Wisdom (Metaphysics 2016)
9. Metaphysics I, Reading 2: The Six-Part Description of the Wise Man — Universality, Certitude, Causes, Knowledge for Its Own Sake, and the Origin of 'Philosopher' (Part 2 of 3)
Class of 2016-09-22
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/009-metaphysics-i-reading-2-the-six-part-description-of-the-wise/

[0:00] We had that interlude, huh? That scene interlude, okay. Now, Aristotle's going to work out a six-part description of the wise man, huh? And the order in which he gives the six parts of the description, perhaps is from the more known to the less known, right, huh?

[0:22] So let's see if we can gather up these six things that he says. We think first that the wise man knows all things so far as possible, not having a knowledge of these in particular, huh? So it's impossible for a man to know all things in particular, right, huh? But because he knows the what, universal, he can know in some way an infinity of things, huh? Let me show you my knowledge of an infinity of things.

[1:00] No odd number is even. How many things have I taken in there? How many odd numbers are there? Two infinity. Yeah. No odd number is an even number, right? I'm really something, aren't I, huh? That's just one of two infinity. Yeah, yeah. And notice how in our famous definition of reason, huh? The first thing that our teacher Shakespeare taught us, right, is that reason is the ability for large discourse, right?

[1:34] And the first sense of large is, instead of discourse, that is to say, is that it's about the large, right? In the first sense of about the large, it's about what? Covers a large area, right? You know, in the dialogues of Plato, you know, when the young Socrates there is talking to Parmenides, I guess it is, you know, he imagines universes to be like a big sail, you know, but it covers a large area, right?

[2:01] Odd number or number covers, you know, large area, right? An infinity of of numbers, right? So if the wise man is at the end of reason, right? His knowledge is going to extend to what? Yes, his discourse is going to be the largest of all, right? The most universal of all. That's why we learn in the fourth book of wisdom that wisdom is about being in one.

[2:33] And being extends to everything that is in any way whatsoever. Is anything before God? Nothing is before God. But nothing is only a being a reason, right? Yeah, it's kind of funny that we say nothing is before God.

[3:07] Yeah, yeah, that was my joke, Mike. Oh, teacher, I told you that Kasurik He said philosophy is the only subject where you can get paid for talking about nothing. Hmm. Somewhat famous debate between Richard Dawkins and Daniel Craig a Protestant philosopher who has had debates with atheists Hmm. Oh, I'm sorry. No, it was Cardinal Pell and Dawkins. And Cardinal Pell just starts grinning widely as Dawkins is going on and on.

[3:40] Dawkins gets a little disturbed. He goes, "You know, why are you grinning at me?" And Cardinal Pell says, "Because you're spending all this time talking about nothing. Because he wasn't clear that nothing was actually nothing. Yeah, yeah. Some scientists now are saying you get something out of nothing, right? Even the early Greeks, you couldn't do that. But the prophets have been trying to tell us that for a long time.

[4:12] Yeah. So that's kind of most known that the wise man knows everything, right? Okay. We suddenly said about somebody who's really eminent in his field, right?

[4:33] Then we think why is the one who is able to know things difficult and not easy for man to know. To sense is common to all; hence, it is easy and. Nothing wise, right? I saw a dog today, right? No big deal, Berquist. What's the big deal?

[4:57] Um. Now, isn't that something we think in general? Not just we, editorial Aristotle, but that men in general think that the wise man knows things are difficult for man to know, right? Don't we think that?

[5:16] We admire somebody for knowing something that's not easy to know, don't we? Einstein understands the whole universe in some way, right? It's not easy to do, right?

[5:29] So you see what Aristotle is saying when he says we, right? Okay. Now the third thing he says. Further, we think wiser in every science the man who is more certain, more sure, right? Now, do we think of the wise man as being more sure or more certain of what he's saying than other men?

[5:58] I'm not too sure about something. Don't I go to see a wiser man, or a man I consider wiser than myself? Right. Now, was that Laval there, huh? Charles de Conic and Monsignor Dion were the wisest men there, right? But de Conic deferred to Monsignor Dion, right? And I know my friend Warren Murray went up to study at Laval, and he had a background in experimental science.

