Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
54. Wonder, Curiosity, and the Proemium: Q&A on Providence, Free Will, and the Central Question
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7b-wisdom-2006-colorado/054-wonder-curiosity-and-the-proemium-q-a-on-providence-free/

[0:00] Now, in the next sentence, Aristotle is going to observe that although philosophy begins in wonder, right? If by wonder you mean wanting to know what you don't know. Then it's not going to end in that kind of wonder anyway, because that kind of wonder is going to disappear once you have what? Yeah, yeah. And in one of Shakespeare's plays, there, someone says, "Stuff yourself with questions, you know, that reason wonder may diminish, huh?

[0:41] You know, Ah, you're here, you know. Where's your shop you know shop, you know? And that sort of thing, you know. And stuff yourself with questions, and eventually your wonder about are all happening to be here is going to what? Diminish, right? At first, you've got a surprise sometimes to see somebody somewhere. What are you doing here? You know. And then, after you see why they're there, then your wonder what diminishes, huh?

[1:06] So stuff yourselves with questions, he says, that reason wonder may diminished. Whereas Aristotle's saying the same thing here, right? That it began, right, in wonder, will end up in something better, namely the what? Possession of knowledge, right? But in talking about how it begins in wonder again here briefly, he again touches upon the order that there is in wonder. How you wonder about the things that are close at hand?

[1:37] It's kind of interesting what he says here that people begin to wonder about the automata, right? The things that happen by what? Chance, huh? And there's no way of understanding the Greek word, perhaps.

[1:57] Something that moves itself, right? The toy that moves itself, the kid wonders about and so on. But it's perhaps more these things that happen by chance that arouse our wonder. If you think going back to the philomythos huh? And how the philomythos's wonder, is a stepping stone to wonder the philosopher. Well, what the the.

[2:26] Poet likes to do is make a big deal of what happens by luck or by chance, and yet he wants to hint that there's some kind of what. Divine providence, huh? So in in the great play, Romeo and Roman Juliet, um, great deal of luck and fortune, now like Romeo says, and fortune's fool.

[2:52] But then at the end of the thing, when the Duke is talking to the two fathers, you know, and he's talking about how heaven has found a way to punish you for your enmity and your feuding, you know, and the death of your only children, huh? And you kind of see some kind of what? Oh, some kind of you know, behind the scenes, there's something you know, moving, huh?

[3:17] I see. Aristotle talks about this in the. Book about the poetic art, that chance events that have great results, right? Especially arouse wonder when they seem to be due to some divine influence upon things, or some kind of seems to be some kind of reason why these things did happen. He gives a very simple example there, I think, where someone had murdered somebody, right? Murdered a famous man, and they didn't discover who had murdered the famous man, but because of his standing and so on, they erected a statue of him in the central part of the marketplace.

[3:59] huh? And one day, there's a great, you know, festival in the town city, and there's a huge crowd down in the market, and the crowd, you know, is packed tightly and so on, and up against the statue, and you know, as the crowd moves, the statue what falls over on top of somebody and kills him. Guess who?

[4:27] Yeah, the very murderer right? Say, did that happen by chance? Just some meaning, some purpose behind this, huh? And I guess in the assassination of Julius Caesar, huh? That's what statue's right behind him, huh? The statue of Pompeii, you know, is that by chance? Did that happen, huh? So sometimes these things happen in life, and they seem to have some deeper meaning or purpose to them, huh?

[5:00] Although they happen by luck, and then they tend to arouse our what? Wonder, huh? And that's what the poet likes to especially emphasize: these chance events or apparently chance events that have tremendous consequences, and then seem to have some kind of hidden or deeper meaning or purpose, huh? Influence or something, huh? That arouses your wonder, right? And when when literary friend of my, literary critic, I guess may be called, anyway, brother Mark said, you know, good literature should end in wonder, huh?

[5:44] And and philosophy begins in wonder, right? Some truth to that, huh? So that's one way of understanding this reference to the chance events here, totu mata. And then he goes on how they begin to wonder about the turnings of the sun. Well, I guess that refers to the fact that the sun is gets higher in the sky, then turns around, comes lower. Oh, that's kind of a strange thing.

