Wisdom (Metaphysics 2016)
11. Metaphysics Proemium: The Natural Road and the Six Marks of the Wise Man
Class of 2016-09-29
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/011-metaphysics-proemium-the-natural-road-and-the-six-marks-of/

[0:00] of course, you know. I mean, Aristotle kills many stones with. or many birds with one stone, right? Huh? And he has taught us in the first reading something about the natural road, right? Huh? Okay.

[0:20] Sometimes I distinguish at least three orders in the natural road. And the order that he points out in the first reading is the order in which different kinds of knowledge come along this road. What is that order?

[0:53] Yeah, well, that's that's the whole name of the roads, The senses and the reason, but sensing comes first on that road, then comes memory, then comes, yeah, and then finally knowledge of the universal, right? Huh? Okay. Now,

[1:12] how does memory arise in sensing, right? Huh? Many similar experiences Or excuse me I think it's many similar senses? Yeah, in a sense, you're retaining the movement of the senses, right? Huh? Okay. The image inside you, right? Caused by the movement of the eye, right? And move something else in us, right? Okay. So we retain. You might say you get from sensing to memory by retaining what you sensed, right?

[1:45] Okay. Sometimes you can't retain what somebody says, right? Okay. But we try to retain, right? What we sensed, right? And that's how we get memory, right? Now, how do you get from memory to experience?

[2:06] By these similar memories, I guess. Yeah, but by gathering them together, right? Huh? Okay. Okay. Okay. Kind of like getting money, right? Huh? You don't spend it as you get it. You can retain some of the money, right? Then you retain some more money. Then you start to get together and can be pile money. Now you're you're wealthy, right? Okay. So experience arises from memory in a different way than memory from what the senses.

[2:41] Okay. Now, how does knowledge of universal arise from experience? In one of those two ways, or in some other way? Yeah. I separate out what they have in common, right? Huh? I compare them, you know. He's got two ears. He's got two ears. He's got two ears. Two years? He's got two legs. He's got two legs. He's got two legs. So what, man? Is a two-legged animal, right?

[3:13] I guess something universal, right? Okay. Yeah. So, having brought together so much as what separated out, what you have in common, comparing you. Okay.

[3:32] Now, in the proemium to the eight books of natural hearing, Aristotle points out another what order in our knowledge, right, along the natural road, and this is the order in which even the same thing is known, right. That's known in a confused way before it's known distinctly, right. Or it's known in an outward way before it's known in an inward way, right. Okay. So the beautiful word in Latin there, intus legere, right, to read within, right, huh, or the beautiful word in English to understand, right.

[4:13] Okay. But you can also speak of a third order, right? A little more easier than this one I just spoke of, and that's the order in which different things are known along this road. So sensible things are known before things that are not sensible, if the last are known at all, right. And therefore, material things are known before immaterial things. That's where we use the negative, immaterial, right?

[4:46] Mm-hmm. They're not material, right? And then we can see that effects are for the most part known before causes. So every time you ask why, you're witnessing to the effect being known before the cause. You see the effect, but you don't see the cause, right? Okay. You're searching that. And if the cause is known after the fact, what about the cause of the cause? Yeah. So if wisdom comes at the end of our knowledge, it might be a knowledge of not just any cause, but of the what, very first cause, right?

[5:27] It's a knowledge of God, as I tell Lady Sophia, Lady Wisdom. If you ask Sophia what is wisdom, she says it's a knowledge of God. Okay.

[5:44] But Aristotle, in the second reading here that we saw, I guess last time, right, we kind of went to that. Um, he kind of backtracked and said, let's just say the wisdom is about causes, and let's consider again, right. Uh, about what kind of causes it is. He wants to show that it's about the first causes. right? And he suggests that maybe knowing a little bit about the wise man is might help us to see what kind of causes he's after, right?

[6:13] And so he works out a what he thinks out a six part description of the wise man, right? Now, what is that six part description of the wise man? It has six parts to it. What's the first thing he says about the wise man?

