Wisdom (Metaphysics 2016)
3. Metaphysics I Proemium: Knowledge, Experience, Art, and the Six Marks of the Wise Man; Wisdom as Looking, Liberal and Divine Knowledge
Class of 2016-06-09
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/003-metaphysics-i-proemium-knowledge-experience-art-and-the-six/

[0:00] In the Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the, Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, guardian angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas, Dios Gracias. God, our enlightenment. God, help us to understand and love you.

[0:20] Guardian angels, lights of our minds, ordains human images, and arouses us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, pray for us and help us to understand all that you have written. Father, Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Interesting, he's got the word understanding here, right? Okay. Now, let's recall a little bit what he did in the first what reading.

[0:53] What does he base himself upon, right? What he wants to say about wisdom. And just before we get into that for a second, huh?

[1:05] Would you distinguish between knowledge and wisdom? Yes. Okay. Well, how would you distinguish between the two? Knowledge is the knowledge is the the matter, the tools. Wisdom is the judgment, as far as how to use it, how to how to put it together, how to understand it properly, how to understand it rightly. Yeah, but isn't that part of knowing? It is, but knowledge, I was thinking, is knowledge is.

[1:56] How to put it? The tools, but the wisdom is the use of the tools use of the tools. Doesn't Thomas? Doesn't Aristotle in the texture say that wisdom is knowledge, and the wise man? He always says, you know, leading up to it, that the man of art or science knows more than the man of experience, and he gives a very good reason why he knows more because he he knows the cause, right, and is able to teach.

[2:24] It's a sign of it, right? Okay. It's a little bit like you know this distinction we make between is loving and liking to be distinguished, or is loving something liking it?

[2:46] At the risk of further embarrassing myself, loving includes liking, but liking doesn't necessarily include loving. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a subset of liking. Now to quote my daughter, really, you know, she said, "I don't like this. I love it," you know. And the point is that loving is more intense thing than liking, right? So you could say loving is an intense liking, right? Huh? Okay.

[3:16] And therefore, you got to be careful with those words, right? You know, Aristotle says in the book on sophistic refutations, the book on fallacies, right? The most common mistake is that of equivocation, right? And so, in one sense, you would divide loving against liking, like in the words of my daughter there, right? But another sense, you could of the word liking, you could say in general that loving is a kind of liking, right?

[3:44] See, and like in the categories there, when Aristotle, you know, will say that habit is a what firm disposition, so that it comes under disposition. It is a disposition. In that case, it's not distinguished from it, right? Except general from the particular. And then he'll sometimes divide habit against a what disposition, right? Because a disposition that's easily lost keeps the name disposition, but a firm, you know, thing that's ingrained and and kind of natural, as Cicero says, right?

[4:18] Is called a what habit, right? So a habit is like a second nature, right? Okay, but if I'm moody today or something, I'm a little depressed today or something, you know. That's not you know second nature to me. you say It's just a disposition Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so you got to be careful there, right? When you distinguish disposition and habit, right? Or liking or loving, right?

[4:41] Huh? You got to know what you're doing, right? And so likewise with knowledge and wisdom, right? So knowledge and wisdom, wisdom in some senses is some kind of knowledge, right? But it's the most what perfect knowledge, the most complete knowledge, right? Okay. Now Aristotle wants to talk in a premium, you know, among other things, among the the goodness of what he's going to be concerned with in this book, right?

[5:08] Huh? And he begins by pointing out in the first paragraph, if you recall, that knowledge is something really good, right? And the sign he gives as something really good is that we naturally what Desire desire it, right? Huh? Okay. The good is what all want, right? And if something's naturally desired, then that's a very good sign that it's something really good, right? And then he starts to talk after that, right, about the order in our knowledge, right?

[5:44] We're talking about the order in the natural road in our knowledge, the road from the senses into reason. And at the beginning, this road comes sensing itself, of course, and then after sensing comes memory, remembrance of what you have sensed, right? And then after memory comes experience when you bring together many memories of the same kind of thing, and then finally, out of memory comes some kind of knowledge of the universal.

[6:16] So when you see, you know, you see your first dog, you see your first dog, let's say, right? You say, you know, mommy says, mommy says, a dog, you know, it's a dog. And then the next day, there's a dog in the yard too, or something. You say, look at the dog, huh? And then finally, some day, the little child says, mommy, there's a dog in the thing, and he's, you know, separate out what's common to these his experience of dogs, huh?

[6:42] And he now sees the universal, right? Okay. But then he brings out what the difference here between this universal knowledge and experience, huh? And he's using the word art for this knowledge of the universal. It's not art is distinguished from science, but art. And so, in the beginning of the first complete paragraph on page two, there, he says, nevertheless, we think that knowing and understanding belong more to art than experience, and we hold that the artists are wiser than experience, right?

[7:26] So that wisdom follows knowledge and all, right? The idea that wisdom is a kind of knowledge, but the ultimate knowledge, and he gives a reason why we think the artist is wiser than a man of experience. This is because they know why, huh? They know the cause which the others do not. The experience know that it is so, but do not know why it is so, right, huh?

[7:53] But these know why it is so and the what cause, so the idea is, you know, husbands know that their wives are upset about something, right, huh? And you know from experience that if they do this or don't do this, they'll be in trouble, right, huh? But you know why? Why? Why does that bother the woman, right?