[6:16] Why is it doing that, right? So wondering about these heavenly things. And then he takes an example from what? That first one is from that second one is from natural philosophy, but then one from geometry, right? And it's the one about the what? Incommensurability of the diagonal of the square with the side of the square. And of course, one would think here's those exceptions to what I said before.

[6:46] Remember that men would usually guess the truth in geometry before they know the reason why it must be so. But here you'd probably guess if you took a smallest, a small enough measure, you could measure both, right? And turns out you can't, then. And I mentioned how

[7:08] when my politician friend there, Roy, was kind of sneering at my going back to these high school studies of geometry that we'd had in high school, and I led him in very gradually to that theorem in the third book of Euclid that I mentioned before, where the tangent to the circle and the curve line of the circle itself are so close that you cannot put a straight line in between there.

[7:34] But you would think you could, huh? Because from the point where the two meet above that point, there's space all the way up, right? So why can't you take a you know line starting that point and draw a line in between? And I showed him you know the theorem of it. He was kind of filled with wonder, right? And Thomas, in talking about this, not in the commentary here, but elsewhere, talking about the significance of Aristotle's example, right?

[8:03] He says that your wonder is aroused more about something that is contrary to what you'd expect. And Einstein makes the same observation in his little autobiographical sketch in like in the Harper books there. There's two volumes called Einstein: Philosopher Scientist, huh? And they have a collection of essays, a lot from scientists, and then some from philosophers of science, people like that. And then at the end they have Einstein

[8:44] kind of commenting, you know, upon their comments, so to speak. But there's also an autobiographical sketch of Einstein, and Einstein speaks of the role of wonder in his thinking, huh? And he he gives two examples of what he considers two kinds of wonder, right? And one was the wonder when his father brought home a magnet, right? And seeing that one body was acting upon another body with nothing between, with no contact, right?

[9:19] And this aroused wonder in him, right? But he makes the observation that. We don't wonder so much about the fact of a stone falling to the ground if we let go of it, even though we don't know maybe why the stone does really fall to the ground, but because it happens all the time, we, familiarity breeds contempt. We don't tend to wonder about it. But if I let go of a stone is went up instead of down, right?

[9:44] Contrary to what I expect, then I wonder, I wonder why the stone went up. You know, see, I don't usually stop to wonder about why it goes down, even though I don't know that, either, right? And Thomas, as I said, makes the same point for Aristotle's example here, and I'm giving the example there from the third book of Euclid. And to some extent, that wonderful theorem, and I thought wonderful, that I'm referring to a lot here, the fifth theorem in book two, right?

[10:13] It would seem that a rectangle with more perimeter would contain a larger area than a rectangle with less perimeter. But it's possible, as you understand number five, to have more and even much more area contained by less fence. That seems kind of impossible, doesn't it? You see. So the theorems that tend to arouse wonder, the things that arouse wonder is not merely your ignorance of why this is so, but your ignorance of why something is so that is contrary to what you would what expect, right?

[11:02] If your friend acts the way he always acts, you don't wonder why he acts that way, huh? Even though you may not know why he really acts that way, but if he suddenly starts acting in a way that's contrary to the way you'd expect him to act, right? You see. If your friend suddenly starts drinking beer instead of wine or something, you know, then you say, why?

[11:26] Then you start to wonder why, you see. And so, those words are in explanation of the significance of the example that Aristotle takes, right? And maybe it's even true somewhat about the the sun going up and down. You would expect maybe the sun to do that, a little bit unusual. So he says, then is necessary in the contrary to go, which is knowledge, right? And the better, according to the proverb, right?

[12:05] And do it in that way, huh? And then he says that, you know, if the side of the square turned out to be commensurable, with the diagonal, then the geometer would wonder, right? But once he realizes the reason why that cannot be so, then that kind of wonder, at least, right, can stop, right? Now some may say, yeah, but when Aristotle gets down to a knowledge of what the first cause is, and he's thinking about God, he says God compels our wonder, right?