[6:35] He had a degree in chemistry and so on. He was going to work with de Conic, because de Conic was the man who taught the philosophy of nature and was knew something about science and so on. But de Conic made perfectly clear, crystal clear, to Warren, that Dion is the greatest mind up here. Even though Warren went up to study under under him, right? You know. So anyway, I was writing my doctoral thesis under Monsignor Dion, right?

[7:04] And there was some, you know, difficult matter that I was was involved in my thesis there, and I thought I'd go and ask de Conic what he thought about this, right? So I asked de Conic what he thought about, and he says, "Why do you ask me when you got Dion for your thesis director? " I said, "Well, I know what you think anyway. " He says, "Okay.

[7:24] " So he told me what he thought. I mean, you know, so we tend to go to a man who we consider to be wiser when we're not what sure about something, right? And after I came down and was having a doctorate and I was teaching an Assumption there, at Thanksgiving and at Easter vacations, I'd drive to Quebec and see Monsignor Dion. I'd have a package of questions, you know, to ask him, you know, and so he'd sit around for two or three hours and asking questions, and I take him out to dinner and then he'd say goodbye until next vacation.

[7:57] So, but you go to to ask a man who's what you think he's wiser than you are about things that are what difficult to know, right? So you think the wise man is a man who knows things are what difficult to know, not easy for man to know, huh? Now, if you think about this, huh?

[8:22] Doesn't the third thing he's saying about the wise man, he's more certain? And the second thing he says about the wise man, he knows things difficult, not easy for man to know, right? There's a little tension between those two, right? Because the wise man is knowing things that are most difficult for man to know, right? Would he be most sure in what he says?

[8:48] More sure than the rest of us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But would you say that he's characterized by being more certain in his knowledge than other men?

[9:01] I mean, I can count the number of chairs here in the room. I might have to count twice, but make sure I get them all, you know. But wouldn't I be more sure of the number of chairs in this room than somebody would be about the first cause, huh? The cause of the causes of the cause. How many far far back it goes? You see a little tension between these two.

[9:28] Now, I compare that to the tension that you have in the proem to the three books on the soul. I think I mentioned before that Aristotle begins the proem there by saying that all knowledge is good. We think, you know, but then he looks before and after in the fourth sense. But one knowledge is better than another, either because it's about a better thing, right, or because we know something better, okay, more certain.

[10:05] Those are two different criteria, right? But then he makes the statement that the knowledge of the soul seems to be better than most other knowledge in both of these ways. It's about a better thing, it's about the best thing in the in the material world, and it's also better in the sense of being more certain. Say, well, how can he put those two together, right? Because he himself says later on, it's one of the most difficult things in the world to know what the soul is.

[10:43] So how can the study of the soul excel both in the nobility of what is being known, right? And have an excellence of what? Certitude, right? There's a tension there between us saying those two things.

[11:05] Well, the solution to this is that it's not exactly in the same way that it is both, right? And when we study the three books on the soul,

[11:20] how is it that we know these things that we know in the three books on the soul? Well, it's not by cutting open, you know, frogs in the lab, right? It's not by electrifying the frog's legs and seeing what how it moves and so on. Um. Just wait for a second.

[11:50] You feel fall asleep during your Put my eyes over. We had a professor in college and he'd come in, you know, and you know, maybe he'd pick up this or a big book and let it drop, you know. Every jump, you wake up the class, you know.

[12:11] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, students come into class, I have them you know you know, out last night or something, whatever it is. They're really half asleep, you know. Not at TAC, obviously, right? But in? The average college, I mean, you know, you got a class of half asleep, so he probably would jump, you know, so.

[12:35] Great, great English. He was head of English department. He was a great guy, you know. I told you that my my old teacher, Kasurik, you know, defined the poet as a man with his brains kicked out, which infuriated you know most of the teachers of literature, right? And and Colwell there was the head of the department of English. She said that's the first definition of a poet I agree with.

[12:55] He says. You couldn't have a first without poet Well, no, no, yeah, we have to. Shakespeare is unique that way, huh? Yeah. Because some some words of Shakespeare we admire for the wisdom of them, and but others just because of their poetic excellence, you know. He has, you know, two excellences there, right? Magnificent poet. Okay.