[6:36] Wise man knows all things so far as possible, by having a knowledge of these in particular. Yeah. Now I mentioned there's, you know, we kind of think that about the wise man, huh? Yeah. Yeah. Are you a wise guy? Know it all?

[6:57] That's a Georgia sense, right? There you see that we recognize that. Or I took the example, you know, I hear people say about somebody, you know, he's got it all together. See, he's kind of wise about life, right? He's got it all together, right? Most of us have it all together. Our life is kind of, you know, shipwrecked or kind of in pieces, so to speak, right?

[7:21] And so Aristotle says, you know, that Homer taught them how to tell good what story, right? It's got to be a course of action as a beginning, middle, end. You can't just take anything that happens to a person, right? Because they have no connection, right?

[7:41] Got out the trash today because that's when they come on Thursday, right? What's that got to do with teaching philosophy, right? Don't form a story. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[7:55] Don't waste the paper. What's the second thing he says about the wise man? He knows all things in some way. He's talking about what we think, you know, and as I say to the students, he's not using the editorial way, you know, that we use sometimes to give us more apparent authority.

[8:21] He's talking about men in general. We think, you know, but do we also think about the wise men? Those difficult things? Yeah, things are difficult for a man to know that he's in, right? Okay. And what's the third thing he says about the wise man? Yeah, yeah. Don't we go to the wise men when we're not sure what to do or something like that, right? And like he's maybe more sure about what we should do than we are, okay?

[8:53] Or if you have a difficult thing, I'd go see what you know De Koninck would say or what Dionne would say or. originally, what Kasurik would say,

[9:04] But Kasurik said funny about some of my questions. Wait until De Koninck comes down. You ask him. Okay. Then Dionne came down. Kasurik said, "Dionne's talking about the importance of logic for wisdom. Isn't natural philosophy more important than than logic? Because in natural philosophy, you learn that there's an unmoved mover, and therefore there's an immaterial, and it's immaterial, and that's so you know it's immaterial things, right?

[9:35] Or you learn that the human soul is immortal, right? And you begin to see—is that more important for that? So, and so I go over and see Dionne's one. So I give him this line of Kasurik. He says, 'He distinguished Dionne, right? Because obviously, knowing those things, you have to do through natural philosophy, right? And Aristotle calls a natural philosophy gives it."The title, second philosophy, right? And of course, all the way back to Socrates and Plato, right?

[10:07] You know, if you want to talk about causes, you go to natural philosophy, right? That's where you first learn about the various kinds of causes, because the natural philosophy uses all of them, right? The geometer, he doesn't use all of them. He just uses form a little bit, right? You know, doesn't mean he has matter in this strict sense, and he so he doesn't have purpose, right?

[10:25] Huh? What's the purpose of a triangle having two right angles? You go to two right angles. No purpose in this. So, geometry can make a living this way. Yeah. But logic, what Monsignor Dionne was talking about was that logic, in one way, is more like wisdom, right? Than natural philosophy is, because it's more universal, right? Okay. So the first distinction we have of being is according to the figures of what predication, and this is proper to logic to talk about predication, right?

[11:07] And then logic is like wisdom in its immaterial. Talk the immaterial. So in some ways, logic disposes us for wisdom, right? In a way that natural philosophy does not, right? Natural philosophy goes from what the general down to the particular, and it goes towards matter, huh? As Aristotle points out, and as Thomas points out, and wisdom, you're going what? Towards the immaterial, right?

[11:42] And as I like to say, you know, the logician seems to be like the wise man because he directs all the sciences, right? As to how they should proceed, huh? That's not a syllogism. What do you think you're doing? You're the jock. You can't. You can't have a conclusion following necessarily by induction, you know.

[12:05] I can give infinite examples that numbers are odd, right? If it follows that all numbers are odd, I got a huge, got a large induction, right? Three, five, seven, nine, eleven. How long you want to go? Yeah, yeah, that's impressive, right? You know. Like a little girl the other day, I can count to a hundred.

