Wisdom (Metaphysics 2006, Colorado)
56. Why Dialectic Comes First: Contradiction, Right Questions and Universal Doubt in Aristotle's Wisdom, Book III
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7b-wisdom-2006-colorado/056-why-dialectic-comes-first-contradiction-right-questions-and/

[0:00] Because I suppose, as Heraclitus says, nature loves to hide, and sometimes I quote after the phrase, "the hidden harmony is better than the apparent harmony." And then I'll quote the fragment where he says, "Nature loves to hide."

[0:23] So there are many reasons why the harmony of nature, you could say, is hidden from us. But the first reason is that nature is a cause what? Internal, and we know the external. Yeah, yeah, yeah. First. But if if nature loves to hide, even more so, could you say God loves to hide, right? Because he's behind nature. Yeah, and so, I mean, immaterial and so on. And he's more inner than the innermost.

[0:53] Yeah, yeah. So that's part of the reason, right? Okay. Let's look a little bit here at the second reason Aristotle gives, and the third reason. The second and the third reasons are connected,

[1:14] because the second reason is going to say, you don't know where you're going unless you see the contradiction, the difficulty, and you don't know, and this is the third reason, when you've arrived unless you saw the contradiction first.

[1:39] And what he seems to be saying there is that seeing the contradiction points out, in a way, where something is hidden, because it's hidden underneath the contradiction. And so, seeing the contradiction in a way tells you where to go in the direction of untying that contradiction. It also tells you that there is something to look for. Yeah, yeah, but it tells you, in a sense, where to look, where to go, because it's hidden underneath that contradiction.

[2:17] But then, when you succeed in untying the contradiction, making your discovery, you see that the contradiction disappears. That's a sign that you have arrived. You know when you arrived when the difficulties and the contradictions disappear. Okay. So an example there from our Lord in the Gospel of Matthew, the twenty-second chapter, where he interrogates the the Pharisees, and he says, "What do you think about Christ? Whose son is he?"

[3:00] And they say, "David's." And then he quotes another passage from the Psalms there, where David calls Christ his Lord. Well, how can he be his son if David calls him Lord? The Father is not inferior to the Son, right? Well, there is an apparent contradiction even in sacred Scripture, and our Lord is bringing that out. But hidden under this apparent contradiction is a profound truth that Christ is both God and man.

[3:37] And then you can explain why he can be a son of David, descendant as man for the flesh from David, right? But as God, suddenly he's the Lord of what David and so on. But you could bring out other apparent contradictions like that in Scripture, you know, where Christ might say the Father is greater than I, and then the one where he says the Father and I are one and so on.

[4:05] Well, as man he's less than the Father; he's less than himself as as God too. But as God, he is equal to what the Father. So hidden under these apparent contradictions is some profound truth. But a sign that you have arrived at the truth is that the contradiction disappears. And Einstein, in talking about the the theory of relativity, even the special one, that the strength of it lies in which it unties all those difficulties, huh?

[4:44] The consistency and simplicity of the theory, so it's free from contradictions now, or the contradictions that were there before. And when Bohr applied the the quantum to the atom, the contradictions begin to what disappear, huh? You see, and that's a sign that you've made some progress, that you've arrived to to some extent, huh? In the same way, when when we untied the contradiction in in our friend Anaxagoras,

[5:13] that contradiction told us there was something hidden here about the mind's self-ruling, how it really takes place, right? And when we arrived at the time of that contradiction and saw that there is a distinction between what the mind knows and what it doesn't know, right? And it's ruled what it does know, but what it does know, the contradiction disappears between those two things. And now we've that's a sign for us that we've arrived.

[5:40] Okay. And it's interesting that that second thing, and this will come out again in the fourth reason, right? But the second, the third reason, but the second part of this twofold thing, is touching now upon what not just discovery, but judging that what you've discovered is in fact the the truth, huh?

[6:04] Now, in a way, this goes back to the sophistical objection of Meno in the dialogue called *Meno*, because Socrates admits he doesn't know what virtue is, and in the conversation, the first major conversation with Meno, he shows Meno that he doesn't know what virtue is either. Now Socrates says, "Let's put our two heads together and try to find out what virtue is." At that point, Meno gives a sophistical objection: "How can we go looking for what we don't know?

[6:42] How can we direct our thinking, our investigation, to what we don't know? We don't know what we're looking for, so how can we aim at it? " But then Meno goes on and adds, "And how would we know whether we had what found it, because we didn't know what we were looking for? " It's like me saying to you, "Will you go out and get me one.