[13:27] Um. Going back to the example there of the dynamo. Everything we know in the three books about the soul is from our inward experience about being alive, right? So we all experience within ourselves, right, life, and that says a great certitude because it's inward, right, huh? Even those crazy modern philosophers who think that matter doesn't exist, you know, but you know that they know about the inward experience of man, right, huh?

[14:01] You know, they just don't know anything else. They're corresponding to it, right? But there's a certitude there, right? Okay. Well, there's nobility in what you're knowing eventually, the soul itself, right? It's not exactly the same thing that is what most certain and what is most noble, right? Now, in the fourth book, in the fourth book of wisdom here, Aristotle will defend the axioms. Now the axioms are the statements that are known through themselves or by themselves, but they're known through themselves by all men.

[14:44] And therefore, they're the statements that are most what certain, right? But the wise man knows them better than anybody else. And one way in which the wise man knows them better than anybody else is that he knows that the words in the axioms are all equivocal. But equivocal by what reason? And therefore, in the fifth book, you know, you find out the central meanings of these words and their order and so on, right?

[15:18] So the wise man can what defend them, right? Sophistic art. Yeah. So he's most yeah. So I've given you my sophism about the axiom that the whole is more than the part. Did I give you that last time? Did you last time? You know. I've heard it also somewhat recently, but yeah. So, a few pages we fit here. You don't recall.

[15:50] I quote my mother, you know, and my mother didn't like it when I said man is an animal. I said, well, mother, he's not just an animal. It's an animal that has reason. My mother said, "Well, that's better." She said, "My mother never went to college, but he said, 'That's better,

[16:08] doing. It's better doing. '" And so, animal is only a part of what man is, not the whole of man, right? But animal includes besides man, dog, cat, horse, elephant. So sometimes the part includes more than the whole. You know, there's always true that the whole is more than the part. Now the axiom, there's an argument against the axiom that none of the students in my class is at least can answer, right?

[16:37] See, but it kind of, and I used to play around. I say, you know, what if Aristotle came up through the the floor here in the classroom? You know, what would he say? You sophist, breakfast. deceiving your students by the fallacy that I said was the most common kind of fallacy, and you mixing up the what senses the word whole and part, right? So when you say that animal is a part of what man is, you're thinking of the whole definition, right, of man, which is a composed whole put together from the genus of animal and the difference of reasonable, right?

[17:19] So animal there is being considered as a composing part of the composed whole, the definition of man. When you say man includes, I mean, since the animal includes besides man, dog, cat, and horse, you think if animal has a universal whole, it's said of more than dog is said of, more than cat is said of, more than see. So in a composed whole, always is more than just one of its parts.

[17:54] It's put together from more than one of its parts, and a universal whole is always said of more than one of its parts, right? But you're mixing up the two wholes and parts, right?

[18:07] If you want to consider animal as a composing part of what definition of man, we'll look at the whole definition. You'll see it's bigger than just animal, right? As my dear mother pointed out. But if you want to consider animal as a what universal whole, which is a whole set of its parts, right? You'll see it's said of more than man is said of, right?

[18:33] So this is what happens, right, with the fallacies. So the wise man knows the axioms better than anybody else, right? Because they're all composed of words like whole and part that are equivocal by reason,

[18:57] and the wise man distinguishes the central senses of such words and. Order, right? Aristotle spends a whole fifth book of the of wisdom, distinguishing the senses of these words and showing the order, right? That's where Thomas learned how to do that within and out, right? So, imitator Aristotle, right? And it's the most imitative of the animals, right? It's kind of amazing.

[19:28] So, in knowing the axioms, you can see the wise man is the most sure, has most certain knowledge of anybody. But insofar as he knows the first cause, he's most certain in knowing that, right? But he's knowing the best thing there is. We'll find out. Yeah. So the wise man discourse is the largest in both of the first two senses. It's the most universal, and it's what about the best thing, right? Okay.

[20:05] So that's the third thing, right? And the fourth thing, and he's more able to teach what? The causes, right? Now, is that less known than more certain for the wise man? See, we think of the wise man as being more sure of what he's saying, right? Is that more known to us than that he teaches causes?