[8:14] And sometimes, there you see on TV or something like that. You know, they got a psychologist there and just go explain why people are annoyed by this or are annoyed by that, right, huh? And they look to the psychologist as being in some way wiser, right? Because he knows the what universals, but more precisely, because he he's supposed to know or thought to know why people are actually annoyed by this, right, huh?

[8:40] The husband just merely knows from experience that it is so, right? And he used you to avoid that, right? That reminds me of the objection to Euclid's demonstration that uh short distance between. Two points of a straight line. That's my. expression. So he says, if you have a an oblong, then the straightest line to the opposite opposite corners. Yeah. And the objection is that, well, everybody knows that you can't demonstrate that.

[9:11] Mm-hmm. And then the guy says, if you have an ass in the field, and he's in this corner for the food network, he's not going to run down there and there. And then the answer to the objection was, well, yes, the ass knows it's the shortest list but he doesn't know why. Now he goes on the next paragraph to speak of the man who not only knows the cause, but knows the cause of the cause, right?

[9:42] So not only do we think that the man of of art who knows the cause is wiser than the man of experience who merely knows that it is so, but we also think that the chief artists about each thing are more honorable and know more and are wiser than the handicraftsmen. Because they know the cause of the things made, right? So the chief artist knows the cause of the cause.

[10:08] For the latter are like inanimate things; they make, they do not know what they make, as fire burns, huh? Okay. And he gives the sign in next paragraph. On the whole, the sign of knowing is the ability to teach, right? Okay.

[10:26] Now, next one touches upon the universal again, as opposed to singular. Further, we think that no one of the senses is wisdom, although they are the chief ways of knowing singulars. Yeah. So I mean, you know, your memory sometimes is what fallacious, right? And so you go back and look, right? And then you see, you know, that your memory was or was not correct, right? So the senses are more what definitive, right?

[10:57] Huh? They're more certain. But the senses don't say why it is so, right? Body thing, right? Okay. Okay. Then in next paragraph, he says it is probable that the first one finding any art beyond the senses, common to all, was admired by men, not only because of the things found were useful, but also as being wise and distinguished from what others. Now he points out a distinction here: among arts, many arts having been found, some being for necessities, like the art of cooking, the art of farming, right, the art of carpentry, right, and some for passing the time pleasantly.

[11:42] These would be like the poetic arts, right? Always the finders of the latter were considered wiser, because their sciences are not for practical use. Okay. Now that's especially true for the Greeks, right? Because Homer says, I mean, she, I mean, Plato says Homer is the teacher of all the Greeks. You don't say some carpenter or some cook or some, you know, you know. And even we would probably think of Shakespeare as being wiser than the carpenter or the cook, right?

[12:17] Okay. Whence all these sciences having been built up, those sciences were founded neither for pleasure nor for what necessities, huh? Because Shakespeare says, "we'll strive to please you every day," right? At the end of the epilogue there in the plays. And first in those places where men had leisure, hence the mathematical sciences first began around Egypt, But there the priestly class was allowed leisure.

[12:46] Okay. Now he gives the conclusion here in the first reading. But that, for the sake of which we have now made a discourse, right? And we learned some things that are very important to know. That all knowledge is good, right? And the order in the first road in our knowledge, the road from the senses into reason, right? But as far as the primary purpose here, right? That for the sake of which we have now made a discourse is this: that all hold what is called wisdom to be about the first causes and beginnings, right?

[13:19] That comes out of what's been said before, right? If the man who knows the cause is wiser and more knowing than the man who just knows that it is so, well, wouldn't the man who knows the cause of the cause be considered even wiser? And therefore, wisdom would have to be about the what? First cause or beginnings, huh? Okay. So as has been said before, the experienced man seems to be wiser than any of those having mere sensation, right?

[13:57] So even the young person might have better senses than the old man, right? Doesn't have experience, doesn't seem to be as wise, right? The artist seems wiser than the experienced man because he knows why, right? The chief artist and the handicraftsman, and even the looking sciences, huh? More than the what making? And then he kind of backtracked and says, "Thus it is clear that wisdom is about beginnings and causes, " as if he hasn't shown this about the first causes, right?

[14:27] See how careful Aristotle is, right? And then he kind of takes up, you know, the question. Okay, it's about beginnings and causes. Now let's say, let's say like we didn't know there was about the first causes. Let's say about what causes is it? So since we seek such knowledge, is thought to be considered in the beginning of the second meeting. About what sort of causes and about what sort of beginnings is wisdom the what?

[14:54] Knowledge, huh? Perhaps he says, "philosophical modesty, as." Thomas would say it would become clearer if one took the thoughts we have about the wise man, right? And now Aristotle makes out a what six-part description of the wise man, right? Describes this in six things. So see if we can enumerate those six things, huh?

[15:22] We think first that the wise man knows all things so far as possible, not having a knowledge of these in what particular, right? So he knows the what universal, right, which covers a multitude of things, right?

[15:43] Now let's talk about that for a moment, right? Because there's two kinds of universality that Aristotle is touching upon here, right? And one in Latin used to call it the universale in causando. universal cause, universal in causing, and then the universale in predicando, the universal that is said of many, right? Okay. Now, is there a connection between these two universals?

[16:17] Well, let me take a very simple example to point out what the connection is. Suppose there is a kingdom, right, where the king rules, right, the whole kingdom, right. And under the king, there is a general in charge of the whole army, right? General, the army will call him.

[16:42] Now, who is the more universal cause, the king or the general of the army? Yeah, and the king commands the general of the army and says, "Go to war." You don't go to war or something, right? Um. Now, the causality of the general of the army extends to everyone who is a soldier, every one of whom soldier can be said, right? But the causality of the king extends to what?