[12:38] Okay, but that's not really wonder in the same sense, right? The wonder that Aristotle has in the twelfth book is a kind of admiration of God coming from seeing the excellence of God, right? So it's not a wonder it's proceeding from his ignorance of God, even though he might know that, you know, he's not fully understanding God, but it's really proceeding from his God. Yeah, yeah, and so

[13:08] sometimes in English, you know, you could use the word wonder to name either one of these, but sometimes they'll call curiosity the wonder that's proceeding from ignorance, although curiosity often has the sense of the bad too, right? And admiration or something like that for the other sense of wonder that proceeds from seeing the excellence or something, right? So Shakespeare in the in the song of Sylvia there

[13:37] in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, you know, they sing, "Who is Sylvia, that all our swains do commend her? Heaven lent her such graces that she might admire and be, right? she's so so beautiful, right? That she arouses our wonder and admiration with Sylvia. That's a different sort of thing than the wonder Shakespeare's talking about when he says, "Stuff your minds with questions that reason wonder may diminish, right?

[14:03] As reason begins to understand why this is so, then the wonder that arouses from ignorance of the cause diminishes, huh? Okay. And you see that in daily life, right? You know, even

[14:21] when you don't have too much experience, you wonder why people do things, or they do things, and then later on you you expect them to do things this way, you know? You know, there's got to be this corruption, you know, in society and so on. You don't wonder about so much, right? But you're not so so stupefied and shocked by it.

[14:42] So he says, once the geometer knows why this is so, then he doesn't wonder. It has to be that way, and nothing would arouse the wonder unless it turned out that it could be, okay. Now the last sentence is there, which is twenty one, twenty two. So Aristotle has the epilogue now, right? As we mentioned before, he recalls the two things he did in the first division of the premium, but he recalls the thing he just did now in the second part of it, in the third Lectio.

[15:23] and then he recalls second the first thing he did in the first part, which occupied the first two readings. So he says, "What then is the nature of this what episteme, the one that we're seeking? Right, has been said, and that's what he's done in the what third reading, of the third Lectio, huh? and then what is the scopus, the aim, the goal, right, which one ought to hit, right,

[15:57] but the investigation, right, and the whole knowledge over a road, must hit, and that's the first thing he did in the first two readings.

[16:14] So he first showed that it was what aiming at causes and at the very first causes, and then secondly he showed what kind of knowledge it is, looking most liberal, not a human possession, but the best and most honourable because the most divine. But he calls them in the contrary order, right? And I mentioned before that he does the same thing at the end of the proemium of the Nicomachean Ethics, except there the logical and understandable divisions into three rather than two.

[16:49] So he calls three things, but he calls the third thing he did first, and then the second thing he did, and the first thing he did, and kind of following the the order of what of recollection, you recall, right? What you did yesterday, and then maybe the day before, and so on.

[17:10] But as I said before, offhand I can remember these two very important premia, where he has an epilogue, right? So maybe that's a sign that there's a special importance for these, and one is is somewhat the premium to looking philosophy, and especially wisdom, and the other is a premium to practical philosophy, and so they have a special importance in all premia. So what do you think of Aristotle's premium?

[17:46] Yeah, I don't. know any other philosopher who has a premium to wisdom, but anyway. Approaches this, or even starts to approach you? No, no. Because Aristotle talks about human nature being enslaved. Yeah. Does he anywhere show?

[18:13] Does he wonder about what it is? Yeah, people point to that when they say that that Aristotle has some awareness of the effects of what original sin, right?

[18:29] But when Thomas takes up original sin there in the fourth book of the Summa Contra Gentiles he speaks of the probability you can estimate that there was something like original sin. A lot of the poets seem to get that. Yeah, the golden age. Between the gods and men. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, Plato in the Phaedo, when, he talks about the soul as being better off separated from the body than in it.

[18:59] Right. He speaks kind of as if the soul were kind of imprisoned in the body, and that seems like a punishment, right? And to some extent, the affliction of the soul from the body is a punishment, right? But

[19:16] I don't know that there is an explicit guessing in Aristotle or Phaedo's part that there was this. fall. And of course, when we talk about the first state of man, there is something

[19:33] kind of befitting man's nature that has been added by God, right? But not altogether natural, right? The immortality of the body. If you eat the right foods, yeah. Does Aristotle think that all things happen according to the providence of

[19:57] the first cause? Well, there is an interesting discussion there of luck or chance in the second book of Natural Hearing. Aristotle gives two opinions about luck or chance, and one is it ain't such a thing, just a name for ignorance, right? And he rejects that. Another is that luck or chance is responsible for the whole origin of the universe, right? And he rejects that. The third one is there is something divine about it, and that's touched upon in the poet Plato's saying before.