[20:36] If you, if you ask the man in the street there, you know, whom do you consider wise with you, right? You know? You know, we speak of somebody who's got it all together, right? They use that expression, right? You know? You know, if he's a wise chef, he knows all about it, right? Can make all these... Be wiser he could teach. Yeah. But, um, he might not think of cause at first, right?

[21:02] He'd think he's more sure about what to do, right? Okay. Yeah. He's more known. Mm-hmm. Sorry, which is more known, that he's more sure than that he can teach? He would be able to teach the causes, right? Okay.

[21:29] See, we don't think about that so much. But maybe those two things, certain and more able to teach the causes, go kind of go together too, because the man who knows the reason why something must be so is going to be more sure, right? So when Aristotle defines the greatest syllogism, he calls it demonstration, right? And the definition of the demonstration, propter quid, is a syllogism making us know the cause, and that of which it is the cause, and it cannot be otherwise.

[22:03] Okay, so those two kind of go together, right? Certain and being able to know the cause, right? Why is the whole more than a- than one of its parts? Where every whole is parts in the plural. That's why. Not very sure about that, yeah. If a whole didn't have any parts, would I call it a whole? Of course. You spell it different. H-O-L. Yeah. Yeah. I've been thinking about donuts.

[22:36] Yeah. That's what St. Thomas says, it's the perfection of a power that makes something like itself. Mm. So if you have a power that's perfected by knowing, Mm. you can make someone else like yourself.

[22:52] It's interesting that logic reflects the, um, thing we see about reason. Our reason is the part of us that can know itself, right? Does the eye know what an eye is? Not really. But reason can know what reason is. And so Shakespeare's definition of reason is an example of reason coming to know what it is, right? But in logic, you know, we have a what? We learn what a definition is, and there's even a definition of definition.

[23:27] Interesting, huh? Definition is knowing itself. You can say that in a way. I mean, the reason is knowing what a definition is. Did you ever read Chesterton's book called Man Alive? Because he begins at a university, I think it's supposed to be Oxford. Yeah. And he talks about how there was, it was, not only was it raining, but there's rivers and streams and ponds, and he says, that's so appropriate for university because it's a place of reflection.

[23:55] Oh. Water is the perfect medium for university. I said I'm saying they're all wet, yeah. Depends on the school, maybe, depends on the teachers. Yeah. You know, it's kind of funny when I was driving in, there was a license plate on the car in front of me, right? We stopped there, and it said DRFUNK, Dr. Funk. That- that just didn't happen. Someone must have ordered it. It- it's a truck, you know?

[24:33] Dr. Funk. Maybe- maybe it's, uh... must be some kind of, you know, disrespect for the higher. So I gotta be careful with what I say and do today. I don't wanna be Dr. Funk, you know.

[24:57] Okay. Now, the next thing. And the science is the one for itself and for the sake of knowing, that's be for itself, right? Is more wisdom than that for the sake of its results. This is something maybe would be more hesitant to admit, right? That the wisdom is knowledge that's for its itself, right? It's not for the sake of, uh, doing something. They might say, like, what good is action and that sort of thing.

[25:26] So it's less known, right? It can be something less known. But notice the thing that he gave in the, in the first reading there, where he said that the arts that are for pleasure, right, huh? Seem to be more, what? Perfect, right? Than the ones for, uh, doing something, right? So we think of Shakespeare as being, what, um, wiser than, uh, the carpenter, right, or the cook, right?

[25:52] Or, you know, auto mechanic and so on, right, huh? Most people may probably think that, right, huh? In Afortiori, the Greeks, you know, when they called the Antonomasia, the poets, the makers, right, huh? They saw them as being wiser, huh? Even Homer, I mean, even Plato speaks of, you know, Socrates of, of, uh, Homer as being the teacher of all the Greeks, right? Well, that's quite a...

[26:18] you know? You know? But his thing is for pleasure, right? Shakespeare says at the end of some of the plays, and will strive to please you every day, you know? Or Mozart said, you know, music must never be displeasing to the ear, or in other words, cease to be music.