[7:06] " Well, merely by chance you'd get it, huh? You couldn't go and get me one, and how would you know if you happen to get what I wanted? if That's what I wanted, you see. But Aristotle, in a sense, is giving the solution to that. He's saying, seeing the contradiction, will tell you in a way where the unknown is, so the unknown

[7:36] is in some imperfect way known. It's known as the solution to the problem. Well, in a way, yeah, yeah. And then when you untie the contradiction, right? That's evidence, witness that you have advanced, huh? That you have arrived in a way, huh? So Aristotle, in a sense, is solving the sophistical objection of of Meno, huh? To some extent, with this thing, but these two go together, just like they went together in Meno's objection, huh?

[8:09] If I don't know what I'm looking for, I can't go looking for it, really. And if I happen to get what I'm, you know, get it, I wouldn't know it I've gotten it. But Aristotle saying, no, this will tell you where you're going, and will help you to know when you've gotten there. But to the man who hasn't considered the difficulty, doesn't know it's been unravelled, huh?

[8:32] Doesn't know that he's arrived, that he's made made progress, huh? So that's that's like you can't really know the answer unless you know the question. Well, I sometimes say to students, you know, when I'm giving Meno's thing there, I said, "Now, when the student asks a question, does know what he wants to know? " If he knows what he wants to know, why bother to ask the question?

[8:54] Because he always got the answer, right? If he doesn't know what he wants to know, how can I help him? Right? Doesn't he know what he wants to know, huh? And so the person who asks a question has to. In some way, in some imperfect way, know what it is he doesn't know. And I say, "What's your name? I don't know your name, but in some way, I know what I'm looking for, right?

[9:22] " And again, you have the that kind of mistake was mistake of mixing up what is so simply and what is not so simply, but in some way. And this Hegel used to attack uh uh Kant, not Kant talking about the thing in itself is unknown. Well, how are you talking about it then if it's unknown? Well, Kant wasn't there to defend himself, but Kant doesn't seem to be aware too much of the distinction between what is so simply and what is not so simply, but in some imperfect way.

[9:59] And so, to know that something is unknown involves knowing it in some way, but there's an appearance of contradiction there if you don't see that there's a distinction between what is so simply and what is not so simply. And that happens a lot.

[10:23] A beautiful thing for this second reason here. that Aristotle gave beautiful example in Heisenberg's on Gifford lectures. The second lecture, I think it is, the second chapter, when they put it into physics and philosophy, is where Heisenberg is giving a kind of summary of the history of quantum theory and just the main steps.

[10:55] And at one point, he makes what I think is a very interesting statement. He says, in the course of narrating the history, he says it was at one point. He says it was at this point that the physicists began. He says to ask the right question,

[11:17] and to ask the right question, he says, is often to go more than halfway to the truth. Right. I think I mentioned before that impress upon the minds of students what Heisenberg is saying. First of all, right.

[11:38] I draw a straight line in the board, a finite straight line. It's the only kind you can draw on the board, by the way. And I mark the left end point ignorance and the right end point knowledge. Right. And I put a line halfway down the thing. I say now this line represents the time and the effort it takes to go from ignorance to knowledge. Right. Now the average guy would think where along this line comes asking the right question, or they think well, maybe towards the beginning, right?

[12:16] That you spend most of your time and effort answering the question rather than asking the question, right? But Heisenberg is making the very interesting thing from his own experience as a physicist that asking the right question is often more than halfway to the knowledge. So you spend more time and more effort before you ask the right question than you spend time and effort after you ask the right question to get to the end.

[12:55] That's like a seed. A seed takes more time. Yeah. Starting looks like it's doing nothing, and then. Yeah. Now I've had that experience myself as a philosopher that I spend more time and effort in thinking before I ask the right question than after I ask the right question. I remember in graduate school there was a question that kind of.