[20:36] He doesn't reply to that, and it's very interesting. Thomas points out or notes that he doesn't reply to that, right? And it kind of transcends the natural philosopher to see that, but it's interesting that he needs to be open to that, right? That the divine. Providence could extend even down to these luck or chance events.

[21:07] And again, in ethics, has something of this too, right? About the divine extending down to these contingent things. Throw out the later books in the meantime. Is there anything? I don't know if if you get that precise or detailed there in the fourth book, but

[21:30] I was reading the Summa Contra Gentiles as I often do, and I think I mentioned this to you earlier sometime while we're here. How Thomas, in the first three books of the Summa Contra Gentiles, he almost always gives the arguments from reason to show the question right, and then he brings in the authorities sometimes from Scripture and sometimes from Church Father. Confirmation of the truth is shown by reason, but I believe it is when he's down in the third book there when he's discussing God's causality with respect to our will

[22:14] that he reverses the order, right? Which I take as a sign that he sees the great difficulty of the question. Yeah, and and and some of the even the Christian writers like Origen and so on, have a difficulty understanding how God can be the cause of acts of our will, and yet we're free, right? And so he gives the arguments from authority first, and he gives arguments from reason, right?

[22:47] So this is even for Thomas, you know, a difficult question. But he goes to the the reasons, and the last one is from Aristotle, in the Ethics. where Aristotle says that God is the cause of the acts of will, and the reason he gives for it, I guess. And I was I was saying to Warren Murray, I was saying, what what a testimony to Aristotle, right? And that question is so difficult, and people have gone wrong, you know, and astray, and so much so that Thomas thinks it may be better to give the arguments from authority first because you want to have in mind that, but the truth is, and then try to, you know, however you can understand it, right?

[23:31] But that Aristotle should come in with an argument, you know, in support of it. It's just an amazing thing. So he sees that, huh? And then he then he first he talks about it first too, also in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics. So he soon he sees divine providence extending down to to our will, huh? To our free will. So.

[23:57] When Thomas talks about the releases. You know, is liber est causa sui Yeah. Does that? mean, is that with respect to final, or maybe some efficient causality? We got to be kind of careful as to you know what that means, right?

[24:21] Because some people would might you know quote that and say, well, then God is not the cause of the acts of our will, right? But you have to understand that God's causality not only extends to things happening that God wants to happen, right? But that they happen the way God wants them to happen, whether it be by necessity in some cases or by by luck or by chance in other cases.

[24:45] So that's hard hard for us to understand, right? The the absolute priority of God's causality, right? And particularly here, it's very difficult to understand the free will. That God is is the cause of my freely choosing something, right? And it doesn't interfere with my freely choosing it. And it would be a diminishing diminishing of God's power if He couldn't be the cause of something happening freely. And likewise, if he couldn't be the cause of something happening by luck or by chance.

[25:23] I know some people interpret that as final causality. They say man is free because he's for his own sake. He's, you know, it doesn't separate him from a slave. Well, I think it's more than just final cause. Yeah. Because then you could still have a good one. He moves freely to the end.

[25:45] Soul naturally moves toward good of itself, not being forced by something. And then he picks his means. He's free to pick among the means. He's not really free to choose some non-end

[26:03] Yeah. So that's free. Free is somewhat efficient causality there too. Outward. Libers. And then he goes into a dialectical discussion of all these questions, right? And we couldn't do all that, obviously. But when you enumerate the questions, right,

[26:29] then you can begin to see a little bit of the dialectic about them. But you kind of see what the chief questions are. We could do that, you know, do the those those and the way the way he divides the questions and the way

[26:50] Thomas explains the logical, understandable division of the questions and the order of the questions. And if you know a little bit of modern philosophy too, you see how even the positions of the modern philosophers are going to come into the discussion of these questions. You see, how Thomas was sellable right? That's one thing we could do, right? Or we could, you know, go to the little book, book six or something, right?

[27:20] Or we could do some readings in the fifth book. when you first run into the categories, it's in logic, and then you run into them again here. Yeah. There's a difference. Is there? a place where that's... Is what they thought, the difference? Yeah. How you at first it's because it's the way you speak, and then later it's because that's the way things are. Well, you see, Thomas doesn't have an exposition of Aristotle's book called the Categories, right?