[26:41] Do you know Peter Cariani? Yeah, you sent me, uh, the article that he wrote, or? Oh, he was at my house last night. He's joined our, he's back from, from, I don't know, is it what? He was at TAC a bunch of years ago, maybe before you. Yeah, yeah. Peter, he used to Cariani? Cariani. Yeah, even before your time, you know, at the TAC, you know, but, but he was in the, he's a friend of, uh, Richard, you know, my other student.

[27:10] Oh. They met when they were in Marine Corps in Okinawa, you know, so they met. They became friends. But he's back. Yeah, so he came there last, last night, I mean Tuesday night, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But he was telling me about my brother Marcus's talk on music. I don't know if my brother Mark, you guys had talked in music? Yeah. But he was saying, Marcus is saying, you know, that there's no philosophy without music.

[27:36] He's saying, why did you, why did Marcus say that, you know? So I was saying, well, truth is the harmony of reason with things, and moral virtue is the harmony of what sense appetite with reason and so on. So we foster harmony, right? And this is where you first appreciate harmony and good music. But you also speak, you know, of the fact that music is so beautiful, right?

[28:04] You play the what? I play the cello. The cello? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're deeper than the violin, right? Yeah. Mozart would like to play the- deeper well, he played the violin too, but he played the- next one that we thought.

[28:25] What's the next one to the violin? The viola. Yeah, Mozart, yeah, they played the string quartets, you know, and they get together and play a string quartet together. Mozart would play the viola, you know, so and so. Yeah, Yeah. And he's describing

[28:41] one of the evenings there where his father had, uh, some guys over to play a quartet, you know, and Mozart was pretty young at the time, and so just- just listen. Well, finally he said, do it, you play along with so and so. Finally, so and so put down his violin, and Mozart just took over the part, you know, almost like self-taught, you know. How old was he then?

[29:04] No, just a little kid, just a little kid, I know. So the one for the sake of knowing is more wisdom than that for the sake of its results, right? Now, like you said, my notable excursion earlier in the night, day, right? Is God wise?

[29:36] But does God have wisdom? It says that he is wisdom. He is wisdom, right? See? See? Be more correct to say that God is wisdom than to say he has wisdom. At least you got to be careful if you use the word has, right? Because God is whatever he has, right? So if you say God has love, it doesn't mean that His love is something added to His substance, right?

[30:07] It is His very substance, right? And if you say God is wise, that He has wisdom or something of that sort, you have to say, well, that's not really the ordinary sense it has, right? Because God is what He has; He's wisdom itself, right? And so, what does the word philosopher mean? Lover of wisdom. Yeah, lover of wisdom. Sophia is a Greek word for for wisdom, right?

[30:35] I told you my little joke there with my grandchild Sophia, right? I tell her philosopher means a lover of Sophia, so I love you very much.

[30:45] And she's now known, you know, trading as Lady Wisdom, right? Huh? I showed you a picture of Lady Wisdom looking up from her books. Yeah, it's really, really a mixed family face. It's a wonderful thing, you know. But if God is wisdom itself, then the philosopher is a lover of God in some way, right? It's kind of interesting.

[31:12] Now, what is the origin of the word philosopher? You know, the origin of the word philosopher. Who was the first man that called himself a philosopher? Maybe not the first philosopher, but the first man to call himself a philosopher. And what was the occasion for him calling himself by this name? Do you know that? It could be a joke, which I won't share, but

[31:44] no, Philo was calling himself, no, Pythagoras. Yeah, Pythagoras. Pythagoras. Yeah, yeah, Pythagoras. Pythagoras. Yeah, Pythagoras. He would discover wonderful things like the Pythagorean theorem and other things besides that. And they were calling him wise, right? And he says, "Don't call me wise. God alone is wise, right? " Dearest, I'll repeat this later on, you right? Either we should say that God alone is wise, or if we say that man is wise, it's in a very imperfect way compared to God.

[32:16] Only God is fully wise. Well, then they said to Pythagoras, "Well, what are we going to call you then? " Right? See, he says, "Well, if you got to call me something, call me a lover of wisdom, right? " So in the origin of the name philosopher, right, there is not only what the name itself etymologically is composed of, you know, Philo, which means lover, right, and Sophia, wisdom, but there is also humility, right, placing yourself under God is the truly wise one or the fully wise one, right.