[13:25] Problem that kind of bothered me when undergraduate and had not been resolved and still had it when I was in graduate school and then it became kind of relevant to my thesis so and I was meeting Thomas at one time and reading and listening to Monsignor and so on and I asked the right question and bang there the answer was almost you know and you know I hadn't been thinking you know for six seven eight years where I was continuously about this problem but I mean I've been thinking about on and off you know and and it's been back in my mind and I was kind of surprised and so um, I thought I'd go down and check and see with Monsignor Dionne what thought

[14:03] about my answer and so on so I came down and I said to Dion I asked the question I just you know asked and he said to me I know where you're going I said well damn it can I go there and so let me go there I agreed with it you know so I a little bit you know experienced there of what the great Heisenberg was saying

[14:31] now to ask the right question or let's say something more general first every investigation takes the direction of the questions asked right and so to ask the right question is to go in the right direction and you know how in the courtroom when they ask certain line of questions you don't like this line of question because you know where it's going okay so to ask the right question is to go in the right direction which is connected here with what Aristotle says in number two but now go back into the text of Heisenberg he says talking about a certain point in their investigations and he says at this point the physicists began to ask the right questions and to ask the right question he says

[15:28] to go more than halfway what were these questions he says almost all of them were concerned he says with the strange apparent contradictions between the experiments

[15:45] so it's when they saw these strange apparent contradictions between the experiments that they started to ask the right questions and that took them more than halfway to it huh well I think that that very interesting huh because Aristotle says you don't know where you're going huh you can't direct yourself towards what you don't know unless you see the contradictions right and seeing these contradictions or these strange apparent contradictions anyway between the experiments That led the physicists to ask the right questions, and to ask the right questions is to go in the right direction.

[16:26] So it's a beautiful confirmation of what the philosopher is saying here, but also a great testimony to Heisenberg's understanding of these things. But Bohr was saying the same thing. I was quoting him earlier. The physicists who worked with Bohr, he really impressed this upon them, and he always started in his conversations with paradox, and then gradually he would what elucidate that paradox and untie it. But he was saying, you know, to the students of elementary particles there was into his life that they weren't making progress because they had not yet seen a sufficiently violent contradiction between that and current ideas that would give them a what indication of how they had to where they had to go, right, in order to advance their knowledge.

[17:26] So the second and the third reasons are separate reasons, but they kind of go together, and you can see that already in the objection of Meno huh. If you don't know where you're going, you certainly can't know when you arrived. So you need to see the contradictions both to know where you're going, because you're going in the direction of untieing these contradictions, and

[17:51] you can't know well that you've arrived because if you haven't seen those contradictions, because you untie those contradictions, the contradiction is disappearing is a sign that you've arrived or made progress in where you're going.

[18:11] Now the last one he gives is involved. Has a likeness to our rhetoric, which is to some extent more known to us. And we think that the jury in the courtroom is more able to judge whether a man is guilty or not guilty if they've heard both sides. And so we think there should be a lawyer trying to show that he is guilty, and another lawyer trying to show he is not guilty, and both trying to give some reason for what they say.

[18:53] And that if the jury only heard one of these lawyers, they would not be in as good a position to judge what the truth is about this man on trial. As they are, they've heard both sides. So likewise, in philosophy, except you're dealing now with the universal question rather than individual man or something, if you heard the arguments for and against, you're more able to judge where the truth lies.

[19:24] So he says, "Further, beltion that one is better had necessarily towards krinaya to judge, right? " And then he makes a comparison to those listening to a courtroom. It goes in a trial, the jury, right?

[19:45] So notice the way he goes from discovery now to towards judgment. Discovery tends to come before judgment. Grasping before judging, just like guessing before knowing. So dialectic not only helps you to discover, but also to judge. Of course, the third reason, in a way, was judgment too, wasn't it? Because when you say that I've untied the contradiction, then you kind of judge that you have arrived. If you haven't seen the contradictions, you don't know they've been untied or have not been untied, right?

[20:27] Now, Thomas Aquinas in the commentary says that for these four reasons, Aristotle also uses dialectic in other books, like, for example, in Book Four of Natural Hearing, you have a dialectic about place before Aristotle tries to define the truth, and there's some about time and so on.

[20:51] But he points out a difference in the dialectic here, in the third book, and in the other books of Aristotle, that here you have a whole book devoted to dialectic, and in see the eight books of Natural Hearing, the dialectic is piecemeal, right? There's a little dialectic in Book One, and then untying of that, and then the resolution. And then there's another one, say for place, another one for time, okay?

[21:24] But here you have kind of a universal doubt, okay? And then in books four through fourteen, you're going to be untying all the doubts and all the knots that have been raised in book three. Well, why this difference, right? Why this kind of universal doubting? Well, here,

[21:51] well, he gives one reason that it belongs to the wise man to have a universal consideration of truth, not a piecemeal consideration of truth that you have before that. And so you have kind of a universal doubt here, but much different from what Descartes, Descartes' universal doubt is not a result of doubting well, but by an act of the will. He says, set aside everything, right? So setting aside the obvious as well as the unobvious, all kinds of things.

