Wisdom (Metaphysics 2016)
12. Metaphysics Proemium: Wonder as the Beginning of Philosophy — Wisdom as Free and Divine Knowledge
Class of 2016-09-29
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7c-wisdom-2016/012-metaphysics-proemium-wonder-as-the-beginning-of-philosophy/

[0:00] Now, Thomas divides the what, premium into two parts, and the first part is in the first two readings, right? Where we learn what wisdom is what, about, right? We learn that it's about causes and about, Or precisely, the first causes, right? Or the first causes is just one. Now, the second part of the premium is the kind of knowledge that wisdom is. Okay. I mentioned before that in this great premium, at the end of page five and the bottom of page five, Aristotle has an epilogue, right, where he will recall these two things that he's talked about, but he recalls the thing he just did last and then goes back to the first thing.

[0:49] So, what is the nature of the knowledge thought and has been said? That's going to be said now in the what, third reading, right? And what is the goal of the investigation? And the whole knowledge of a road you can see how he translated the methodos there, must reach, right? That was done in the first two readings. The goal was to know what, the very first cause, right?

[1:11] Okay. Aristotle will know that in the twelfth book, right? He says it compels our wonder, the first cause. Okay. Now, the first thing he he sets off to show here in the third reading about this kind of knowledge is that it's not practical knowledge, right? It's not for making or doing, but it's for the sake of what, understanding, just for the sake of knowing. And what does he give as a sign in the first paragraph here?

[1:51] That is not a a making science is clear also from those first philosophizing, for men both now, in his time, right, and even at first begin to philosophize through wonder.

[2:11] In the beginning, he says, wondering about the strange things close at hand, a new toy. Then little by little, thus going forward, raising questions about the greater things, is about the changes of the moon. Sometimes you have a half moon, sometimes a quarter moon. What's the cause of that, right? Why is that? And the sun, right, and the eclipse of the sun, the stars, and finally about the origin of the universe itself, right?

[2:39] So it's kind of a development of thing. But the man in doubt and wondering thinks himself to be ignorant, so he's trying to escape his ignorance, right?

[2:56] So if God gives us the pity vision, He's taking pity on our ignorance, right? But then He makes an interesting comparison to the philomuthos. But before I go to the remark about the philomuthos, Plato says that the chief philosophers are what? I mean, Thomas says are Plato and Aristotle.

[3:24] I gave you the text from the Theaetetus. Did I give it, to the last time, I thought. Okay. Can you see the camera? Sometimes I forget when what.

[3:47] Plato thanked the gods for three things: that he was born a man and not a woman. That's the first thing he thanked them for. Second, that he was born a Greek and not a barbarian.

[4:07] And third, that he had met what Socrates. Now, in the dialogues, right, come down to us in Plato, he always has Socrates, right, almost always in there engaged in some kind of conversation that is somewhat philosophical, right? You got to be careful in comparing Plato and Aristotle because Plato's imitations of men in philosophical conversation in the dialogues have come down to us, but his lectures have not.

[4:51] Okay, we hear some references to his lectures, but we don't have any summary of his lectures, right? Now, with Aristotle, it's the reverse, right? The accounts of his lectures have come down to us, and in one of them, he actually had Aristotle, saying, "Now you should thank us for the new discoveries and all, and forgive us for what you know." So, so he's like a professor lecturing, right?

[5:20] These are you know pretty good summaries of his lectures, huh? But Aristotle's dialogues have been lost. We know there's a dialogue that was introductory to philosophy. We know there's a dialogue with the poets, so on. So you get kind of a false view, right? But Aristotle probably didn't have to write so many dialogues because Plato had done such a good job, right? But Aristotle said in the book on the Poetic Art, he has three famous statements about man and imitation, and one is that man is the most imitative of all the animals.

[5:59] That's easy to see in our experience, right? I'm always meowing, you know, from my grandchildren or my little niece was over at the house the other day there. I have a great meow, you know. I got the old cat here, you know. They always look at the cat and so on. And when I was at my daughter's to give cows, right, and I go, and all the cows came running over to me.

[6:24] They're amazing, you know. And I call them my cousins, not my brothers. Not that close, but they're my cousins, you know. And I say hello to my cousins. So if I'm with the kids and I drive by the cows in the field, I give them a nice moo, you know, so on. So

[6:43] remember Mark. We're coming back from the zoo. Remember Mark, you know, taking up the movements of the ape, you know, and Salvador D'Orencia, you know. And so man is the most imitative of the animals, right? And the second thing he says is that what we all therefore delight in imitations. Remember when I was at Laval there, there was a guy who was very good at imitating, you know, and he would Christmas party, right?

[7:11] He would imitate this or that professor, and everybody knew what professor was imitating. The professor got little quirks in his voice or little quirky things with his hands or something, you know, and we'd be laughing, you know, and the professor has to laugh too because he's being taken taken off, you know. And and the third thing he says is at first we learn by imitation. That's very important, right?

[7:35] So that's how you learn your native language, you know. My case English, and I learned it from imitating my parents and brothers and so on. And so Aristotle understands the importance of imitation, and therefore the dialogues, right? One should be introduced to philosophy, you know, through the dialogues because they're an imitation of men, right, and kind of imitate them. Now the dialogues are usually named not from Socrates, but he appears in all the dialogues, but the man he talks to, right?

[8:12] And this dialogue I'm going to refer to here is called the Theaetetus, right? Because Socrates talks to the young Theaetetus, who's a prized pupil of Theodorus, right? And Theaetetus is in fact a what historical person who made very great contributions to geometry, right? And so if you get the Heath edition, you know, of Euclid, there you'll see what parts, you know, they think go back to Theaetetus, right?

