Wisdom (Metaphysics 2016)
10. Sapientis est Ordinare: The Wise Man as Director, Universal in Predicating and in Causing, and Why the Most Universal Is Hardest to Know (Part 3 of 3)
Class of 2016-09-22
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/010-sapientis-est-ordinare-the-wise-man-as-director-universal/

[0:00] Now, Thomas took this, huh? I give you that premium to the Nicomachean Ethics of Thomas. Yeah, and he's going to divide human knowledge on the basis of what the order that it considers. He quotes this sixth thing here about the wise man, and he in Latin it says "Sapientis est ordinare." It belongs to the wise man to order things, right? And Thomas gives a reason why it belongs to the wise man to order things, or a reason, right?

[0:36] Because wisdom is the highest perfection, he says the reason of which it is proper to what to know order, or as my teacher Shakespeare says, to look before and after, right? Thomas didn't quote Shakespeare because he was before him in the first sense yeah, yeah, yeah.

[0:58] Very good, very good, very good. See, see how wise he is, looking before and after now. Okay. So, a lot of times, I tell people, you know, that what if you know what reason is, that'll help you to know what wisdom is, right? But again, if you know what wisdom is, which is the highest perfection of reason, that characterizes something and tells you something about reason too, right?

[1:24] If you know that the reason is the ability to look before and after, you wouldn't be surprised that the wise man most of all knows order, right? But if you perceive that the wise man most of all knows order, right, that the chief artist, right, is wiser because he directs others and so on, then you might see that seems to be characteristic of reason, right? So that appears both in Aristotle, I mean Shakespeare's definition of reason and Hugo's definition of reason, right?

[1:52] Okay. Where is Hugo's definition really? I gave it to you, didn't I? It's the ability. To understand reason and direct oneself and others. Didn't I give you that Hugo's Yeah, yeah. And Hugo's a plagiarist, and I think he got the idea of its ability to understand and reason from Thomas's *Premium to Logic*. Right. Oh, he's contemporary with St. Thomas or afterwards. No, he's kind of he's he's quite recent.

[2:23] Oh, oh, oh! This Hugo. Okay. Okay. And he's influenced by by you know the *Premium* to the *Nicomachean Ethics*, where reason directs itself and directs the will and directs us in our making of exterior things, right?

[2:46] And Hugo, by the way, means mind. Huh Oh. I didn't know that Yeah. Yeah. Now. Every once in a time we we had a book of etymologies and and we looked at etymology of people's names, right? So finally, they came to me, right? And they said, "What does super?"mean, I didn't know where it'd come from, you know, and looked it up. It meant mind. Thank goodness. You get some stupid apology, you know.

[3:23] So he sums up and says, such and so many are the thoughts we have about wise men and wisdom, right? So if you know what a wise man is, that'll help you know what wisdom is, and vice versa. So the sixth part description, the wise man is—he's the man who knows all things, in some way, right? In general, but not in particular, right? He's what? He thinks he knows things that are difficult for men to know, and he knows what?

[4:00] He's more sure. He's more able to teach, right? Knows the causes more, and he has knowledge that's more desirable for its own sake, and that he bosses everybody else around. He directs everybody else. He is the boss. Yeah, yeah. It's good. Now he's

[4:35] going to reason from the six-part description, you know, to the wisdom being about the first causes, right? Huh? The first cause was just one, but this description is valuable for many other reasons besides, right? Just as knowing the natural road is good, right?

[4:55] I mean, if you're in logic, can you say now which is more known to us, syllogism or induction? What would you say? Induction, yeah. But induction is an argument from many what singulars to the universal, while syllogism starts from the universal, right? So in the syllogism, you have the two great principles, the set of all and the set of none, right? And the syllogism is based on the set of all or the set of none, so it's based upon something that's seen universally.

[5:33] Isn't that going to be the first argument we know? No, but induction is an argument from many singulars towards universal, right? Well, now if you know the natural road of sensing, memory, experience, right, then now it's universal. You can see how induction comes before

[5:58] syllogism, right? Known, right? Okay. It's not as strong an argument as syllogism, right? And actually, before syllogism, before induction is the argument they call example, right? Now the word example is equivocal, right? Example can mean what? A singular used to illustrate the universal,

[6:28] or can name an argument from one singular to another singular of the same kind. Okay. So example as an argument is more known to us even than induction. It's easier to use, right?