[22:24] So he's not doubting well, but secondly, Descartes' universal doubt comes at the very beginning almost of his philosophy, and that's how he arrives at the cogito. You know how he does that. Where Aristotle has universal doubt here in the last part of philosophy, and yeah, now maybe there's a reason why a universal doubt in the beginning of philosophy will get you nowhere because the mind will simply break down.

[22:58] That's kind of the result of that in the modern philosophers. You know, you get as a professor, I get free introductions to philosophy ad nauseam through the mail, unsolicited, unpaid for, hoping I'll adopt this expensive book for my course and I'll make some more money through my students, huh? But you know, it's kind of universal doubt about all things, from the existence of God to you know morality and so on.

[23:31] And is the mind ready for a universal doubt in the beginning? Is that the way to? you see, no. You need to give him a little bit of dialectic for, and then untie that, right? And then again, you know, another little dialectic and untie that, and so on. You can't have this, you know. It's not appropriate to the beginning, huh? Because you you can't even doubt till you know something.

[23:57] Yeah, yeah. Knowing something first. Yeah. So one reason he gives then why we have this kind of universal doubt here, or the whole dialectic, is because of this, you know, universal consideration of the philosopher, the wise man, that is to say. That's why children have to believe everything you say until they. Yeah. Yeah. Now he gives another reason, and that is that they got into these doubts sometimes proceeding in a wildly different way.

[24:27] The Aristotle thinks you have to find the truth, so they jump up to the what you know world of the forms and so on, and sink back to the sensible world. From that world, Aristotle wants to go from the sensible to what cannot be sensed. So he wants to, in this book, go through the doubts that arise from their wildly different ways of proceeding, right? And then determine the truth in the order it has to be determined later on.

[24:58] And then he gives a third reason from Averroes, and that's because of the likeness between dialectic and wisdom. You know, how Plato in the Republic makes dialectic the highest there, makes it the same as wisdom. He says we have a likeness between dialectic in its universality and wisdom in its universality, so that dialectic becomes like a principal part of wisdom, which you have a whole book devoted to it.

[25:26] It's not really doesn't have that likeness to any other part of philosophy. And I sometimes you know go back to what Thomas says there when you talk about the the fifth book here. In the fifth book, Aristotle spends a whole book distinguishing the senses of words, equivocal by reason? huh They say, well, in other books, you know, in the fourth book of Natural hearing he distinguishes the senses of the word in and out.

[25:58] But it's only one word he's doing there, right? Okay, in the categories, he's distinguishing the word before and after and a few other words. But here you have a whole book devoted just to distinguishing the senses of a word. Well, there you see again this likeness to dialectic, because the second tool of dialectic is the tool of distinguishing the senses of a word. This is similarity, right?

[26:24] That the whole the whole book seems to be like dialectic insofar as it's distinguishing the senses of a word, and this is most appropriate to the dialectician. So that's a very interesting reason that Averroes gives there, and Thomas thinks it's worthwhile communicating to us.

[26:47] Aristotle does later on, I guess in the fourth book, point out the likeness between wisdom and dialectic, and even the likeness between wisdom and sophistry, because the sophist wants to appear to be wise, right? So he has a certain likeness to

[27:08] wisdom. But actually, dialectic and sophistic are two sides of the same thing, because. The sophist is dealing with the the sorts of irritations is about the mistakes can be made everywhere, and dialectic is applicable to every subject matter. And the second tool of dialectic, say the tool of distinguishing the senses of word, is useful among other things for avoiding the fallacy of equivocation, the most common fallacy that the sophists

[27:47] are using. Okay, so let's turn now here to the enumeration. Let us say of the questions, and this will occupy the second and the third readings, which, as far as we shall go this summer, because in the fourth reading we'll start the dialectic about each one of the questions. But we'll touch a little bit upon the difficulty of some of these questions as we go through them, and so on.

[28:21] Now, there's about 23 questions that Aristotle is going to enumerate. You can maybe subdivide some of them, but basically, the way Thomas divides them, and so on, there's about 23 questions,

[28:41] and the first nine of them are in this second reading, and then the remaining 14 are in the third reading. And this literary or editorial and reference division there of the second and third correspond to the logical and understandable division for the most part of these questions, and to the order of them, right? And Thomas recalls what Aristotle taught us at the end of the second book of wisdom that it's one thing, you know, to try to acquire an episteme; it's another thing to know the road or the way you ought to follow in acquiring that knowledge.