[28:00] Ammonius is pretty good, right? I think you have to supplement it with texts of Thomas that are scattered around, right? So, for example, the the basis for and the distinction of the ten categories is given by Thomas in two places. And one is in the third book of the Natural Hearing, right, where Aristotle talks about motion and motion being the same as acting upon undergoing, right? Acting upon undergoing into the categories, and some problems that are raised at that point.

[28:39] And then, apropos of that, Thomas gives an explanation of the basis for distinguishing the ten, and then he goes through how the ten are distinguished, following the rule of two or three, right? And then, when Aristotle, in the fifth book of Wisdom, when he talks about the distinction of being or beings according to the figures of predication, right, he again gives a explanation of the basis for the distinction of the ten, and then goes through how they're distinguished.

[29:15] Following the rule of two or three, and it's almost identical at that in the third book of Natural Hearing. There's maybe one or two little differences, or of some importance, but it's basically the same explanation, right? And so, now I was trying to understand Aristotle's categories. I found those two texts important, right? But you have to kind of put things together because of the fact that Thomas has not done an exposition of the categories.

[29:45] But you can also read Albert the Great or read Ammonius Hermiae and maybe a few other great commentators. and bring these things together, you know, and there are other texts of Thomas where he illuminates something more particular about this or that that's in the categories. So,

[30:05] in my commentary, kind of on the categories, I try to bring those things together, right? But we don't have the categories now, do we? That's another course, right? No, I was thinking about the difference between when you first read the categories in logic and then you read them again, maybe. Yeah, but he begins, you see, because he says in the fifth book that we looked at the text a little bit earlier, "being according to the schemata, the figuras, the figures of predication.

[30:38] " So, as Thomas says in the text there, the ways of being are proportional to the ways of being said, and so the ways of being said are of our kind of stepping stone to understanding the ways of being. And there you see again the affinity of logic, right, and the usefulness of logic, even the treatise on the categories for study of being as being.

[31:14] We could look at the, if you want it to the text in the no, we've got the metaphysics here right? In the physics. we look at the way he distinguishes the ten, and I explain that right.

[31:35] As far as seeing, you know, kind of the breadth of the wisdom, and again, the third book, you know, you see the reason why the third book comes before books four through fourteen, while the third book comes before book comes before. And then you can see, in outline at least,

[31:56] the major questions of wisdom, and as we outline them, we can touch briefly upon the reason why people might think differently about them, right, or or at least that they have thought differently about them, and so on. But we don't have time to go through the rest of Book Three, you know.

[32:19] So we'll look, we'll look tomorrow morning, I guess, at the at least the first reading of the third book, right? And then maybe start to go a little bit into the distinction of questions, right? It's absolutely incredible the way Thomas you know was able to understand Aristotle's doing there, you know. I think he'd be elsewhere to figure it out. It

[32:49] just inspires. Is there any good commentaries on the last two books of wisdom? Offhand, I don't think I know any, right? But quite rare about the last two books when you haven't got through the first twelve books. But I usually have one text from the last two books there. I think it's thirteen now, the one Aristotle speaks of the three main forms of beautiful, and I used that in my article on comedy, right?

[33:28] Because comedy is the likeness of the laughable, and Aristotle explains in the book of the poetic arts the laughable is a form of the ugly, and so in order to understand the forms of the ugly, I used the text in the thirteenth book, the forms of the what the main forms of beautiful, and tied in just perfectly because once if you have an experience of the English comic muse, which is my experience, you know, behind trying to write comedy, you see that it fits exactly three forms of the ugly.

[34:07] They're opposed to the three main forms of beautiful. Yeah, same knowledge of opposites, right? Very beautiful text there in Aristotle. So I mean, there are treasures in there, and I think to some extent, but I don't have Thomas to back me up here, you know.

[34:33] I think that Aristotle's final consideration of the central question of philosophy is in those last books, right? Because in the last books he's taking up again mainly Plato, huh? And those who have gone astray as to what the first causes are, and think of them in terms of these of the forms, right? In terms of the mathematical things, and of course Plato's mistake is large part due to the wrong answer to the central question of philosophy, and so appropriate that the final words of Aristotle about the central question come there at the end of the books of wisdom.