[17:13] Every citizen, right? Okay. Now, which is more universal, citizen or soldier? Yeah. And taking a simplified example here, right? Every soldier is a citizen, right? A citizen army, but not every citizen is a what? Soldier. Yeah. So the more fundamental, the cause of the cause here, right, which is the king, right, because he commands the general of the army, right? His causality extends to something that is said of more, right?

[17:47] Extends to all citizens, and the causality of the general of the army extends only to those that are what? Soldiers, right? See. So if the wise man knows all things in general, then the wise man, the fullest sense, would be the man who knows what is said of all.

[18:10] That how that corresponds to being about the first cause. It's a different kind of causality, right? But they go together, right? Okay. If you want to understand the king's causality, you have to realize it extends to all citizens. To understand the general's causality, extends only to those citizens that are soldiers, right? Okay. So later on in the fourth book of wisdom, a long way to go, in the fourth book of wisdom, Aristotle says that wisdom is about being in one, which is said of everything, right?

[18:45] Everything that is in any way whatsoever is a being in some way, right? It may be a real being, it may be a being just a reason, but it's a being, right? And so it's interesting, right, that the first cause. Which is the most universal in causality, right? That in some way corresponds to that. What is most universal in being said of, right?

[19:19] Makes sense. So you got to kind of kind of stop and see how subtle this that right now. The first thing he says about that, right, no, no. I say the, you know, in Latin, Thomas will speak of it as the universal in causando, the universal in causation, and then the universal in predicando. And you don't want to confuse those two, right? See, if you want to confuse those two, you go to Hegel, right?

[19:53] Because Hegel works his way back to being, right now. And which is the most universal thought that our mind has, right? And he tries to generate the whole reality from the most universal and, in some sense, the most imperfect thought, most confused thought, in a sense, of our mind, right? Where, he's confusing the universal in what?

[20:23] Yeah, yeah. But to some extent, Plato did this too, right, with the so-called forms, right? Because where we have a universal in predicando, right? He had an abstract what, separate from matter, form from which these other things were partaking of it, right? So he was, to some extent, confusing the two what universality, and that's a very serious what mistake, right? You know.

[20:54] But when our weak mind wants to, you know, talk about the causality of the king, we'd have to explain, well, whom does he move, right? Well, he moves all the citizens in some way, right? His causality extends to everyone of whom citizen can be said, which is the other kind of causality, right? Okay. So I take my example there of, you know, general of the army MacArthur, right?

[21:20] Well, now the word general is like the word universal, right? But is MacArthur or the general of the army is he said of everyone? Everyone in the army is MacArthur? No, he's an individual, right? Whose command, whose causality extends to all these what soldiers, right? So soldier can be said of all these people, right? But MacArthur cannot, right? But MacArthur, MacArthur is general in a different way in causality, right?

[21:56] He's not general the way the soldier is, right? The king is general in a different way, right? Universal in a different way than citizen, right?

[22:09] Okay. The first cause is a general cause in a way different, right? Than being in one, right? Okay. So that's a very subtle thing, right? But nevertheless, there's a connection among them, right? So if we think the wise man knows everything in some way, now it's always just to say to class, and I'd say, now even the pejorative sense of wise guy, you know, what are you a wise guy?

[22:35] You're know-it-all? What are you? You heard that expression, haven't you? You're a wise guy, know-it-all. You know, that's how we say it, a wise guy. What are you, a know-it-all, right? Well, that's what a wise guy is. He knows it all, right? So, see. And that would, why you'd say later on,

[22:57] that he's going to speak about the difficulty of it, right? Then we think wise the one who is able to know things difficult and not easy for man to know, right? The sense is common to all, hence it is easy and nothing wise, right?

[23:16] So if I saw the tree out there, you say, oh, you're wise, huh? Okay. But I notice that there's something difficult about that, right? But as we move from the senses, which is a starting point, you know, as we've seen in the what first reading, right? But it's not the most difficult thing to know. The first cause is much more difficult to know. Okay. So those are two things he says about the wise man.

[23:44] He knows all things in some way, right? But not in particular, right? He knows what is said of all things, and he knows things very difficult for us to know, right? Okay. And the next two things he says, huh? We think wiser in every science the man who is more what certain and more able to teach the causes, right? Okay. Now we've already manifested that he knows the causes, right, in the first reading.

[24:14] But the idea of being more certain, right? Huh? Got to be kind of careful about that, right? Because if it's difficult to know, how can it be more certain? Say.

[24:31] Well, in knowing what's most universal, the wise man knows what the axioms, right? Aristotle discovered that the axioms are expressed in words that are equivocal by reason, right? And so in taking up being and one and so on, he distinguished senses of the words, right? And the order of the words, right? Huh? So he knows more distinctly than anybody else, right? The axioms, right? And they're the most certain of all.

[25:09] Okay. Now another way he might have some certitude that the surgeon comes to knowing the causes, right? But there's still a difficulty, and it's hard to be certain about the first cause, right? Huh? Okay. So you got to be kind of careful, right? Huh? Okay. And it reminds me of the famous thing when Aristotle is in the proemium to the De Anima, right? The three books about the soul.

