is what the free man will have, right? And there's some truth to that, because the free man who has a slave to supply the necessities of life has some leisure. He may not philosophize, but like we said before, it's not until the necessities of life are provided in some way and there's some kind of leisure there, leisure the basis of culture, as that famous book said, that men begin to philosophize.

[34:06] So you see how the second thing kind of follows upon the first. If it was practical knowledge, it would not be for its own sake, and then would not be what free or liberal, okay?

[34:22] Now you know a lot of times nowadays they use liberal arts education as some kind of synonym for liberal education, but strictly speaking, what are called the liberal arts, the trivium and the quadrivium, are the beginning of liberal knowledge, and wisdom is the end of liberal knowledge.

[34:51] So strictly speaking, liberal arts, and Thomas explained them in the De Trinitate, carefully should not be seen as being equivalent to liberal education, but used well, those words refer to the beginning of liberal education, but this is what the end. And Aristotle goes on to say, in a way, this knowledge seems to be the only knowledge that is liberal or fully liberal, because to some extent, things like mathematics and natural philosophy and so on are stepping stones to wisdom.

[35:32] So wisdom is not a stepping stone to any other knowledge. We don't know anything about theology at this point, and therefore it seems to be most what liberal or the only one that is holy for itself, right? So it's a culmination of all liberal education. So

[35:54] that's why Aristotle is so strong there in twenty-six and twenty-seven. The free is that which is for its own sake, hautou heneka, and not for another. Thus, this monen only, right, being free among the sciences, and that's kind of strongly said, but only this is fully and completely free. So that's a wonderful thing to say about. Do you say the other, the other theoretical looking sciences are just for the sake of the higher one?

[36:27] No, no. So you could say that they are for their own sake, but also to some extent for the higher one, right? And so they're not as fully liberal as the highest, right? You still say they're for their own sake, and therefore, you know, that delightful theorem there, number fourteen in Book Two, to go back to, why he did say,

[36:47] that's delightful for its own sake, right? But it's also for the sake of something higher. Just as Thomas will sometimes say about play, that run into your house and play with your thoughts, play is to some extent for its own sake. We also do it to what recreate ourselves, so we can go back to more serious things after our play. So play is not entirely for its own sake.

[37:17] So one should not live for the sake of playing, as he says in the tenth book of the Ethics. Now the third thing he says kind of follows upon the what second thing, because Aristotle is saying,

[37:36] does this seem to be a human possession? Doesn't man have all kinds of needs, bodily needs, needs of his possessions, needs of his family, children, et cetera, et cetera, right? And for most men, maybe throughout history, all their working time or all their

[38:03] apart from their relaxation or something is taken up with these things, right? And even maybe they didn't sometimes succeed in satisfying even those things. So is this really a human possession? And in saying that wisdom is not a human possession, Aristotle doesn't mean that man cannot attain to wisdom at all. But it's not something you can use any time you want to. See, a possession is something you can use whenever you want to because it's yours.

[38:39] This book here is my possession, so I can use this book anytime I want to. But if I have a library book, I got to return the book and or something like that, right?

[38:53] And Aristotle is saying, well, is man really that free? And then he makes the very simple statement, which you can obviously follow out. pollachos he physis the nature of man, ton ton anthropon is doule, a slave, right? Now usually translate that as in many ways, man or the nature of man is enslaved, right? And if you take you know what most of all makes man to be a man, right?

[39:24] Reason, right? You could say reason most of the time has to be providing for the body, or the car, or the house, or the family, or something else. So it seems to be not for its own good, but for the good of another, and therefore, in many ways, man is what enslaved. I gave a talk one time, unfolding in many ways that man is enslaved, right? But there is some slavery that's unavoidable.

[39:55] Your body has to be fed and clothed and and rested at night time and so on, and then you need the money to buy the food, the clothing, the shelter and so on. Okay, and then you get sick, and you've got to have this and that, and then you have to have a house or a car and other possessions, and then these need to be attended to, you know.

[40:20] And I notice myself, you know, I'm irregular and and getting the car checked. You know than myself, I say, what the heck am I doing? I should be having my health checked for the doctor, and so on. And your family, and then there are other kinds of slavery that we're more or less involved in, like what does Hamlet say, "Give me that man that is not enslaved to his passions"?

[40:47] Right. Most men are enslaved to one passion or another, right? To anger or lust, or desire for money, or whatever it might be, right? We saw Shakespeare talking about the tyranny of custom, right? So men are slaves of custom and fashion and hair and so on. So you could go, Aristotle. What did they say? What is the great? He say there that you know Euclid leads you to fill out the the other sense, the other cases.

[41:20] Aristotle leads you to unfold at least as far as the text goes here all the ways which man is enslaved. Right? Some necessarily, like just body bodily needs and so on. Others like to the passions and to fashion and to custom and to hair and so on. It's hard to avoid entirely being slaves somewhat to these things. So, there is knowledge that is liberal, and in fact, most of all, liberal, seem to fit man.