[35:15] I had a question about the central question. Is that something that you discovered, or is this a teaching of St. Thomas, or? Well, Thomas talks about Plato's mistake being due to his. Is thinking that the way we know should be the way things are, right? But I coined the the term, the central question of philosophy, and kind of made explicit this question. And I called the central question of philosophy because, like a center, it brings together the end of philosophy—to know the truth—with the two matters or things that the philosopher talks about, namely the way we know and the way things are.

[36:04] So in logic, say we're chiefly concerned the way we know, but in natural philosophy, political philosophy, the way things are, and wisdom, mainly the way things are. So this question says, does truth require that the way we know be the way things are? It's a question that involves then everything the philosopher talks about.

[36:29] General, the way we know the way things are, but in reference to his very goal, which is know the truth, right? So the answer gives this question is going to influence everything. huh? Your attainment of truth or your failure to attain it, right? And you can make a mistake going in either direction, right? If you don't see that distinction between the way we know and the way things are, and so that's why I call it I call it, nobody else calls it the central question, but I kind of saw the importance of it, right?

[37:07] And Aristotle, you know, talks there in the beginning of the Natural Hearing that the what is more known to us is less known by nature, and vice versa, right? He's already talking there about a distinction in the order we know and the order in which things are. And but in his critique of Plato in the second book of Natural Hearing, Aristotle has just got through distinguishing natural philosophy and mathematics, and pointing out that mathematics considers these things in separation.

[37:50] And this is kind of a footnote that this doesn't mean that he's false, though, right? And then he criticizes Plato there, right? And there you're seeing that things can be known in distinction or in separation from each other, truly, even though they don't exist in separation. And since distinction comes before order, the next thing to see is that things can be known in a different order than they are, right?

[38:21] I think very simple examples in class. I'll say, you know, I know you before I know your parents, so. You must have come before your parents, right? I truly know you before I know your parents, right? But am I false in knowing you before your parents? Maybe I won't know you fully until I know your parents. But am I knowing falsely? You're a boy. You're a girl.

[38:45] You're a good student, or whatever it is. You know, I'm not knowing falsely, am I? No. You take simple examples, but then, you know, you go to Sherlock Holmes and saying, "We got to reason backwards. " Watson says, "What do you mean? From the effect to the cause, " he says. It's backwards as far as reality is concerned.

[39:12] And so, for the most part, we go from the effect to the cause. But then you pick up Spinoza, and he says, "The order in thoughts and the order in things is the same, right? " So, what comes first in reality is what we have our first thought of. Well, just just the contrary, right? And and and it gets in terrible confusions because he's identifying the order in our knowing with the order in things.

[39:43] Then you get to Hegel, you see. Hegel makes being the beginning of all reality, but that's really the most confused notion in our mind. So he's identifying what's or making correspond what's first in our mind, making it first in reality. Horrible confusion, right? So you see the tremendous result of this.

[40:09] It would be true if we were the makers of reality. Yeah, God doesn't really have order in His knowledge because it's all at once, right? But God, by knowing Himself, knows everything else, right? So if there were order in God's knowledge, He'd be going from the cause to the effect, right? This is a much better way of knowing. But see, they're they're influenced by the custom of mathematics, where because of the fact you're considering just an accident abstractly, you can know that these straight lines intersecting are straight before you see fully why those angles must be what equal, right?

[40:43] And we're the makers there. Yeah, yeah, but when you universalize and say you got to proceed everywhere as you do in geometry, well, now you're now you're you're really fouling things up.

[41:07] You know the cause before the effect. You know, you know why your wife is angry before you know she's angry. You know she's, you know why she's upset before you know she's upset. In my experience of married life.

[41:24] It's a different sense of man-made. And even sometimes you're making, you know, you see, by this garage, you know, huh? Yeah. Dion gave a little course one time in the premium, you know, you can get the one of those French store things, you know, that really, you know, talking about the importance of the premium so

[42:01] you saw Dion more clearly than the other man the importance of these premium Aristotle, not just a foreword in a loose sense or a preface, you know.

[42:15] Yeah, premium means paving the way, right? And then you you read the modern philosophers, you realize you don't really have a premium in this strict sense. it's like John the Baptist yeah.