[12:28] That's what I can say, you know. You count to a hundred, and then you know, you count to a thousand, daddy. So, so you see a distinction there, right? In one way, natural philosophy, right? Huh?

[12:52] I think natural philosophy, you know, helps us more with act and ability, right? In fact, in the definition of motion, there you have what.

[13:05] Both act and ability, right? And motion is what's most known. And Thomas has a beautiful distinction between the way logic proceeds and the way natural philosophy proceeds, right? And it's marvelous because of its brevity, right? He says that natural philosophy proceeds per modum motus, by way of motion. Everything is made known by what motion, right? Even nature is defined as the beginning cause of motion and rest, right?

[13:34] It's so thin. And logic proceeds what? By way of predication, he says. Now, now studying logic at Laval, there, my teacher was Albert the Great, you know. And one of the first two books in logic, either the Isagoge, right, of Porphyry and the Categories of Aristotle, in the Latin, you call them the Predicabilibus and the Predicamentis which are taken from the root predicare, right? To be said, right?

[14:13] And when you get to the great argument called the syllogism, it's based on what? Dici de omni and dici de nullo the sort of all and the sort of none, right? So logic is characterized by being said of something, right? By natural philosophy, you learn these things through motion, right? Ink, it's alive, you know. But because it moves of itself, right? You know, you see, you know, you sit down, it's just starts to move, you know.

[14:46] And I have bifocals here, you know. Sometimes I think something moves, you know, it's not really moving. I know you had that experience. The bug or something, yeah. It's kind of funny, you know. But

[15:06] or you know something is alive because it grows or something, right? Even in its mother's womb, it grows, huh? Okay. So he knows all things in some way. It has to be in particular because you can't know them. I mean, it has to be in general because you can't know them all in particular, okay? And he knows what Difficult. things difficult to know, right? And Thomas will, Aristotle will point out something kind of interesting there, right?

[15:52] That the most universal are furthest away from the senses which know only singulars, right? And therefore, perhaps are the most difficult to know, right? Well, it turns out that we know the effect before the cause, and the cause before the cause of the cause, and that way, the last thing we know would be to know the first cause, and that turns out to be the more difficult to know than the most what universal, right?

[16:22] De Koninck says one day, you know, every respectable word in philosophy is analogous, right? It's equivocal by reason, right? And modern philosophers have great difficulty, right? I always give the example of the uh writing the thesis there on marxism, you know Marxism is known as technically as dialectical materialism, right? But matter means materialism. It's everything begins with matter, right? And it develops by what conflict of opposites, right?

[17:05] But nowhere does Marx distinguish the four senses, you know, even be aware of it, right? And you make call contradiction, whatever it is, you know, whether it be contrariety or you know some other kind of opposition, and you say, gee whiz, that's that's fundamental. It's in the very name of the, you know, because in dialectic, I mean, you know, they argue opposite sides, right? That's why they start using dialectical for this war of opposites, huh?

[17:38] And you know they quote Heraclitus anymore as the father of all, you know. A good exposition of the rudiments of dialectical materialism. Trying to show you know that stretches all the way back to the great Heraclitus, but they they can't you know distinguish. You don't seem to know that these most common words are what equivocal. All them by reason, right? This is what Aristotle discovered, right? That the common words we use, especially in wisdom, but in the axioms, right?

[18:16] And to some extent everywhere, right? These common words are what all equivocal, but equivocal by reason. And so he set out, and he spent a whole book there in in wisdom, the fifth book, distinguishing these senses of these words and thinking out their order, right? And you know the

[18:41] the thing we use for before and after, right, was taken from the categories, right? Okay, because for logic, but it's also present in the fifth book of wisdom, right? That word, but I think it's good to start the texting categories. it's marvelous what he does there, right? Who else could do that? Maybe Thomas. I give the example there, you know, of

[19:12] the fourth book of the Physics. Aristotle distinguishes the eight central senses of in or to be in, and he doesn't order them. At least the text we have, right? Thomas says, "Well, we'll order them in the way that he taught us in the fifth book of Wisdom, right?" And he orders them beautifully. We talked about that before. Those eight senses, huh? And he kind of was very fond of that because he he taught he had of course, you know, and he taught on place, you know.