[6:51] My brother Mark and I are from the Midwest, so we weren't used to seafood at all. And what do you eat on Friday? We get you some seafood on Friday, you know. So you try different things. We're in the grocery market, the supermarket, and there's there's

[7:10] they call them that funny thing that lobster lobster legs like that, right? So my brother's Mark said, "Well, just why don't we try these?" Right? So we

[7:25] made them for dinner, and after this dinner, my brother Mark threw up. And he was disgusted, so I'm going to go out and see a movie. So there's a movie in town, so he goes out to see the movie. After two three hours, he comes back to the apartment where we at, and

[7:49] smelled the thing, threw up a second time. And you think we're about? You probably never bought that again. Yeah, never bought that again. Experience. Yeah. So this is an argument from one singular to another singular of the same kind. Yeah. Yeah. Evolution. Yeah. Yeah.

[8:17] None of that. Yeah. Supposedly lobsters are related to cockroaches. That's why I heard cockroaches in the ocean, lobsters and crawfish and all that stuff. They're all related. I think Warren Murray told me of some biologist he met. You know, who whose study was cockroaches, and I guess they're they're resistant to atomic radiation or something. And so he thought they're kind of at the top of evolutionary scale.

[8:49] Yeah, yeah, because we're able to, you know, I mean, evolution is because you get something that can survive in this environment, right? Well, we live in an atomic world now, so the cockroaches are at the top, you know. I mean, crazy biologist, you know, they have that kind of. Of a narrow mind that's highly specialized, huh? I

[9:17] suppose I suppose a stone could could could survive a time of war too. Why is the sixth characteristic considered least known? Because it seems actually very well known that if someone giving orders, he seems to know. Why don't people read Aristotle and Thomas more?

[9:39] They don't want to do it themselves, right? They want to be directed, right? I remember when I started getting interested in in philosophy in high school. My brother Richard was four years older than me, right? So he was already a philosophy major, right? He didn't start; I was a philosophy major in English or something, but then he became a philosophy major. And so I was always picking up little tidbits, you know, philosophy from him and my cousin Donald.

[10:06] You know, was a history major. He became a philosophy major, so two of them, you know, were little troublemakers. But anyway, but I remember, you know, getting interested in reading Thomas, you know, all the time, and Aristotle, you know, and so on. And my friend Rodney Melky, you know, he said, "I talked to him about it, and he'd say, 'Yeah, I'm my own philosophy. ' " Says, you know,

[10:29] he doesn't want to be directed by somebody, right? You know, you know, he's not going to be directed by someone else who's who's going to be wiser than he is, right? These are what people think a wise man is like. Yeah, well, we'll go back to the first reading. There's a little bit of help here, right? Huh? As you go along the natural road there, right, from sensing, right, to memory, right, and then from memory to what, the knowledge universal, and then within the knowledge universal, starting to know why, right, huh?

[11:04] And then finally, you see that that there can be what, chief artists and subordinate artists, right, in different things. So MacArthur is wiser than the officers that are obeying MacArthur, right? And maybe they're wiser than the guys lower down, right? Huh? Chain of command, they should be wiser, right? And then you begin to see that maybe it's going to be the first cause, right? Huh? And so on the Aristotle first, and then.

[11:32] But notice there you're talking about one man directing another. That's the last thing you came to, right? In the order, right? Okay. Right. The first thing you you come to is that he knows all things, right? That's the beginning of art or science that you know the universal. That's kind of first known, right? And what distinguishes that from experience, right? Which is only knowledge of singulars, huh?

[12:10] And you know the fifth thing there that it's not for its own sake, you know, you know, you know, Martha would maybe prove that, right? And but as Christ says, Mary has chosen the better part, and it shall not be taken away from her. Because the practical life will end with death, and then if you're been reasonably good, right, then you'll begin or have the speculative life to the full, right?

[12:40] You're not going to do anything with God in the sense of change him or make anything. He's going to contemplate him contemplate him for and praise him, right?