[32:56] So that's interesting, huh? That there's humility, right, in the in the origin of the word what philosopher, right, as well as what is etymology that says you have all these words in English, you know, that are like philologist means a lover of words, right? I was reading a book, a little book of things from Pope Benedict, right, and talking about John Paul II, right. He said he started out as a philologist.

[33:27] He says, but then you have words like, say, philanthropist, right, man who who gives, you know, endows things and does many things for mankind. So it means a lover of man, right, philanthropist. But philosopher means a lover of what of wisdom, okay?

[33:49] Wisdom is the knowledge of God. I was telling my lady wisdom there that wisdom is the knowledge of God in both senses of the word knowledge of God.

[34:03] This is amphiboly. When you have when you have a speech that has two meanings or more, we speak of amphiboly, right? That's the technical word, terrible Greek word. It means two ways, right? And

[34:20] equivocation is one word, right? One word has many meanings. So we speak of the equivocation of the word before that we study. But amphiboly is a phrase that has more than one meaning. I'm very fond of these phrases like like the word of God, right? What is the word of God? What is a treatise there? I mean, a document in Vatican II called Verbum Dei. But what are they talking about?

[34:49] Verbum Dei Well, they're talking about the Scripture, mainly right? So the Bible is said to be the word of God, right? Somebody asked me, "What is the Bible, Mister Grucus?" I'd say it's the word of God. It's the written word of God. Yeah, but now you could also say that the Son of God is what word of God, right? But there's a harmony between those two meanings of word of God, right?

[35:20] Connection between the two that the word of God in the sense of the Bible is chiefly about the word of God in the sense of the Son of God. Beautiful like that. Or my teacher Shakespeare, right?

[35:38] Instead of speaking of the philosophy of nature as the philosophy of nature, he calls it the wisdom of nature, right? Oh, I love that. The amphiboly of wisdom of nature, right? Because it could mean the wisdom about.

[35:55] Nature, or it could mean the wisdom that nature shows and what it does. When Aristotle is studying the animals and the parts of animals and so on, and he talks about how we get a little insight into the mind that made these animals, right? We see his wisdom and so on, right? So the wisdom of nature, in a way, is wisdom of God, right? They don't know that too much anymore.

[36:24] But the wisdom of nature could mean then the wisdom that nature reveals and what it does, and then it could mean the wisdom which is about nature, right? Thomas says in some cases, you know, philosophy is what a synonym for philosophy is wisdom, right? Okay, although if you take the origin of philosophy, you can see that it's kind of human wisdom, right? We wouldn't say that God has philosophy so much, but we'd say that He is, He alone is wise, and He alone is fully and perfectly wise.

[37:02] So when I say to my to to Sophia that wisdom is the knowledge of God, right, has two meanings. It's a knowledge which God most of all has, or it's a knowledge which is what about God, right? Isn't that beautiful,

[37:23] And of course, when you get to study God's knowledge as you do eventually in philosophy and theology. You come to realize that God's knowledge is primarily a knowledge of Himself, and it's by knowing Himself that He knows all other things. He doesn't derive his knowledge of other things from them, right?

[37:45] God doesn't have to wait for me to do what I'm going to do today to know what I'm going to do today. See? So God's knowledge is very much a knowledge of God.

[38:01] Beautiful, right? The knowledge of God is the knowledge of God. I'm not repeating myself either. I'm using knowledge of God in two different senses, right? Okay.

[38:22] And now you come to the sixth and last thing, right? And the one ruling is more wisdom than the one what obeying. Now that came out after he had come to a knowledge of what the man of art being wiser than the man of mere experience, because he knows why and the cause and so on. And then he said that the chief artist is even wiser than the what handicraftsman, right?

[38:48] And then you start to see the idea that it belongs to the wise man to direct others, right? And in Hugh's definition of reason right as the ability to understand reason and direct itself and others, you see, connection between reason right and this highest perfection of reason right. If it's characteristic of reason to be able to direct itself, as the existence of logic tells us, right, the art by which reason directs itself, and it can direct us in our actions, right, and you can direct by your reason other people, right, your children and so on.