[19:43] Still remember him coming down to class there, looking up in my eyes and saying, "Isn't this wonderful?" He's just full of wonder, man. He's been teaching us since the 1930s, right? I'm up here in the 1960s. I'm learning from him, right? My Goodness, man. to. The wonder he had Great man. but he deferred to Dionne, right? You know that humility is amazing, right? And he was much more famous than Dionne you know.

[20:11] Monsignor Dionne didn't go out and lecture tours, or you know, he wasn't. But kind of great. Okay, so that's what he says. Perhaps, right? There are actually things more difficult. That's difficult enough. You take the moderns as an example of the difficulty, right?

[20:35] Because most universal things are very hard to see. What's the third thing he says about him? More certain, more certain, yeah. We talked about a little bit of tension there between the second and the third, right?

[21:01] Because is he most certain in his knowledge of those things that are most difficult for us to know, or are there some things that are less difficult for us to know, but he's very certain about? Well, you can look at the axioms, right? Aristotle defends the axiom that something cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same way, right? Something that Hegel and Marx couldn't, you know.

[21:34] They say dialectics is a study of the contradiction within the very essence of things. So it's based upon denying, right? Aristotle is most certain about these axioms, right? And without trying to say why he's more certain than other men entirely, part of it is that he can what?

[22:00] Yeah, like Berquist, you know, who tries to you know convince his poor students that sometimes the part is greater than the whole, right? And at least for you know, make a name for yourself.

[22:16] Yeah. Yeah. Because Hegel says that when something is becoming, it both is and is not, right? I'm coming into your house. Am I in your house or not in your house? I'm both in your house and not in your house, right? It was a contradiction, right? Becoming is a contradiction.

[22:43] So they have a hard time, huh? You know, a very difficult time to distinguish those things, right? So Aristotle's perhaps is most difficult, right?

[22:56] Okay. So it's not the most difficult, but it is. But so he's able to defend the axioms, right? Because he knows these things, huh? You know, I'm just thinking of another fiendish question I'm going to ask my Tuesday night students.

[23:14] I told you now after, after giving them the text and the categories and the senses of before, how are you going to ask the question? In what sense of before does one sense of before come before another sense of before? You know, Peter Piper picked

[23:30] the peppers. What are you doing? The girls would cry. Why are you doing this to me? But those senses that he gives there, right? Those four senses are distinguished in a certain what order, right? In a certain before and after. Well, which sense of before and after is it?

[23:59] Is before in time better than the other senses? Is it before the other senses in being? Well, as thomas gives the principle there when he's talking about the fifth book there. We name things as we know them, right?

[24:30] So when they find something they didn't know about before, they give it a name, don't they? Right? We name things as we know them. And that, of course, leads the idea that naming what follows the order in knowing, huh? The third order, right? We were looking at a text there last Tuesday, my students there, and the text comes, of course, it's a statement that Thomas very often talks about and goes back to Plato, right?

[25:00] That the per se is before the per aliud, right? To speak English, the through itself is before the through what another, right? And we're talking there about the what move mover, right? Huh? And the move mover is not a mover to itself, right? So there's got to be before it another mover. Now, if that is a mover, yeah, eventually got to come to a what? A mover that's a mover what?

[25:37] Per se. Yeah. Yeah. To itself. Yeah. I said now you could go more general and say is there a cause before a cause cause? Because cause cause, and say what? Cause to itself. No, unless it's cause, it's not going to cause anything else, right? So a cause, caused cause, is a cause through what? Another. Well, it must be somewhere before the caused cause a what? Cause to itself.