[25:38] And he begins a little bit like he begins here. He says, you know, holding as we do that all knowledge is good. Remember mentioned this one time in a talk there at the Trivium School, right? And one of the fathers, you know, in the question for the afterwards said, well, but this sex education is doing a lot of harm. And

[26:11] That's kind of objection he's posing, right? Huh? He's saying, "Well, Aristotle is speaking as such, right? " See, but it can happen, right, that something as good as such can be what? Bad for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he says, "Knowing how to make a bomb, good. " It depends upon what your intentions are.

[26:39] Knowing how to shoot a gun, good. Well, what's his name knew how to shoot the president, right? And you know, so is knowledge as such is always good. That's Aristotle saying, right? Okay. Is bodily strength good? It's good to be strong.

[26:58] Okay, I mean, I may beat you up or something, right? You know, so it's not the knowledge as such, right? But it can for bad, right? So again, that distinction is hard people to see, right? So I had tried to explain that to this gentleman, right? I mean, I agree with him that this education was doing a lot of harm, right? Huh? Okay. I always tell the story, you know, doing with the kids here when they're little, you know, going through the commandments.

[27:24] And I said, What's adultery, Daddy? So I didn't think it was appropriate to give a very explicit knowledge of what adultery was. I said, "They wanted to say something. " I said, "It's stealing somebody's mother or father. " That sounds pretty bad, right? And it's true, right? I said that's as far as I went, right? As much knowledge as as was suitable for them at that time.

[27:48] And okay. But Aristotle then says, although we hold that all knowledge is good, one knowledge is better than another, right? Either because we're knowing a better thing, right? Something that's better to know, or because we're knowing it better, that is with more certitude, right? Okay.

[28:18] And so Aristotle gives two criteria, right, for saying that one knowledge is better than another. Either because it's more certain, right, more precise, you might say, more certain, or because it's about a better thing, right? And then he says, and for both of these reasons, we would say that the knowledge of the soul is better than most other knowledge, right? Because the soul is better than the body, right?

[28:44] And so on, and we have this certitude that we have a soul that we're alive, right? We have certitude of our own inward experience of life. The three books on the soul are based on our common inward experience of life, right? So in some sense you're very sure, right? I think therefore I am, as Descartes says, right? We're very sure about those things, and but there's a distinction that has to be seen here, right?

[29:10] Huh? Because Aristotle will go on to say that, later on, it's one of the most difficult things in the world to know what the soul is, right? So you say, how can you be more certain than about these things, right? Well, the way in which, if I mean, the knowledge of the soul is more certain than other many other kinds of knowledge, is because we all have this inward experience of life, and that's what the siriotu is, right?

[29:38] See, we know we're we are alive, right? We know some of that just from our inward experience, but as to what the soul is, it's not. So easy to know that, right? Huh? Well, something like that here, right? Those things will gradually unfold as book after book comes down, right? Huh? So the man more certain and more able to teach the causes, right? Again, you have to lead into these things, right?

[30:12] I mean, suppose the doctor is is examining you, right? Huh? He's kind of a general practitioner, right? Huh? And he suspects this or that is wrong with you, but it's something that he doesn't have the, so he calls in a specialist, right? Well, doesn't he think of the specialist as being wiser about this potential thing? Yeah. So he's more certain, you know. This doctor thinks you might have such and such a thing wrong with you, right?

[30:49] But he goes, why is he calling specialist? Because the specialist will be more certain that you have or do not have it, right? It'd be good news or bad news, right? Huh? I was talking to Warren Murray last night, and friend of his, or friend, I know the guy too, but just got, you know, got an incurable what do you call it? Tumor. Tumor, yeah. The doctor says you got two months to live, right?

[31:17] So he's a professor, after all. He's a, well, he's tired already, but he's a linguist, right? Huh? I think he's the guy who said, you know, the English language is the greatest invention of the human mind. So. I agree, but but get put a sea of perfume when you think of it, you know. But but you call but you call a specialist in these cases, right? Huh?

[31:41] And get the good or good or bad news, right? Now, there's a famous text of Aristotle on in the Parts of Animals, where he explains which of these criteria is better. Is it better to have a more certain knowledge or a knowledge of a better thing? And Aristotle argues that it's better to have a knowledge of a better thing, and he gives a very simple example, you know, just as we would what prefer a glimpse of someone we love than a long view of someone we don't particularly.

[32:20] love. Very certainly. Yeah. I I take an example for the students in class. You know this, and they say you're you're working in the office all day. There, you know, the boss is over there. You know, it's a severe guy, you know, and so, and then you look out the window, and the window is exploding. There, your girlfriend is over there. You know, you know that little glimpse of your girlfriend, you know, is worth more than the leisurely view of the boss there, you know, that's sitting there.

[32:43] But it's beautiful. He has to show you, right? Huh? Yeah. And so I mentioned that because Aristotle or the commentators there too. We'll point out that the certitude, you know, when we say that it exceeds other knowledge by certitude, we don't mean the certitude of knowing what the soul is, right? The certitude of being alive and the operations of life that we all experience within ourselves, right?

[33:16] Everybody knows he's got emotions, he's got sensations, and got some kind of thinking, you know. So, able to teach the causes, well, that, you know, is something that we saw developed in the first reading too. And a science is the one for itself, and for the sake of knowing is more wisdom than that, for the sake of its results, right? I know Aristotle gives that fifth because that's not so clear, especially to us democratic people, right?

[33:48] Okay. But you know, I ask people, you know, don't people regard even Einstein as wiser than the scientists who are, you know, doing these engineering type of things, right? Because Einstein is supposed to have understood what the universe, right, more than anybody else, right? And so, but you can't do anything about the universe, you know. Okay. Sell it to China or something. Yeah, yeah. And then the sixth and last thing, right, the culmination of all, right, and the one ruling is more wisdom than the one obeying, right?