[39:28] Then, if wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, you would expect wisdom to especially be able to direct others, right? Now, sometimes I just give a dialectical argument that logic is wisdom, right? Heaven forbid, right?

[39:53] But I said that logic directs us in all the sciences. In defining and reasoning and syllogizing, right? In logic, we learn how to syllogize and things of this sort. So, if the logician directs all the other sciences, then he's the wise man, right?

[40:19] Yeah. So the economic and natural philosopher is not as wise as Monsignor Dionne's logician, right? What is logic wisdom? Well, as Thomas explained in the commentary on the fourteen books of Metaphysics (wisdom) and he quotes here with approval, Averroes, right? About the affinity between logic and what wisdom,

[40:55] and two things or two ways in which logic and wisdom are similar is one their universality, right? Okay. You've read the categories of Aristotle. Those are the highest genera, right? He knows just about everything there, right? In general, doesn't he? Just like the wise man. See, wisdom and logic are what most universal, right? They're very similar in that respect. And then, logic is about immaterial things, right?

[41:39] And wisdom is about what immaterial things, things that don't have any matter or don't don't need to have any matter, right? That's two ways in which logic and wisdom are alike.

[41:59] A third way is logic. The logician seems to direct everybody else, right? Even mistakes, right? I mean, the logician explains that there are fallacies in language and fallacies outside of language, right? And he goes through. There's actually what thirteen kinds of mistakes that Aristotle gives, right? I kind of joke this is how thirteen became unlucky, you know. That's why there's There's no thirteenth floor in some, you know.

[42:34] I told you, I tell you, my my in-laws there. On thirteen gauge lane, right? That's my my wife was living when I first went out of there, you know. Thirteen gauge lane. I guess when they moved in there, they assumed at the town hall that they want to change the number because it's too rugged at thirteen. Well, of course, thirteen is somehow lucky number for my my my in-laws, so they they kept they wanted to keep the name thirteen on the house, right?

[43:00] Thirteen gauge lane. So. People Irish thought the 13 was a lucky number because it's the 12 apostles plus Christ. Yeah. That's why it had to be unlucky because Judas was thirteen Well, then you have a replacement apostle and you could say it's number 12.

[43:19] But anyway, so the magician teaches us, you know, about the mistakes we can make, right? Common mistakes and so on, and the fallacy of equivocation, right? So he's a need the wise man, right? That's three ways that they are similar, right? So this comes up in in the

[43:39] 14 books of wisdom at different times, huh? For example, in the the third book of wisdom, the whole book is dialectical, and Aristotle reasons on this side and that side about all these simple questions of wisdom, right? But at the beginning of this, he he has a beautiful explanation of why we need dialectic.

[44:07] That's what I criticized Descartes for, right? Not seeing the need for that. And Thomas goes through those reasons that aristotle gives there, right? For doing this whole book of dialectic, and he says for these reasons Aristotle in other books, you know, has some dialectic, right? But there's a difference here that in the other parts of philosophy, the dialectic is particular. So like in the eight books of natural hearing, you have a dialectic about place, and then you have the determination of truth about place, and then later on you have a dialectic about time, and you determine the truth about time, right?

[44:50] But here in the what third book you have the dialectic of the whole, you know, so that it seems to be this dialectical book a chief part of wisdom. This shows the affinity between what logic, which dialectic is a part, right? Logica utens, as well as docens it's a principal part of wisdom. Of course, Aristotle compares wisdom to dialectic in terms of universality. So in the dialogues of Plato, which are mainly dialectical, you can have a dialogue about just about anything, right?

[45:33] Because he even compares to sophistry, right? We have the appearance of wisdom, but you have universality, right? That's why I always point out that first thing, you know, what are you a wise guy? What are you a know-it-all? Even that pejorative sense of wise has got the idea that he knows all things, right? Are you a wise guy? You know-it-all. You know, keep on making jokes and.

[46:01] Whatever I say, you you twist it some way to to make it look stupid or funny or something. Now, of course, as I point out, the wise man in the first reading was explaining the what natural road, and that's even more basic than the road of what logic. And logic teaches the common road of reasoned out knowledge, but the wise man talks about the natural road, so he's even more directing us.

[46:48] There's three ways that these two sciences are similar, right?