[26:16] Yeah. Okay. Nice, that's it. Gotta get him next time, you know. I say, I ask them, you know, this great proposition that Thomas I've seen all kinds of places recently, you know, that goes back to Plato, right, Aristotle, Plato originally, huh? The through itself is before the through another, right? Now, in what sense of before is the through itself before the through another? Before indeed The second sense

[27:06] Now, unlike the other question, right, which said that what sense of before does one sense of before come before another sense of before? There is one sense of before to answer, right?

[27:23] In the case, seem to be answering, trying to guess one sense of before, right? Well, I think it's found in the second and the third and the fourth. Maybe not the first. I'm too dumb to see in the first. But in the second sense, third sense, and in the fourth sense, and in the so-called fifth sense, which is not fifth in order, as I was putting quotes, but which is later on the second sense, right?

[27:53] The cause and the effect, right? Okay. I've just been talking about how what the caused cause, right? Huh? Is an effect, right? The cause that is an effect itself, right? Has a cause before it, right? And eventually, have to get to something that is a cause, what? Through itself and not an effect, right? Okay. But the same thing might be said of what? Being too, right? Huh?

[28:24] Okay. That's why you know the argument. One of the arguments for God goes from the contingent can be and not be, so it depends upon something that must be, and some things that must be are are must be through something else, like the conclusion of the syllogism, right, demonstration, and so eventually got to come to a being that is what? To itself. Yeah, yeah. That's why Thomas argues, you know.

[28:51] That God is being itself, right? Because He's being through Himself, and when is being through being, so He must be being itself. Very simple. Okay, but again, in knowing is that true too? Some things are known. Some statements are known through other statements, right? So, like that famous statement, the Pythagorean theorem, right, is known, right? And some of the premises used to prove it are known through other statements, right?

[29:22] Now, is every statement known through another statement? Would this statement be known at all if every statement needed to be known through other statements?

[29:45] I mean, if statement A is known to B, you have to know B before you can know A. And if every statement is known through another statement, then B would be known to C, right? You have to know C before you can know B or A, and you couldn't know C until. you knew D and D until you knew E, and there you couldn't even begin to know something, right?

[30:07] And there'd be infinity of what statements behind any one statement. So if every statement is known to another statement, or has to be known to another statement, then no statement can be what? No. Not quite as obvious, you know, as the difficulty of a guy who says every statement is false, right? People like to maintain that, right? Well, every statement is false, then that statement itself is false, right?

[30:38] That's one way you get there, right? Huh? So if every statement is false, they can't even know that statement. But the same thing would follow if every statement was known to another statement. No statement could be what? No.

[31:02] And so that third sense of you know before, you could take it in the case of defining as well as reasoning. Sometimes, like in the definition of reason, I had to define discourse, right? Discourse is coming to know the unknown through the known, right? But if every part of every definition is the need of definition,

[31:30] could you define anything? Huh? No, because you have to define the parts before you understand the definition, and then you have to the parts of their definitions, and so on. Same thing you have with the statements, right? So there must be some things that are known what they are, but not through definition, right? Okay.

[31:56] Just as there are statements that are known but through themselves, right, and not through other statements. Aristotle distinguishes them, but there's a way in which Boethius does. It's a marvelous way. He says some statements are known to themselves by all, and some are known to themselves by the wise.

[32:22] Okay. So the whole is larger than the part is known to itself by all, because everybody knows that a hole has parts and so on, and therefore it's kind of obvious that a whole is more than one of its parts, right?

[32:43] But you know, every perfect number is a what composite number. And that's per se known to the wise, right? To those who know what a what perfect number is, right? See, a perfect number is a number that is equal to the sum of everything that measures it. So six is the first perfect number, right? It's measured by one, by two, and three, but not by four or five.