[12:53] Huh? Okay. So people don't kind of maybe appreciate that this should be knowledge for its own sake, right? Huh? Yeah, that's why I was thinking that five seems to be a more abstract, more More difficult, or at least a lesser known opinion about the wise man. Just, I mean, Aristotle usually brings in, for example, the wise man, the the chief artists, and these are guys that are practical.

[13:22] These are guys that direct other people, and they seem to have, they're not doing it just for their own sake. Yeah. Oh, they seem to be wise, yeah, but it's taken from the practical order because it's more known to us, right? There's a direction there, and I mean, in terms of the fifth thing there, they might think, you know, when I was teaching college, now used to be a phrase we'd say, you know, when you get out into the real world, and then you really, then you really find out what it's all about, right?

[13:54] You live out in the real world Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's some truth about that, right? You know, you know, people ask me, why do all these professors vote Democratic? I says that's because they don't live in the real world. And there is a kind of foolishness in professors, right? That everybody can see, right? And so, you know, you want these guys running the country, did you?

[14:26] You know, the famous remark of William F. But you know, he'd rather be directed by the first 200 names was it in the telephone book, you know, than the faculty of Harvard.

[14:39] That's true, right? You know, so I mean, the practical is more known to us, right? You see, when Aristotle takes up the virtues of reason in the sixth book of uh, Nicomachean Ethics*, right? You know, wisdom will kind of come, you know, later on, right? And so it's not known as. There's a kind of reflection of that in the general attitude that we have. many people have uh being directed not in the practical order but in speculative order, Mhm meaning you have these Catholic university professors who will say, "I don't want to be told what to believe and what to think by somebody else.

[15:24] I'm going to think for myself. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. I'm not going to be directed in what I think. " You see, you know how how Catholics, you know, vote for the wrong people, right? You know, people who are really, you know, got the worst positions, really, you know, and things that are contrary to the to the what the church teaches, right? Huh? But they don't they don't be directed, you know, by, you know, they shouldn't be directed by, you know, the church, you know.

[15:56] So Hillary Hillary has what? Announce that she intends to use political will and resources, you know, to attack the Catholic Church, right? You know, meaning you know religious beliefs, right, that are contrary to their party line there regarding abortion, so. So, so is this ruling that he's talking about in the sixth characteristic a speculative ruling that a teacher might rule the students? Yeah, but he's talking about about how the wise man, in some sense, directs those in the other sciences, right, as regards certain fundamental things.

[16:43] And so I was comparing, you know, the logician to the wise man, right, that they both, in some ways, seem to direct others, right. The thing you know that I notice with the modern philosophers, you know, they don't seem to know the names of the various kinds of mistakes. And if you know the names of the kinds of mistakes, that's not to understand them. But if you understand them, you can make that kind of mistake, right?

[17:09] And then they're not being what directed by by the logician, and they should be, right? So could they just be called philosophers, or something like a like a sophist? They're more sophists, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[17:34] But you also see, as far as the the wise ruling in today's culture, you can see sort of moving away from reason and wisdom and focusing more on the emotions, still the emotions. Yeah, yeah. And, uh... Well, the thing I noticed that I go from Greek philosophy, which begins, as Aristotle would say here in the third reading, begin in wonder, right? Um.

[18:07] I find in the great you know physicists of the twentieth century more wonder, right, true wonder, than in the modern philosophers, right. So I feel more at home with Heisenberg, right, or Max Born, or even Einstein, and so on, than with the modern philosophers, right. And Max Born, he says nothing great in science can be accomplished without the elementary wonder of the philosopher. He's a guy who got the Nobel Prize, right, for explaining what the wave means in wave mechanics, right?

[18:45] You know, he's a great great physicist, right? You can buy the correspondence between Born and Einstein, right? It's see in the bookstores. But have any appreciation for that, right? And my friend Warren Murray, you know, he he he went and talked to Heisenberg, right? Warren speaks good German, by the way, and. So, uh he had a conversation. with Heisenberg. Heisenberg was more a Platonist or Aristotelian, and in terms of being, you know, mathematical physicist, he was more like Plato, right?