[42:34] I mentioned, you know, how in the English edition they had the documents of Vatican II, in the De Verbum there, on scripture and so on the English edition said beginning there introduction, you know, a little thing, and then chapter one, so, and then someone gave me the official Latin text, and it says premium, didn't say introduction. The introduction means you're what leading somebody into something, right? So a whole course could be an introduction, but premium is always something very short at the beginning, huh?

[43:12] That has a very definite purpose, and in Plato, huh, in the Timaeus, huh, which is more like a treatise than the it's not really a dialogue that you're in any sense so much. Timaeus has a premium, it's identified as a premium,

[43:36] and there's a pause in a little, you know, a bit before between the premium and the main part of the thing, and Socrates praises, Socrates praises

[43:50] Timaeus for the excellence of his premium, right? So there's you can see Aristotle, you know, is perhaps indebted there to Plato, right? Who's beginning to see the importance of the premium in the treatise, you know, it's a little different in a dialogue, you know, that is not that formal, the dialogue, but and when you read that premium in the Greek, especially, and Timaeus is talking about how you can't talk about things in the same way, and so on, it reminds me, you know, a little bit of the Aristotle's strictures there in the beginning, of Nicomachean Ethics, but we can't have the same certitude here because these things are somewhat changeable and so on.

[44:32] And to me, it's the same. You can't talk in the same way about changeable and unchangeable things. So I, I've seen Plato use the word premium in another sense than this one here, and

[44:53] I think at the end of the, well, at the end of the first book of the Republic, right, where he's kind of shown the truth, but then somebody says at the beginning of the second book, Socrates, do you want to seem to have convinced us, or do you really want to convince us? And Socrates says, Well, I really want to convince you. And then you see that maybe that first book was kind of concise, and and

[45:20] and then Socrates, I think, says, you know, it turned out to be just a premium, right? You see, and then they go through what books two through nine there, where he blows it up so they can see it big by comparing the parts of the soul to the parts of the what city, right? And that's premium in a different sense than all these things are. The premium in Plato that is this sense and probably the stricter sense of the word, paving the way, right, rather than going through it in a in a in that way, is the premium in the the Timaeus, right?

[46:00] You know, should we read Plato or read Aristotle? You know, if you know Aristotle, you read. Plato. Carefully, you see how much he got out of Plato, right? And some things he took over from Plato, and other things he criticized. But he developed his own thinking by criticizing them too. So he's very indebted to Plato. But when you get now, when you get to these questions, you see the supreme importance of Plato, right?

[46:23] You know, in the second group of questions, right? We'll leave that delicious tidbit till we get there. But you realize the importance of Plato, especially for wisdom. Does the proemium prepare the hearer so that he's then able to continue to learn that certain sorts of ability? No, it kind of paves the way. It's more like the you know the prologue to Romeo and Juliet. That kind of prepares you for a tragedy, right?

[47:00] And even something of the order of it, and so on. Dion said the most essential thing in proemium is the scope is what you're aiming at, right? And then if something of the desirability what you're aiming at, that that next, right? So prepares the mind. Yeah. To know what it's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if but if the road to follow in this knowledge can be elaborated a bit, it's not too difficult to see something of that might be in the proemium right So in the proemium to Natural Hearing, he shows that we ought to consider these things in general before in particular, right?

[47:38] Is something of the order. He doesn't do that here, because he's got enough on his hands, right? And it's very difficult to know what the road to follow within wisdom should be.

[47:49] And that's going to be brought out more later on. So not every premium goes as far, right? And some things are more cut and dried, like the premium to the Peri Hermeneias, you know. It's really time you're going to talk about what is what is a noun, what is a verb, what is a statement, you know, what is speech, what is affirmation, negation, you know. It's just about that, you know, that big ball.

[48:13] That's a very, very clear cut work, you know. The Peri Hermeneias is much easier in some sense than the categories. The categories are a kind of

[48:25] problem. Once in a while, Dion said that premium is not given at the very beginning. That's kind of an exception to the rule. The categories in one place and the other. The other one he took was Dionysus.

[48:51] So you're pretty bad shape on that when it's a premium. Well, I got something else first, you know. Not sure I fully understood that part of the master's teaching. He said,

[49:10] "But in talking about the categories, he said that, and he referred me to the to Dionysius. You know, Dionysius exceeds Thomas's understanding. How much more mind? How much more mind? How much more mind? If Dionysius is above Thomas, and Thomas is above me, then if it's very Dionysius, it's above me.