[33:13] And one plus two plus three equals six, right? So Augustine and Thomas, when they talk about God making the universe in six days, right, it's a sign of the perfect number, right, the perfection of it right? Kind of, I kind of amazing thing in music is kind of mathematical, right? And the custom of the composers, you know, to write, you know, in six, you know, Mozart's most famous quartets are called the Haydn quartets because he dedicated them to Haydn, right?

[33:45] He said he taught me how to write a quartet, but it's six, right? You know, it's very common, huh? Six. Sometimes they have twelve, right? It's two times six, but but kind of, maybe it's about six, right? Okay. Well, now a composite number is a number that is measured by another number, not just every number is measured by one. But a prime number is measured only by one.

[34:14] But a composite number is measured by at least one other number. But now it's an obvious that a perfect number must be a composite number. Because if it wasn't composite, it would be measured only by one. That won't add up to it. So it's got to be. So it's per se known to the wise, right? Not wise in the fullest sense, but I mean those who know, right?

[34:40] Or if I know what a odd number is, right, an even number, it's obvious to me that no odd number is even, right? But little kid might not know that no tragedy can be a comedy. Shakespeare's always making fun of those who say, you know, a very lamentable comedy or a very making fun of you know,

[35:11] a very funny tragedy, that sort of thing, you know. But the wise, you know, tragedy comedy, they know it's nonsense, right? Is a line longer than a point?

[35:42] I don't know. I think that's per se known, but it's not. See, a point has no length, right? So can a can a line be longer than a point?

[36:00] Longer means he has more length, right? Okay. Add more, just add more points. Well, more and less are are relatives, right? So if a line had more length than a point, then the point would have less length. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[36:19] Okay. A lot of people think points don't exist, right? Because they have no length or width or depth, right? Yeah. Instead, I try to to show kids that points must really exist, right? Because there are lines that don't go on forever. So there's an end of the line, and the end of the line is a point. Therefore. Gotcha.

[36:44] Okay. So what's the? Okay. So there's a little tension there between the second and the third, right? See, so the wise men might be most certain of the axioms, which are the most certain statements of all, right? See, it's great certitude, right? Okay.

[37:06] I heard Shakespeare talk about that. Principle of contradiction. To be or not to be. Yeah. To be or not to be, that is the question. He says, right? I say it's a question because you can't both be and not be. See, Is it or is it not So if, somebody said, you know, to eat or sleep—that is a question. No, you can do both, and you probably should do both.

[37:30] Eat a little bit and sleep a little bit, right? You know. You can't both be and not be, right? That's a question. So in dialectic, um, the the problem is always like fact of contradictories, right? The human soul is immortal or it's not.

[37:49] Take take general sides. You want to take an argument, you know, for a while, but then we'll try to find the truth. Okay. So he knows all things in some way, right? He's more what? Things are difficult to know, right? Yeah. Teach the causes. Yeah, he's more able to teach the causes, and he has knowledge that's more desirable. What? Yeah. And then that he or his dog is right.

[38:26] Okay. Now, how do those last things arise? Huh? Why would you think of him as being more knowing the cause, right? The causes are more hidden. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[38:46] But when he compared the man of experience, right, to the man of universal knowledge, right, huh? And he spoke of the man of experience as far as doing something right might succeed better, right? Because he, because what you do is something singular, right? Okay. But the man of art or science seems to be wiser because he knows why things are so, right? Okay.

[39:17] And don't we think the man who knows why is wiser? Or Paul says, why do you do that? You know. So you think of the wise men with no causes, right? Okay. But if he knows things that are more difficult to know, then he's the man who would know what the cause of the cause, right? And the furthest along would be knowing the first cause, right? Okay. There's a connection between being certain and knowing the cause, because the cause tells you why something must be so, right?

[40:08] Now, when you come to the fifth thing that he he has knowledge that's more desirable for its own sake, right? Now, you know, practical man might say, you know, he may, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But remember how you spoke in the in the arts there, how the arts of what?