[41:53] It seem to fit the human condition. Aristotle is not naive about this kind of knowledge in comparison to the human situation. And then, apropos of not being in possession, he. Quotes the the poet Simonides, right, that this God alone should have, right, and that man is not worthy, Simonides the poet apparently saying, to seek this knowledge that's for its own sake, right.

[42:28] And I remember a picture there in the Rise of the West there, and when McNeil is describing the first civilizations there in Sumeria, and there's a picture in the Rise of the West of a Sumerian religious vessel. It's kind of like a tulip thing, and there's three levels on the thing. The bottom level are the beasts. On the middle level are the men, and on the top level are the gods.

[43:07] And they think the theology behind it, the religion behind it, is that the the beasts were created, huh, to relieve man of someone's labor. so the ox relieves some of the labor of plowing the field, and the horse some of the labor of transportation, and so on and so on. But the men are created to relieve the gods of labor, right? So the gods alone would be what free, huh?

[43:36] And that if men would try to escape this servile situation, they were trying to assume part of gods, and would probably be punished by the gods, huh? So this is a little bit what Simonides is saying here. This is not for men, huh? And. Aristotle quotes the poets again in the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics. We should not be. He's speaking against them, right? We should not be like men, you know.

[44:05] He doesn't want to follow advice that being men, we should seek human things, and being mortal, mortal things, we should strive for the immortal things. So

[44:16] he's quoting the poet as a confirmation that this doesn't seem to be a human possession, right? Aristotle doesn't agree that man should what simply avoid doing this, huh? And that looks back to its being a natural desire to know, and therefore he should he is free to pursue this. And so he says,

[44:45] if what the poets say, uh, if there's something to what they say, and uh they're gonna rouse the anger of the gods and so on, huh? Then it would be most unfortunate, huh? People who are philosophers, right?

[45:04] But he then stops and says, according to the parable or proverb. The poets say many things, well that are false. huh? bards tell many a lie. translate sometimes.

[45:26] And he's denying there, huh phthoneron, that God's God cannot be what, envious, son. Okay. So God cannot see the goodness of the creature or the excellence of the creature as diminishing His goodness, because whatever goodnesses in creatures comes from God and reflects goodness of God.

[45:53] Aristotle doesn't go into the reason there, but he just touches upon that. But notice how this third thing, in a way, it's suggested by a consideration of the human condition, right? And the second thing has been said, right? The second thing was said that this is liberal knowledge, and in fact, the only knowledge that's fully liberal, right? And then the liberal doesn't seem to fit the human condition because man is enslaved in so many ways, huh?

[46:25] But yet, because we have a natural desire for this, it should be naturally good for us in some way possible. And therefore, the poets must be exaggerating, right? The opposition between this and human condition, but it shows that man is what, not able, right, to pursue this whatever he wants to, huh? And sometimes not at all, right? And that it's a more divine thing than a human thing, huh?

[46:57] As the poets suggest. And then Aristotle, that leads kind of naturally into the last thing, right? That this knowledge, and this is the fourth fourth thing he says about this knowledge.

[47:14] It's the most divine, huh, theiotate, and therefore the most what, honorable, right? Now, why is this knowledge the most divine? And therefore, the most honorable, right? Where Aristotle brings out that there is two ways that knowledge could be defined, what? As divine, toiaute de dikhos, two ways. And one is because it's about God, right? And the other would be because it's the knowledge God has, right? Okay.

[48:02] Now you know how sometimes I take the one word that this is divine knowledge, and use a speech instead of a name, right? Say. This could be called the knowledge of God, huh? And there's two senses in which something could be called the knowledge of God, because it's about God, or because it's a knowledge that God has, huh? So just as knowledge of God is its two senses, so the word divine here has those two senses, right?

[48:35] Aristotle is going to say that in both senses, wisdom seems to be divine. In both senses, it seems to be the knowledge of God, right? Now, one of those that's about God, he syllogizes to, huh? Here, huh?

[48:59] Because we've shown before that wisdom is a knowledge of the first cause, and that's like the minor premise. And then he takes as a probable opinion, right? Because he's not going to demonstrate it until the twelfth book, that the first cause is God, or at least God is among the first causes. And then he syllogizes, therefore wisdom must be a knowledge of what? God in the senses about God, right?

[49:31] Okay. So in that way, it's divine. That way, it's godlike, right? Okay. Now, the other kind of being godlike, that this is the kind of knowledge that God would have, right? where Aristotle as a proemium here, just proceeds from the common opinion of all the great Greek philosophers, including what the guy who invented the word philosopher, and going through Heraclitus and

[50:09] Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and so on, right? So the guy who invented the name philosophers, according to tradition, is Pythagoras, right? And discovering these wonderful theorems that we have in geometry, men started to call him wise, right? And Pythagoras says, "Don't call me wise. God alone is wise. " Well, what should we call you then? Well, call me a lover of wisdom, huh? Because the phrase "lover of wisdom" doesn't mean you're wise.

[50:45] You could be wise, but you're not necessarily wise, right? So there's a certain humility in the name philosopher, according to that tradition of its origin, as well as the love of wisdom, right? The etymology is love of wisdom, right? And that's the meaning basically. But in the origin of the word, in this legend about. Pythagoras would be saying that would indicate this in humility, right? He's refusing the title, wise man, right?