[29:40] And it's not easy, he says, to get either one, right? Okay, and that you have to know the road to follow in knowledge over road before you can acquire well that knowledge over road.

[30:01] So the determination of the road to follow comes before going down that road to its end and halting, having episteme. But how do you determine the road to follow? Well, you have to know what that reasoned out knowledge is about. So the first nine questions are, for the most part, and we'll see there's a couple exceptions, and there's a reason for that. But for the most part, the first nine questions are concerning what wisdom is about,

[30:48] because you have to know what wisdom is about before you can know the road to follow in wisdom. And then the fourteen questions in the next reading, the thirteenth reading, are questions

[31:07] about the causes, which are what wisdom is about mainly. Now we'll see in this first group of nine questions, there's a couple of questions that are about substance in itself. Are there only material substances, right? Or are there also immaterial substances?

[31:37] And the second question in that line, if there are immaterial substances, is there one like the greater mind of Anaxagoras, or are there many like the forms of Plato and the mathematical maybe substances of Plato too? Now those are not questions as regards what wisdom is about. They're questions about substance in itself.

[32:04] But they're stuck in after three questions about what substances is wisdom about. Okay. And that those questions about what substances are wisdom about are complicated by if they're complicated, if there are immaterial substances, then would there be the same reasoned out knowledge about material substances and immaterial substances?

[32:37] Yes. And someone might argue, well, you know, material substances through your senses. You don't know immaterial substances if you know them through your senses. You know them in some other way. Well, how could you have the same knowledge then of separated substances or angels and dogs and cats and trees? It seems not, right? But then if you have one about material substances and one about immaterial substances, which is wisdom, right?

[33:11] And what happens to the idea that wisdom is what a knowledge of all things? Neither one would be a knowledge of all things, right? On the other hand, if you tried to have one knowledge of all substances, it doesn't seem they're known at all in the same way. So how can you do this?

[33:30] But if there are two, are they kind of you know two generically wisdoms? You know, They act a little bit you know like geometry and arithmetic, which you both put under what mathematical philosophy. But there's a you could say the geometry is not really the same thing as arithmetic. And so, but all those questions. Are tied up with the related question about the things themselves. Are there indeed immaterial substances as well as material substances?

[34:06] And if so, is there more than one kind of immaterial substance or not? So, because of the connection between those, right? And Aristotle, in a sense, is proceeding here in the previous questions I just mentioned from the difficulties that arise if there are indeed immaterial substances, right? Which is going to be this isn't going to be about both or just one, and so on. But you can't separate altogether those questions from the question: Are there, in fact, immaterial substances as well as material substances?

[34:43] So he sticks in those two questions about substances in themselves, following the three questions on what substance wisdom is about, and so on. Because you can't, there is a connection between the two, right? But when he gets to the dialectic later on, those questions about substance itself are pulled out as a separate part of the dialectic. You see, okay, so that's a little complication, you know. They can say for the most part the first nine questions are about what wisdom is about, but the complication about what substance is about is due to the fact of these questions about what in reality is the situation, right?

[35:29] Do you see that? Why does Thomas say it's about the mode? Well, because. And then he says the second part is about the. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now he's speaking for the most part here in the first part, right? Yeah I said the other two questions are stuck in, and Thomas would note that. But why is the mode the same? Because because the mode has to be determined by seeing what road or what way of proceeding fits the matter of the science, right?

[36:04] What the science is about. So he has to determine what wisdom is about before he can find the road or the way of going forward that fits what wisdom is about. So the mode and what's its what is about is connected because the mode needs to fit the matter, and the matter is what it's about. Yeah, yeah, he's not trying to determine exactly the mode here, but what is necessary to determine the mode, and that is knowing what wisdom is about, right?

[36:38] So Thomas sees the order of the questions in book in reading two coming before the questions in reading three. Yes. Because the questions in reading two are relevant to, as we know from the end of book two, to determining the. Road, yeah, and you have to do that in a way before you can really pursue the science fully. So the second set of questions and the third reading are for are the questions necessary to go down the road?

[37:13] Yeah, the questions about the things themselves that wisdom is about, and primarily about the causes themselves, right? Yeah. Now you could say you could say also that wisdom is not just about the causes or about the first causes. In some way, it's about all things, right? And all things are either substances or accidents.