[40:34] The necessities of life. Yeah, it don't seem to be as wise as Shakespeare or something like that, right? I was telling you about even the painter there, right? Huh? How the painter can do a painting where wherever you look, you're looking down. And I told you I bought this at Canaletto, you know, some paintings of the Venice, right? Huh? And on the right side of my room, looking at the painting, which is like in the center there, you know, and looking right down the canal, and the other day, or on this other side, and looking right down, right?

[41:13] Used to be a painting like that in in in the museum there in Boston, there, you know, where even question, what? How could they do that? You know, it's amazing, you know, huh? You know, they can do the eyes sometimes, know? So the eyes seem to follow you around, you know. And my friend Washington Irving makes you know fun of the servants there, you know, in the big houses in England, you know.

[41:37] Something strange about that that painting there, because because the eyes they're following around, right? So you kind of admire them, right? Huh? Yeah. So the arts that are aiming at pleasure seem to be wiser, right? Than the cook or the carpenter or something, right? Okay.

[41:58] And finally, you know, the chief artist seems to be wiser than the what? MacArthur Yeah. So McCarthy seems to be wiser than the men he's commanding, right? Huh? Here's the time McCarthy went up there and right up in the front there, you know, and the guy kind of wearing, you know, we just killed a a you know what do you call him? Sniper, you know. And he's going to keep McCarthy.

[42:26] This is a dangerous place to be. So that's that's what you're supposed to do, he says. That's that's what you're supposed to do. He killed a sniper. Another example, you know, where the enemy strafed McCarthy's headquarters, you know, huh? And the bullets came into where you know his office and the guy in the other office there, you know, officer runs in to see if McCarthy's still alive or what, you know?

[42:53] McCarthy says, yes. Because I never thought that McCarthy was a little bit of an actor, you know, but you have to be a little bit of an actor there, you know, huh?

[43:16] So the chief artist seems to be wiser, right? So the the the wise man then would be like the chief artist, right? And therefore he would be able to command others, right? Okay. Now

[43:33] he doesn't really deduce these things as explicitly as he as he might do, maybe in his lecture public lecture. I mean, the lecture, and he's you know this kind of summary. But the last paragraph there of the on page four there of the second reading, from all the fore said, right, the name sought that is wisdom falls in the same what episteme, for it is necessary that this looks at the first beginnings and causes.

[44:03] For one, the causes is the good, and that for the sake of which. Notice that that is touching upon the last two points, right? Because the end is what enables you to direct others, right? You know, at the end you're aiming at. And the chief artist knows what the end is, right? Other guys don't know the end, but just the means, but they've been told to do it this way.

[44:26] And also that it's more what, you know, a better thing, right? Okay. And this when you study the causes, you find out that the end is the cause of all the other causes, huh? Okay.

[44:41] So wood gets to be the cause of a table because the carpenter. No, because the carpenter, yeah, he shaped it, right? And the shape gets in there because the carpenter is responsible for getting in there. Well, why do he do this, right? So we can have, you know, look as good as books on it and so on, or have his dinner on it or something, right? Okay.

[45:05] The chair is for the sake of sitting. That's why it's constructed the way it is, right? Why should this be a little bit of a obtuse angle? I don't know. He's told me to put him a little bit obtuse angle, but it's for the sake of sitting, right? That's the reason why. Okay. Do you want to be a philosopher? You learn some Greek, doing. So, okay. He's the chief artist there, right?

[45:29] Huh? He knows down the road, right? And even helped me to read Gospel of Saint John and the other things, right? Because that's in Greek, huh?

[45:44] Now, if you go back over these six things, you can kind of see that they do lead you to conclude that the wise man knows not just any causes, but the first causes. So I think I talked about the first thing last time, didn't I, did I?

[46:00] Why would it follow from his knowing the most universal that he knows the names of the first causes? Why was that? Didn't I explain that a little bit last time? What's the

[46:14] connection between that? Right, because he's kind of concluding it from it, right? Right. Well, it's a distinguishing last time between two kinds of general or universality.