[34:29] For the wise men ought not to receive orders, but to give orders, right? So in Latin they talk about this as sapientis est ordinare, right? Belongs to the wise men to order things, right? Thomas is always quoting Saint Paul there: the things which are from God are ordered, right? Well, God is wisdom itself. This goes. Now, Thomas, I mentioned before, you know, when Thomas is in the proemium to Nicomachean Ethics, and he wants to separate the knowledge of reason we're pursuing in the book, the Ethics, from other kinds of knowledge that reason has, right?

[35:08] Thomas is going to try to distinguish this by the order it considers, right? But why does he do that, right? Well, then he calls to Aristotle says here, right? And he says, Aristotle says it belongs to the wise men to order things most of all, right? Why the wise men? Because wisdom is the name of the highest perfection of reason, of which it's proper, he says, to know order.

[35:33] Now he didn't have the advantage that we have of Shakespeare's definition of reason, right? But the culmination of Shakespeare's definition of reason is in terms of order, right? Looking before and after, right? And so, if wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, the wise man must most of all what? Know order, right? Huh? He must most of all be able to order, right? And this is beautiful, beautiful, beautiful text, right?

[36:02] And we think of the man who can command, right, direct others, right, as being what wiser, right? McCarthy came back to to the Philippines there, right now, one of the big islands. Invaded in, I think it was in the the you do in the south first and got the Japs down there, and then he actually visited in the north, and he was afraid that the that the that the Japanese might do some you know horrid things to the prisoners there, and so he personally, you know, made the plan, you know, to rescue the our prisoners, you know, before the Japanese could turn upon them, you know.

[36:42] So that's the kind of man you want, you know. Yeah. Even leave it to somebody else. So there are six things being said about the wise man here, right? Okay.

[37:00] But notice from almost all of these, you could argue, you know, that the wise man is knowing the first causes, right? If he's most able to teach, he must know the cause of the cause, right? Therefore, the first cause. If he's most able to order, right? Well, you order in terms of the end, which is one of the four kinds of causes.

[37:23] If he's knows most universal, right? That goes with the other kind of universality, right? The first cause, huh? The most universal cause extends to all those things of which the most universal predication can be said. Okay. But if you want to think about that, just think about the king and the what general of the army, right? The causality of the king is more universal than the causality of the what general, and the general's causality extends to all those of which soldier can be said, but the king, all those of which citizen can be said, right?

[38:02] But citizen is more general than what soldier. Every soldier is a citizen, but not every citizen is a what soldier, right? Okay. Such and so many are the thoughts we have about wise men and wisdom, right? You can use these things for many other purposes, as Thomas does, right? Aristotle says that the truth all things fit together, and that wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, and that the wise man most of all is able to order, fits in with the definition of reason that our friend Shakespeare.

[38:47] So of these, to know all things necessary belongs to the man most of all having the knowledge universal, for he knows in some way all things placed under the universal.

[39:01] So in books, what six, seven, eight, nine? Aristotle talks about being, right? Book ten, he talks about what the one. In books, what eleven, twelve, thirteen? Give you the first causes, huh?

[39:19] And perhaps the most universal, perhaps right, the most universal are the most difficult for men to know. Why? Because they're furthest from the senses, huh? Okay.

[39:31] And men do have difficulty with the most universal, right? But perhaps that's not the most difficult, right? The first cause is even more difficult, right?

[39:44] And every time we ask the question why, we know the effect but not yet the cause, right? And if there's a cause of the cause, that's even less known, right? Okay.

[39:58] And the most certain of sciences, on page.4 there Are those most of all about what comes first? Those from fewer things are more certain than those from addition. Now he's talking about the fact that the most universal involves less things to be considered, right?

[40:17] Well whole is larger than one of its parts, right? That's much more what certain than that water is H2O. It's a particular whole in its parts, right? Notice the example he gives there, right, He has arithmetic than geometry. Well, the simplest thing in arithmetic is the one, and in geometry it's the point. And they're both indivisible, but the point has more than the what things to be considered.

[40:55] Where is it? Is it here or there, right? Why the one, right? So if you have three points, they could be in a straight line, right, or they could be in the triangle, kind of like, you know. But the three ones, the number three, are what in a straight line or in the form of a triangle? No, not to consider those things, right? Now I know myself from the study of geometry, right?

[41:21] When you read, you know, Euclid Elements, and you have a theorem, sometimes you have to distinguish what they call cases because the the line can be placed in a little different way, right? And sometimes in in the in the Heath edition, right, he'll give you what Proclus or somebody distinction of the cases, right? And you notice that Euclid's taking the most difficult case and they let the easier cases go as dummies.

[41:47] But I scratch my head sometimes they say, "I wonder if I got all the cases I should have considered, right? You know, You know, there's some other way of arranging it, you know." And." I realize I'm not as certain there as I am in arithmetic, right? Arithmetic, because I have to take in those accounts right? So arithmetic is more certain, right? Than geometry. Well, the most universal, it's the least things to consider in one way, right?

[42:16] And the science which considers causes is more fit for teaching for those teach who give the cause of each thing. We've had that before. Understanding and knowledge for the sake of themselves especially belong to the knowledge most knowable. Well, it's the cause that makes known the what effect. It's the cause that explains the effect, right?