[37:44] So he's going to have questions here about substance. Those five questions I've touched upon a bit already, and there'll be three questions about accidents.

[37:56] But you could say that the two questions about substance themselves is really distinct from both of these two groups, right? And in the dialectic, there will be like a separate part of the dialectic, but they are stuck in here, right? Because Aristotle wants to point to their connection of them with these questions, right? If you think that there are both material and immaterial substances, right, then there arises the question: Is there one wisdom about both, right?

[38:35] Or is there one knowledge of one and another knowledge of the other, right? And then you know, if there's two different knowledges, which is wisdom, right? Or is wisdom a generic thing like mathematics and geometry or arithmetic? You know, the questions of that sort. So in both parts, the subject is involved, but in one case, you're considering the subject as as matter or something. No, no, I say

[39:06] the first nine questions are apart from the little complication there, right? Of those two questions about substance themselves, the first nine questions are really what is wisdom about, right? But isn't what wisdom about the subject of wisdom? Yeah, yeah, but these are questions about the things themselves in themselves, right? But wither wisdom is about them.

[39:36] It's one thing to say what is the soul, right? Another thing to say these three books there, the De Anima, are about the soul, right? Okay.

[39:53] Okay. So it's the difference between seeing what is the knowledge and what is the knowledge of. No, one is is a is a group of questions about the things themselves, right? And in the third reading, it's questions about the causes themselves. What are the causes, right? And the disagreement among the Greek philosophers before him as to what the causes really are. And these two questions about substance that I mentioned are stuck in here, are also about the things themselves, right?

[40:33] See, in in in rerum natura, in reality, are there really, you know, immaterial substances as well as immaterial substances we all know about? And if there are, are they just like the one that Anaxagoras talked about, or are they like these forms that Plato talked about and these mathematical things, right? You see, that's about the things themselves, right? But then,

[41:06] depending partly upon the answer to those questions, there are questions now: is wisdom about all these, or just some of these, or are there two wisdoms? You know, questions of that sort, right? So then, the first is questions about what wisdom is. What wisdom is about. And that's necessary, says to do first, because that's presupposed as seeing what is the road to follow in wisdom, what is the way of going forward in wisdom.

[41:42] And that's where we're taught. He says it in the fifth reading of the second book, that we have to know the road and way of going forward before we can acquire well, anyway, the reasoned-out knowledge that has that road. And we can't acquire knowledge of that road without knowing what that reasoned-out knowledge is about, so that we can see what road or way of going forward fits that matter and how we are, how our mind is towards that matter.

[42:18] Now. The eight questions, or the nine questions rather, you could perhaps distinguish the first question from the last eight, because the first one is saying about what kinds of causes is wisdom, and the other eight is more going back to what we saw in the first attribute of the wise man. He knows all things in some way, yeah. And all things are either substances or accidents, and so there'll be eight questions about substances and accidents.

[42:57] The first five of them being about substance, and the last three about accidents, huh? But those eight questions about the things could be distinguished from the first question here about the causes, huh? And so he says there is a doubt first, huh? About those things which we have doubted a little bit already in the Perì tôn aporiôn? Now notice there you've got a little bit like the idea of premium, huh?

[43:31] And Thomas does call the second book in the commentary, if you look at it, a premium in a way, huh? Okay, and it's a premium now in a little different sense than we, the premium we studied in the last couple of days, huh? And the second book is a bit

[43:54] more like the sense of premium there in the Republic of Plato, right? For the first book of the Republic is what turned out to be a premium, Socrates says, huh? Because they weren't really convinced, right? Although in a way he's given good arguments for what he said and so on, but it was kind of hard to see the arguments and so on, and so now he's going to blow it up big, right?

[44:17] Okay. So it's interesting, huh? That he uses the word premium in another sense, maybe halfway between the two senses in Plato, right? But certainly not the kind, exactly the sense that he had in the in the first part that Dion gives for the course, huh? Because that first sense of premium is where every book of Aristotle has a premium, huh? It's usually very short, huh? The other sense is the first part of the treatise.

[44:57] Yeah, but it's got to have a certain completeness in itself too, not just the first ten theorems in Euclid or something like that, right?

[45:14] But it's not simply you know giving you the scopus and paving the way in that sense. You're you're going more into it, huh? It's more like an introduction almost. huh leading into a little