[46:30] In Latin, he used to always give us the universale in causando and the universale in praedicando, right? But speaking English, right? No, the word general has two senses, right? One is something that is said of many things, right? And then the other is the general in the sense of Douglas MacArthur, right? He's a universal cause, right? Commanding the whole of the army, right? Now, is there a connection between those two senses of general?

[47:07] Because they're not the same sense, right? Of course, you know Descartes there, not Descartes, Hegel there. He's trying to deduce the whole universe from the most universal in prædicando, right? The whole universe doesn't come from the most universal prædicando, but the more universal causando, right? Okay. But take a simple example here, right? If you have a a kingdom, right? Who's the top guy? The king, yeah. Le roi c'est moi, the French king said, right?

[47:49] Yeah. But under the king, he has what a general, right? That commands his armies, right? So the more fundamental cause is the king, right? And the king tells the general he wants him to invade another country or something. Now the causality of the general extends to all the what soldiers, but the causality of the king extends to all the what? Yeah. Now which is said of more, citizen or soldier?

[48:22] Citizen. Yeah. You could have a you know citizen army here, but every soldier would be a citizen, but not every citizen is a soldier, right? So citizen corresponds to the causality of the king, because it extends in some way to everyone who's a citizen. But the causality of the general extends just to everyone that is a what soldier. So the more universal in prædicando is what citizen, the less universal.

[48:52] Soldier, and the more universal cause is the king, and the less universal cause is the general, and so citizen corresponds to king. Yeah, yeah. Now, in political philosophy, right, we ask the question, who is and who is not a citizen, right?

[49:20] And citizen is most universal, right? Okay. And then we talk in political philosophy about government, right? Do they go together in the same knowledge, government and citizen?

[49:42] Yeah. But the government governs everyone who is a what citizen, right? Okay. Now, I am a father, right now. I try to rule my three children, right?

[49:59] But my Causality didn't extend to the whole what country, not alone the whole state, even the whole country. Yeah, yeah. You see. Okay. So the governor of Iowa, his causality might extend to not every citizen, but to every Iowa, right?

[50:23] It doesn't tell the people of Nebraska what to do, right? Okay. See, but citizen is more general, since the United States than citizen of Iowa, right? And the president has more universal causality than the governor. Yeah, yeah. But the government has a greater causality than the father. Father does, right? Okay. Grandfather got no more. Um.

[50:53] So it makes sense, right? That if the wise man has the knowledge of all things in general, right? He knows what is said of all, as we learned in the fourth book. Wisdom is about being and one, right? This is said of everything. Then, what kind of causes must he be considering? The cause of all, right? Yeah. Okay.

[51:25] So the general extends to everybody in his army, right? As a soldier, right? But the captain, is just the company and the sergeant, only his squad, right? Squad members and so on. Okay.

[51:40] But we say it's things that are what difficult to know, right? Well, my gosh, the first cause would be most difficult to know if we know the effect before the cause, and the cause before the cause of the cause, right? And therefore, the last thing that seemed to know would be the first cause, right? And that'd be most difficult than to know, even further away than the most universal predication, huh?

[52:05] Okay, that's why it said be perhaps before, right? Okay. He's more certain because he knows what the causes, right? More than anybody else. Caused

[52:19] by something must be so, right? And he's most what? What's the fourth thing? Yeah, yeah. Well, okay. The man knows first causes. Obviously, most of all knows that, right? Yeah. And then, in terms of it being the most desirable knowledge, right? Well, the first cause is the end of everything else. Correct. Then that's the best thing, right? The end is better. So the first end is better than all the rest, huh?

[52:57] And by the end, that you also what order things, don't you? Because you order them to the end. So the man who knows the end can most of all direct others.

[53:10] What did Comrade Lennon say? you know, There had been ten thousand men, in, what? row? And the Russians knew what they wanted. We never would have come to power.

[53:26] Okay.