[42:48] So the causes are most knowable, right, in themselves, huh? And finally, that is the chief science and more ruling than the subordinate, which knows that for the sake of which each thing ought to be done, right? So the end, right? You direct everything towards the end. This serves the good of each and, as a whole, the best in all nature, the end of the whole universe.

[43:16] From all the aforesaid, the name sought falls in the same science, for it is necessary that this looks at the first beginnings and causes. For one of the causes is the good, and that for the sake of which, right? As Augustine says, because God is good, we are.

[43:40] Now, these first two readings correspond to what is the goal reading of wisdom, right? The goal was to know not just any causes, but the very first cause or causes. We'll find out if there's one or more than one. Get in there. Okay. Now, the second part of the proemium is what kind of knowledge is what? Wisdom, yeah. I mentioned how, in the epilogue, on the bottom of page five, you'll recall what he has done in the two parts, right?

[44:10] But in the reverse order that he did them, right? You'll recall what he just did, because that was right close to us. What is the nature of the knowledge sought? Then has been said, and that's we're going to see here in the third reading. And what is the goal of investigation, right? And the whole knowledge over a road—that's my translation. yeah, The methodos must reach, right? Which is what the first two ones.

[44:37] Okay. So let's look at the third reading now. That it's not a making or practical science, even more generally, It's clear also from those first philosophizing. For men, both now and at first, begin to philosophize through wonder.

[45:09] Now he touches upon the order of wonder. In the beginning, wondering about strange things close at hand. Did you ever read Einstein on wonder there? I guess his father brought home some kind of a magnet, you know, and he was kind of, one was aroused because there seemed to be no contact between the magnet and what it was moving.

[45:34] Something close at hand, right? Then, little by little, thus going forward, raising questions about the greater things. So you wonder about these things close at hand at first, right? And then about the greater things, as about the changes of the moon, right? Have the sun and the stars, right? And finally, about the origin of the universe itself, right? So it's kind of an order there in which your wonder grows, right?

[46:02] But the man in doubt and wondering thinks himself to be ignorant. So why are they pursuing knowledge then? Just for the sake of knowing, right? Aristotle makes a beautiful comparison here between the philosopher and the philomythos. Now the word muthas can mean myth, you know, or more generally story, right? Aristotle uses the word muthas in the Poetics to name the plot, right?

[46:34] So he's saying the philomuthas is in some way philosopher because the myth is put together from wonders. So you read the Odyssey, right, and all these wonderful things that happen, right?

[46:48] But if you take philomuthas, there, it doesn't mean the lover of plots, right? Well, you could go back and say, "Huh, this is another sign that all men by nature desire to know, right? " Because if you're reading a story, you're following the story, and the writer is a good writer, right? You want to know what's going to happen, right? Are you going to do it? Are you going to make or do something with that for a practical reason?

[47:13] You just take the example in class, you know. You make the mistake of watching a movie on TV, like let's say at ten or eleven o'clock, right, and it goes on, and you stay up beyond your bedtime, right? You're going to be tired tomorrow on your job, whoever it is, right? Not going to be able to perform so well, right? You're not going to learn anything that's going to help you your work tomorrow by seeing how the movie turns out, right?

[47:36] But your wonder has been what aroused, so you're like a what philosopher, right? The philomythos. But everybody is to some extent a philomythos, right? A lover of stories and plots, right? Every child likes to have you know story read to them or story told to them, right? And they want to know what happens, right? And sometimes they have these things that are you know one week you know have to wait for next week and so on.

[48:03] The pairs of Pauline needs to show you know in the movie theaters, you know, and even Dickens novels, you know, were installments, you know, and people are dying to know and don't let so and so die, you know. They actually read it, you know.

[48:24] Now a little thing that's kind of interesting here. My teacher Monsignor Dionne there. he quoted once. He said, "well, Augustine, not Augustine, but Albert the Great, right, the teacher of Thomas Aquinas. " He says poetry, meaning fiction, he says in the Latin, "Dat modum admirandi, " right? It gives us the way of what. Wondering, yeah. In other words, you have to be in a way a philomythos before you can be a philosopher, right?

[49:00] And that the. Somebody of the excellence of Homer or or Shakespeare, right, makes you a real philomythos, right, and it disposes you for being a what philosopher. I said to Monsignor Dionne one day, "Would there have been any Greek philosophers without Homer first?" And he says, "No." Rather strong statement, right? You know, and I know myself. You know that when I first looked at the basic works of Aristotle I used to have the Oxford you've probably seen one of them McKeon gave me the introduction and so on, and looking at all the detailed contents, the first book that caught interest was a book called The Politics, right?

[49:45] You know, it wasn't natural philosophy or you know anything like that? It was? It was the politics, right? Because I was interested in politics at the time, right, Just the Carthaginians and so on, and revelations of government coming out and so on, these sort of things, and I was reading the Wanderer and so Finding out about the world. but I was not really a philosopher in the full sense, right?

[50:06] And when I was a freshman in college, and I was in the special English class of those of us who knew our grammar and all that stuff, and the professor said we're going to read some plays of Shakespeare, we probably didn't read in high school. And that was the occasion for me to get a complete edition of Shakespeare and read every play of his. That, you know, that made me a looking philosopher, right?

[50:29] But you could take this as second sign here, right? Like the delight in the senses, right? The delight in stories, the wonder about them, is a sign of what knowledge is good, right? And even knowledge for its own sake, right?

[50:48] Hence, if men philosophize to escape their ignorance, it is clear that they sought knowledge for the sake of understanding and not for any use.