[19:20] But he had this great admiration for Aristotle's understanding of potency, right? And you see that in the Gifford lectures, right? You know, magnificent thing, the Gifford lectures, and the.

[19:34] But anyway, Warren would refer to some Greek, you know, fragments. You know, when they were talking their conversation, Heisenberg quote them in Greek, you know, from memory. Honestly,

[19:44] I I wouldn't be able to quote you know Heraclitus in Greek, you know, from memory. You know, I could. And so I mean, he's somebody there, right? You know, you know as, as, uh, what was it? Schrodinger says there's never been any any science people have not come in contact with the Greeks. You know that that's where it is. And Einstein said, you know, if Euclid did not arouse your youthful enthusiasm, you were not born to be a scientist.

[20:18] That's kind of marvelous, you know. To read these, Euclid's wonderful guy to read. Was he a Greek in Alexandria or was he Egyptian? Well, Alexandria's in Egypt, but I mean, he he he went he studied with the Platonists in Athens first. So I sometimes say my teacher Euclid of Athens in Alexandria, but kind of more famous for being at that great Greek school there in Alexandria.

[20:50] Nevison, Nevison, still the best introduction to geometry, you know, Nevison. Wonderful. I didn't read Euclid. till I was out of college and my old teacher. Kasuri says, "Duane, go get Euclid." I said, "Why go get it?" Kasurik said Get." He knew I would obey him. I, you know, that's what I know in Greek. I told you a little Greek. I you know, he says, "Dwayne, where's your Greek?"

[21:16] I said, "My Greek." Yeah, where's your Greek? A lot of things I'd rather take. He said, "There's no reason. I don't want any reason. I think I'd rather take what the hell is that? What kind of reason is that? If you're going to study philosophy, you learn some Greek." Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So he's directing, me, right? And most people would say, You know, the hell with you.

[21:35] I'll do what I want to do. I choose my own courses. I'm not going to tell me what you know, tell me to do. You know, especially the democratic age, right?" That's right You know Declaration of Independence and all that Yeah. Yeah.

[21:51] Yeah. So someone in this democratic age that's wise would be someone that suggested things to you but didn't direct you. Maybe is that how you're saying? Well, you know, people will fight that. I mean, they don't have the humility, right? When Thomas talks about pride as a cause of error, right? And these are the causes or causes of error, you know, on the part of appetite, huh?

[22:17] And he gives two reasons why the the proud man makes mistakes. Right. One is that he thinks he's more what capable than he is, right? And so he tries to judge things that he's not able to judge, right, or before he's able to judge them. And the other is that he won't what listen to minds greater than his own, right? And you know, they often these greater minds they often recall you from errors or mistakes, right?

[22:56] And so that's the two ways that d that pride is a cause of what. Error right. You know Story of Luther Yeah Yeah. Okay. So we got a little more time now. Okay. Okay. I don't know if we have enough time to finish this reading

[23:32] Up to you Okay Let's finish the second reading. Well, we'll go on second reading here. Okay. Now, of these, two know all things necessarily belongs to the man, most of all having a knowledge of the universal. This is the last paragraph there, page three, right? Okay, so we left off, right? For he knows in some way all things placed under the universal. Now let's just stop there for a moment, huh?

[24:11] And is there some connection between his knowing the most universal and the thing he wants to bring out more fully later on that he knows the first cause or causes?

[24:33] Well, let's go back to something more known to us, right? Okay. Let's go back to the king and his top general. Who's a more fundamental mover, the king or the top general? Who obeys who? General obeys king. Yeah. Okay. Now the causality of the general extends to all those of whom soldier can be said. He commands the top general, everyone who comes under the universal soldier, right?

[25:12] Right. The king's causality is governing, extends to all men who are what? King. Who are citizens? Citizen. Okay. Now, which is more universal, citizen or soldier? Citizen. Yeah. Okay. Now do you see a connection between the most universal from this, what is said of all, and the first cause?

[25:46] The first cause has moves the more universal. Yeah, yeah. Citizen is more universal. You can see a point there. He'll stare at that thing, right? The king's causality extends to everyone of whom citizen can be said, right? The general's causality extends only to those of whom soldier can be said. But citizen is more universal than what, soldier, right? So the more universal corresponds to the more universal cause, right?