[51:21] Then you get to the central thinker. In or you could go to go to Heraclitus next, the central thinker of human thought. Heraclitus has these famous what proportions? As the ape is to man, so is man to God, right? And as the ape looks ugly in comparison to man, and the ape is inferior to man in knowledge and everything else, so likewise man is to God like an ape, right?

[52:00] So he obviously sees wisdom is more characteristic of God than of the what man. And sometimes you know when you go back to the scientific so-called name for man is the the wise ape, Homo sapiens. Is that contradicting Heraclitus? Well, you're comparing man to the ape now, right? Man is to the ape compared to the ape, man seems wise, right? And that's what the scientist is doing, right?

[52:35] So he calls man Homo sapiens because he used Homo more generally for a man-like thing, an ape, we could say. But compared to God, man is what not wise, huh? And then the other proportion used by the central thinker

[52:57] is that as a child is to a man, so is man to God, right? Now you're about to be a father, and your little child will in his or her early life kind of think of you as knowing everything. You're wise. He knows everything. Daddy knows everything. But unfortunately, a certain period of time, you realize this is not in fact true that Daddy knows everything. But compared to very little child, Daddy seems to know everything, right?

[53:31] So he says, as a child is to the man, so is man to what God? So you can see in the central thinker there in those beautiful proportions that the great Heraclitus is thinking of wisdom is belonging chiefly or only to God, right? Something in the full sense only to God.

[54:03] Then you have you know man-like Parmenides, right? Talking about learning only so much as mortal wisdom can attain to, right? Not divine wisdom, not the fragrance we have. And then you have the famous example of Socrates, right? Or Socrates,

[54:26] Socrates' friend Cariphon went down to the Oracle Delphi and said, "Is anybody wiser than Socrates? " And the Oracle replied, "No one in Greece is wiser than Socrates. " How could the Oracle said that about me? Socrates says, "There's all kinds of people around with reputation for knowing things. I'm so ignorant. What is the meaning of the Oracle of Delphi? " huh? As Heraclitus says, the Oracle doesn't say out clearly, but gives a sign.

[55:04] Well, maybe I better go and talk to these men who are revered for their knowledge. He found out that they didn't know what they claimed to know, and so they were doubly ignorant. They didn't know either. They didn't know they didn't know. So, at least I know I don't know. So Socrates is saying, the Oracle didn't mean I was wise in the way that God would be wiser, but I'm wiser than these guys who don't know they don't know.

[55:41] So again, Socrates sees God alone, or only in the full sense of being wise. And Plato said philosophy is becoming like God so far as possible, right? But not equal to God, in the Theaetetus. And so Aristotle says here, God alone, right, is wise, or God most of all. Either you should deny that man is wise, or only in some imperfect way. So to compare it to God, Aristotle is saying, God is wise simply, without qualification.

[56:24] Man is not wise simply, without qualification, but in some imperfect way, just as God knows all things simply, without qualification. And man knows by his wisdom here all things only in some imperfect way, not simply, right? In the way that everybody knows what a brother is knows my brother Mark, right? That's not only my brother Mark, but in some ways to know him, right? in a perfect way.

[56:53] So then Aristotle has the premise that wisdom is the most what. Divine knowledge, right? And then he can syllogize, since the divine is most honorable and best,

[57:15] that wisdom is the most honorable and the best knowledge that there is. And that's the fourth and last thing he shows about the kind of knowledge wisdom is. But at the same time, he's showing how desirable this knowledge is. And next to giving the skopos what you're aiming at in some kind of knowledge, it's very important to see the desirability of it, right? And now you see this is the most desirable knowledge there is, Even though it may be difficult to To get to.

[57:50] that. So, that line 6 and seven there is talking about only this has both of these things. on it. It's about God, and God would have it right. For God seems to be among the causes in the beginning, and he, Monas alone or malista right, would have ten such wisdom, this kind of knowledge. Notice what he says in ten there.

[58:44] All the other ones are more what necessary than this, huh? But none is better, right? I was talking about you know asking the students which is better to breathe or to philosophize. Well, to philosophize is better than to breathe, but to breathe is more necessary, right? And which is better, you know, geometry or the art of fishing? You know, well, geometry is better, but the art of fishing is more necessary.

[59:17] It's Aristotle say that, right? All the other ones are more necessary than this, but there is no one that is better than this knowledge. I was going to

[59:31] have a little kind of corollary things after that, but that's basically what he's doing in the second part of the premium, in the third reading, showing the kind of knowledge this is. It's looking knowledge, not practical knowledge. It's liberal knowledge, not servile, and in fact, the most liberal knowledge there is, right? It's not a human possession in the sense that we can't simply give ourselves to this knowledge or the pursuit of it whenever we want to, right?

[1:00:04] But you need, you know, all these circumstances and all these needs that have to be satisfied, and so on, right? And then fourth, it's the best and most honorable knowledge because it's the most divine knowledge. The most divine knowledge in both senses of divine knowledge. So that's quite a mouthful, right?