[50:58] So he's saying that wonder, philosophy is basically looking knowledge, right? It's not what practical knowledge, huh? No, practical philosophy is what practical knowledge, right? But that's not philosophy in the full sense. Then he gives a a sign of this, huh? Second sign. What happened? the witness is this. When almost all necessary things and those for recreation and amusement existed, such knowledge began to be sought. So it is clear that we seek this knowledge through no other need, right?

[51:38] And he had given an example there, the priest there, right? I take an example of my family because my grandfather Bergquist, right, came over from Sweden at the age of twelve, right, He didn't have any education. He became the blacksmith in Parkers Prairie, Minnesota, a little town.

[51:59] So he didn't think he was going to be a philosopher, pursuing knowledge for its own sake. Huh? Blacksmith is a kind of a rough, rough job, right? You're strong, right? You got to obey him, right?

[52:14] Well, then he had my father was of course, the son of this man. Other had other sons too, daughters. And now there was no high school in town. I

[52:28] think my father was thinking of pursuing knowledge, the son of a blacksmith, right? With no high school in town, my father wanted to get a high school education, right? So he managed to go to Alexandria, Minnesota, at high school. But he had to work his way through high school, right? And he worked in a shop there, and he couldn't afford a room to sleep in. He asked the boss if he could sleep in the shop, and the guy said, "Yeah."

[52:58] So my father finally managed to get a high school education, and he got. You know, working with he had an uncle who had a machine shop, right? So my father was kind of talented that way, you know. Didn't seem to rub off on me too much. And and he'd read the advertisements, you know, and get to know the machines, right, and so on. Eventually, he worked his way up, right, and became a manager, right.

[53:26] And then, when his company, when the old guys who ran the company or owned the company died off, and the widows wanted to get rid of it, right, father started looking around and finally started his own company, right. So I think my father was, soon knowledge for its own sake. No, so there was no leisure there, right? Now there's a little bit of money, a little bit of leisure, right?

[53:48] My father thought you know be good for my brother Richard and my brother Marcus and myself to get as much education as we could, right? So high school and college, and he made sure he worked in the summer down the factory, but

[54:03] he was, you know, so now he gets a little bit of leisure, right? So we all became what? Yeah, philosophers, right? Well, that's what he's saying there, right? You know, it's obviously this knowledge, right, for its own sake, right? It's only because my grandfather came over at the age of twelve, right? It's far from him. My father, you know, he had no chance, you know, to even go to college, right?

[54:29] So he was just going to try to make a living and make a better living than maybe his father had, right, and so on. So that's a beautiful sign, isn't it? Right. Beautiful sign. Or I get the example of the priests there in Quebec. There, you know, two of my three best teachers there were priests, right, Monsignor Dion and Father Boulay, right. But they had kind of you know a surplus of priests up there at the time, you know.

[54:55] Father, the thing has been kind of going down in a sense, but so some of these priests are kind of freed from you know the usual, easy work of parish work.

[55:07] I think I always tell that story, you know, coming over to see one of the priests in the parish here in Shrewsbury years ago. You know, kind of talks about some things about the CCD program, you know, and so on. Now, so I went up to his room in the parish house, you know, and we were going to talk about it. That phone was ringing every half hour.

[55:29] And I said, "How can a man, you know, pursue the, you know, but in Quebec he had this, you know, he had this kind of surplus of priests. So the men, those who are in the academic world in some way, have little priestly duties, so to speak, right? Well, I like the priestly class. He sits down in Egypt Egypt there, right? Yeah, that's what our friend Father Dave McNamara, who teaches at the seminary in Boston, yeah, he said they're so short priests in his diocese.

[55:58] He's from Fall River Diocese. Yeah. The bishop wants him back. Yeah. And he said, but there's nobody to replace him because why? Because no no diocese has enough priests to send somebody off for higher studies. Yeah, they just can't afford it. Yeah. So if some diocese finally found priests, they will send off for five days and say two more years and then go back to the parish because there's just no

[56:28] no priests around. Okay, so that's the first thing he says, right? It's looking knowledge, right? Now, if you want to speak Latin, you could say speculative knowledge, right? If you want to speak Greek, you could say it's what theoretical knowledge, right? Wisdom. If you want to speak English, it's looking knowledge. Specula, to look. Okay.

[56:53] Now the top of page five on the second thing he says about this, that this knowledge is what liberal, right? Most people know what that means, right? You got to be very careful with the word liberal, right? I used to always use that as an example when I was teaching logic and all. One of the places, you know, for liberal has many senses that it's got many opposites, right?

[57:16] So what's the opposite of liberal, right? What could be conservative, right? Or a liberal could be the opposite of what servile, or a liberal could be the opposite of what stingy, Stingy, yeah. And those are three different senses, of, liberal, right? So liberality is the name sometimes of a one of Aristotle's virtues, right? And virtue concerned with money and these things, right? And everything a person is generous with their money, right, and so on.

[57:45] And then liberal as opposed to conservative is a different meaning, right? And then when you speak of the liberal arts and the servile arts, that's another sense, right? So he's talking about liberal in the sense in which we speak of the liberal arts, right? The arts are pursued, you know, for sake of knowing, like geometry and the quadrivium, the trivium, right? And as we call a man free that is for himself and not for another.

[58:14] So this alone is free among the sciences. For this alone is for the sake of itself alone, right? Okay. You can apply it to knowing God eventually, right?