[26:23] You know, sometimes in Latin they'll speak of the universale in predicando, in being said of things, right? And universale in causando, right? Which universal cause, right? Okay. Now these are two different kinds of universality, right?

[26:48] And you can see this with the English word general, right? So in the army, let's say, soldier is perhaps the most general, okay? But in the Pacific War, maybe MacArthur is most of all the general, right? Was MacArthur a general in the same way that soldier is general?

[27:16] The soldier is general in being said of what? Oh yeah. But MacArthur is general in the sense of commanding all, right? Huh? Yeah. But there's some correspondence, right? Because you could say that MacArthur's causality extends to everyone who's called a soldier in this army, right? Huh? Listen. So two different kinds of universality, but the kind of they go together, right? Huh? Okay. So in Aristotle's book, say Politics, the so-called Politics, I call it English, right?

[28:00] In political philosophy, he's going to talk about government, right? And who governs, right? Huh? He's also going to talk about who is or is not a what citizen, right?

[28:18] Okay. Something what? The government, you might say, rules everybody who is a citizen, right? So it's appropriate that the same science should talk about government and citizen, right? And so they're both political, but in different ways, right?

[28:41] So from the fact that the wise man knows all things in some way, that he has the most universal knowledge, right? He knows what is said of all, right? Then what kind of causes would you expect him to be looking for? Something universal. Yeah. And that would be the first cause, right?

[29:07] See, see how how Aristotle says that the truth all things harmonize, right? They all fit together, right? Forgot to go to last night to

[29:28] Marianne Carian, but it's beautiful. See that, right? Okay. And then he says, "And perhaps." Okay, now be careful. Why he said "perhaps"? Perhaps the most universal are the most difficult for men to know. Now, why does he say that? He gives the reason for it, for they are furthest from the senses. The senses know singular. Now, the less universal is closer to the singular. So, man is closer to you and me than animal, and dog is closer to Maheba, or his name is, than animal, right now.

[30:22] And so, the most universal would be furthest away from us and from you. What's this? Abibi, Abibi. Okay, I gotta get that down. All right, they say Abibi.

[30:40] First cat we had when I was a little boy there was called Scrappy. Yeah. And then the next two cats we had the the woman we got them from she named them you know Captain and Commodore right and it's by the rings I guess on the tail of kind of military.

[31:03] So of course, Commodore, you know, he always got it abbreviated to Commie because this is the day, you know, McCarthy days and so on. And he's like, "Here, Commie! Here, Commie!" It's like calling him a communist, right? But his name was actually Commodore, right? You know, Captain was abbreviated to Cappy. You know, we call Captain Cappy. Here, Cappy. Here, Cappy. But Commodore got the Commie. Great, great cats.

[31:32] Scrappy was a beautiful cat. He disappeared, you know, and one of the neighbors thought that he'd stolen. He's such a beautiful cat, you know. They thought he's just stealing a beautiful cat like the black and white. Scrappy was was Persian. You know, we got we didn't get that from private. We got that from a you know pet shop. You know, believe me. We're going to the pet shop, and they they had monkeys in cage.

[31:57] You can get, but I can see. Sorry, if I put them up with the cat, I put them up with a monkey. Would have been a that would be a big mistake to come home. Come home with that. He turns and sends

[32:11] you back to the pet store. Yeah. Yeah. We'd scrap her out at the the lake. My father had a friend who had a lakeside place, and so we rented it from him. And my brothers and I would sleep out on the porch, you know, but it was screened in, so you could get the mosquitoes and so on. And the cat would be outside, and in the morning the cat scrap would be climbing up the the things.

[32:40] Got a kick out of that. But notice the reason he gets, for they are furthest from the senses, right? Okay. But notice if you take another, you know, thing from the the actual road, you can say effects are more known than causes, right? And causes are more known than the cause of the cause, right? So the effects are closer to our senses, and the causes are further away. And the cause of the cause, right?

[33:09] And eventually, if it's an immaterial cause, it'd be very far away from our senses, right? So, in one way, the most universal seems to be furthest from the senses, but maybe in another way, the first cause is furthest from the senses, and it's even more difficult to know. So that's why he says what? Perhaps, right? So is he talking about the first cause? No, no. He's saying that the most universal are the most difficult for men to know.

[33:42] Now, why is that? Because they're furthest from the starting point of our knowledge of senses. Okay. We could also say that the first cause is furthest from the senses too, right? And maybe the first cause is even more difficult to know because it's something immaterial, et cetera, et cetera, right? And you have to reason to it, right? Huh? And so on. You see? But it's interesting. People do have a great difficulty, and not only just people in general, but even the so-called modern philosophers, right?

[34:10] They have great difficulty in seeing what the most universal things, right? What exactly is the purpose of modern philosophy in general? Is there any utility to it, really, or is it really just sort of an abstract academic sort of a game? Did you read Whitaker Chambers' book Witness? No, I. That's just biography there. Yeah, yeah. But he says when he got through his education at Columbia, he had two choices: commit suicide or become a communist.

[34:44] So he chose to become a communist. I guess his brother chose suicide. You know, wonderful education they had there at Columbia. I guess. That's what man alive. That's what one of the things in it was that suicide. That's what the professor was teaching suicide. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it was a thing in the parties. But I think you know they've been indoctrinated to suicide in a bad sense.

[35:07] And but I remember now when I was reading, I was in graduate school. They had copies of theses, you know, that had been, you know, people got the doctorates, and you know I had to give a copy of my thesis to the library and so on. And so sometimes we'd go and read one of these theses if we're interested in the topic, you know. Well, at that time, of course, Marxism was very much in the, you know, center, Marxist philosophy.

[35:39] So there was a thesis on Marxism. So I thought I'd read this particular thesis. And but anyway, in his criticism of Marxism, right? As you know, Marxism, the official name of Marxism is dialectical materialism, right? Materialism says matter is the beginning of everything. That's the first cause, so to speak. But everything develops out of matter by the conflict of opposites, and dialectic. Those opposite sides—that's all these are dialectical.

[36:13] Then, when they apply this to human society, it's development is from conflict of things. Okay, so they're always talking about contradiction and opposition, right now. Now, Aristotle in the book called the Categories, right, and in the book called in the fifth book of of wisdom, right, he distinguishes the four basic senses of opposites.

[36:42] And Marx never does that. This is the key thing in this thing, right? Things develop out of opposites, right? He never distinguishes these central senses of opposites and and shows the order, right? Well, it's kind of a fundamental. It is. Yeah. But it's difficult, difficult to talk about something as universal as opposites, right? You know. And Aristotle sees that relatives are one kind of opposites too, right?

[37:16] But you have contradictories, and then having and lacking, and you have contraries, and then you have relatives, right? And so, Kasurik drummed them into me, and I'm able to teach a Kasurik. But

[37:37] it just shows you what Aristotle said, right? Things that are most universal are hard, right? Okay. And you get to to being, which is, you know, Aristotle distinguishes being according to the figures of predication, right? And according to act and ability, we can't do that, even philosophers, right?

[38:00] It's just too far away from the senses, right? Ever sense that temperament also is a major force behind Marx, also Luther. Yeah. Oh yeah. With Marx, you you read him, you know, you feel kind of his anger, you know. I mean, you get that, you know. He's not calm, you know. I mean, he's he's he's kind of fun to read that way, you know. He's

[38:31] a little picky, up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I, I often make a little bit of fun of Beethoven, which I shouldn't do, I suppose. But crank it up, Beethoven, with your enthusiasm, you know. And the fifth, the symphony, you know, became the symphony, you know, for victory, you know, in the Second World War, you know, and so on. But but there are nice things in Beethoven too.

[38:51] Beethoven is actually closer to Haydn than to Mozart. Now, although he's taught by both of them a bit, you know, he taught more by Haydn than. Mozart. I know when when Beethoven heard Mozart's twenty fourth, piano concerto says, "Now we shall never equal that." He says, "It's over. Don't even try, you know. You can't."

[39:20] Anyway, no, philosophy without music as my brother Marcus said, "We got to stop now or what Yeah, okay. So we'll we'll continue here with page three. Yeah.