[58:30] See God as He is is what free, right? Because it's not for the sake of what? Yeah, yeah. That's it. Thomas says I can consider the body, so I can consider the soul, right? Consider the soul, so I can consider the angels. Consider the angels, so I can consider God. Now how do you consider God? That's it. Yeah. That's what Christ says at the last supper when he says, "I don't call you slaves."

[59:04] Yeah. And he gives a reason because the slave doesn't know what his master is doing. All the slave has to know is what he's supposed to do. Yeah. Yeah.

[59:13] That's the second thing he says, right? So it's speculative, theoretical, looking knowledge, right? To use the three languages there, and it's what liberal, right? Free, right? You have to understand liberal there. It's not liberal as opposed to conservative.

[59:35] Now the third thing he says, right? Hence, it might justly be thought that it's not a human possession. You notice he gives us a reason that it's so free, right? For in many ways the nature of man is enslaved.

[59:54] Well, I had to feed this body every day, right? Don't you have to feed your body, and I gotta, you know, give this body, you know, some rest at night time, right?

[1:00:11] So I'm kind of enslaved to my body and its needs, right? And I gotta make the money to to buy food, right? And I gotta make the money to buy a bed, right? And I gotta buy a get the money to buy a house to protect me from the elements, right? So I'm enslaved to all these needs that my body has, right? Okay. And as they say about a house, you know, there's always something that needs to be done, you know.

[1:00:38] Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always something like that, you know. And then I got this car, and the car's got to be taken in to the dealer or something. It's got to be processed and so on, right? And the grass grows and so on. And so, in many ways, man is enslaved, right? Huh? And sometimes we have additional slavery that's part to our fault, you know.

[1:01:01] I get enslaved to my passions, right? Huh? And so the coward is a slave of his fear, right? The lustful man is a, you know, slave of his lusts, right? Huh? The irascible man is a slave of his anger and so on, right? And so, in so many ways, man is enslaved, right? Some are really slaves, right? In the historical sense.

[1:01:29] And thus, according to Simonides, now he's only a poet, right? Now, God alone can have this honor, huh? Man, however, is not worthy to seek knowledge for itself.

[1:01:42] Now, if the poets are saying something, huh? Because the Greek philosophers say the poets tell many a lie, right? Huh? And the divine is able to envy, right? Huh? That you're pursuing, you know, what is reserved for the gods. It is likely, especially, right, to happen about this, right? And unfortunate are all those who excel in knowledge. imagine Aristotle's students, you know, I say, what about you?

[1:02:12] But the divine is not able to be envious, right? Aristotle doesn't get the reason here, right? But you know, the envious man sees the good of another as what is evil, right? You got to be kind of stupid to think that. And the divine is not able to make that mistake. And according to the proverb, poets say many false things.

[1:02:38] So you have the famous discussion of the poets there in what in Plato, right? Huh? Aristotle wrote a dialogue on the poets too, but we've lost the dialogue. But notice

[1:02:54] it's kind of interesting. He introduces this Simonides and so on to point that it doesn't seem to be human possession, but a what? Yeah, I mean, say a human possession. Thomas points out it doesn't mean that man can't pursue it to some extent, right? But a possession is something that I can use it I want to. If I got a ballpoint pen, that it's my possession, right?

[1:03:15] I can write whenever I want with that ballpoint pen, and you know, okay. If I can't pursue wisdom all the time because I'm hungry or I'm sleepy or the car needs to be fixed or the lawn needs to be mowed or I got to make some money or something, right? And so it doesn't seem to be a human possession, right? Okay. Well, anybody's possession, it's God's, right?

[1:03:39] So it seems to be something what divine, okay? And therefore, he's going to argue that it's more what the most honorable knowledge, right? Nor must any other knowledge be thought to be more honorable, for the most divine is most what? Yeah, God is most worthy of honor. And now he points out in the next paragraph that this knowledge is divine in two ways. There's two ways you could say that knowledge is divine.

[1:04:13] One would be because it's the kind of knowledge that God himself would have. And the other way it could be said to be divine is because it's about God himself. And this knowledge is divine in both ways. What more can you ask for, right? Okay.

[1:04:33] Just like if you speak of natural knowledge, you could say knowledge that you have by nature, right? And knowledge of what is natural, right? Okay, can be natural in two ways, right? Okay.

[1:04:53] You know, there's a horrible word in academic world, humanities, right? Huh? But humanities are human in two senses, right? Huh? The humanities is the knowledge that human beings have, right? And the knowledge they have about human things, right? Not divine things, right? So you have those two senses, right? Okay.

[1:05:24] Feminine knowledge would be knowledge of what? Woman? I thought so. Who in hell? But it has those two senses, right? But most divine is only in two ways, for that which God most of all would have, right? Is the most divine of sciences, huh? And secondly, if it were of about divine things, right?

[1:05:51] But this alone has both of these. For God seems, and I said that because it hasn't shown it yet. and that'll be shown in the twelfth book. But God seems to all to be among the causes and the beginning. So if this is a knowledge of the causes and the beginnings, right, and especially if God is thought to be the first cause, then this must be a knowledge about God, right?

[1:06:15] And who would know this first cause better than God himself? And Aristotle adds, and such knowledge, huh, the knowledge of the first cause of God himself, either God alone has, or most of all, he has, right? Either man doesn't have it at all, or he has in some very minor and imperfect way, right?

[1:06:43] So if God is the best thing there is, and this is the most divine knowledge in both of these ways, right, then we can conclude, as he says, huh, all other kinds of knowledge are more necessary than this, right? But none is what better.