[8:44] But in the dialogue, he's a young man, you know, at the beginning of his academic life, you might say. And the person that Socrates talks with and who often gives his name to the dialogue. And the topic that he talks with or about is what appropriate, right? Okay, so he's going to talk, you know, about what episteme is, right? Well, it's a geometer who would know something about or have some experience of episteme, right?

[9:19] This is proportion to us, right? So it's appropriate to talk about that sort of thing. But the thing we're interested in right here is that when Theodorus introduces his pupil Theaetetus to Socrates, he says he's something of a philosopher, this guy, and that was to, you know, press Socrates or make Socrates think. Okay. Now, in the middle of the dialogue,

[9:49] Theaetetus says in regard to something they're talking about, "By the gods, Socrates, I am lost in wonder when I think of all these things."And sometimes when I regard them, it really makes my head swim, right?

[10:06] That's what Niels Bohr said about the quantum theory, right? It doesn't make your head swim, you know. You're not really getting into it. Now Socrates notes this, right? He's broken into this great wonder, and he says, "Theodorus seems to be a pretty good guesser about your nature." Greek word is what, progressing to guess, to thaumazein you know, Book of Topics, right?

[10:35] Theodorus seems to be a pretty good guesser about your nature that you are something of a philosopher. For this, what is very much, I don't like the translation here. The old Victorian bad translations. For this is very much what the philosopher undergoes, right? To wonder, to thaumazein, right? Okay. So it's kind of a confirmation of what Theodorus had said, right? And then Socrates makes a very strong statement: "Ou gar allē archē ale arche, there is no other beginning of philosophy than this."

[11:15] Very strong statement. That's it. Yeah. Now, immediately after saying that, Socrates says, "And he who said that Iris was the child of Thaumas seems to not make a bad genealogy." And that was the great poet what, Hesiod. Now, who is Iris and who is Thaumas Well, Thaumas is the Greek word for wonder, right? So Thaumas is wonder personified. He says it wasn't a bad genealogy. The man who said that Iris was the offspring, right, of Thalmas.

[11:54] Then he goes on doesn't explain why he said that. I used to say to my students now when I gave them this passage, I'd say, "Did you wonder why Socrates said that? Because if you didn't, you're not called to be a philosopher, right? But if you wondered why Socrates should say, hey, you know, Who's iris? Yeah. well, Iris is what in Greek mythology is what the rainbow personified, right, and the messenger of the gods.

[12:25] Okay. So why would he say that Iris is the offspring of wonder? Shakespeare has Iris appear in *The Tempest*, right? And someone beats Iris: "Hail, many-colored messenger!" The two things that Iris is, right?

[12:53] Very subtle, Socrates is saying, but he doesn't explain himself at all. He just goes on. somehow joins us with the gods. Yeah, the, messenger of the gods. Did you people celebrate today, Michael and Gabriel? And No, and St. Ramon's. Well, today we have the feast of the three ones that are named, Gabriel and Raphael and Michael, you know. And the Psalms, you know, they're, reading some Psalms there, you know, praising God in the presence of the angels, right?

[13:30] It's like it's the very well thing I gave you last week, you know, from Saint Francis de Sales. Um, had two different psalms, one hundred three and one thirty eight, with the numbering system. It drives me crazy.

[13:47] I have to number, but anyway. So, Iris in both things, right? Being the messenger of the gods, the messenger of the gods, like the the angels, you know, even in the priest is saying, "Angel means messenger," right? Well, the angels unite us with God in some way, right? Okay, when Gabriel comes down to Mary, right, just a union there between man and God, right. But the rainbow also seems to what join heaven and earth, right?

[14:17] Place of the gods, so to speak, right, with the place of man, right. And you know, for us in the Old Testament, there after the great flood, God pointed to the rainbow as a sign of what reconciliation between him; he was not going to destroy the the world again like he did. And so, Socrates is saying, right? It's not a bad genealogy because wonder unites man with God, right?

[14:45] But on the side of his reason, huh? Because it makes us look for the cause, out of wonder, and then for the cause of the cause, and ultimately the first cause, right? It's very profound what Socrates is saying, It doesn't explain it, right? So that's a beautiful thing, right? The two chief philosophers, as Thomas calls them, Plato and Aristotle, agree that wonder is the beginning of philosophy, right?

[15:11] Isn't one of those names of Christ there in in Isaiah? Yeah, wonderful, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so because men become like Theaetetus, right? Something a philosopher, right? Because he's he's wondering, right? But the man is wondering, trying to what? Simply to know, right? He's not trying to make or do something, right? And therefore, if philosophy begins in wonder, then it must be looking knowledge, right? If you like to speak Latin, it's speculative knowledge.

[15:45] If you like to speak Greek, it's theoretical knowledge, right? I think it's good to speak English, and so it's looking knowledge, right? And then he compares, huh? The philomuthos to the philosopher, right? Okay.

[16:03] Now, what is the philomuthos? It means he's? A lover of myths, and the myth is a little bit like our fairy tale, right? Now, but it contains what wonderful things, right?

[16:19] So, if you have children, you should get the Dover, you know, fairy tale books, right? The green book, the blue book, and the yellow book, and the red book—the names, colors that they come in. My friend Warren Murray's made some study of fairy tales. Says that's the best collection if you're starting, you know, make one. You stay out there with the kids and you read them. It's got very good illustrations too.

[16:41] So the Philomuthos is in some way philosopher, for the myth is put together from what wonders. Now, my teacher Monsignor Dion, he brought to our attention what Albert the Great said when he's commenting on this, right? And he's talking about great literature like Homer or Shakespeare or Sophocles or somebody, right? And he says poetry, in that sense, hoc modum admirandi. It gives us the way of what wondering.

[17:17] So a poet like Homer or a poet like Shakespeare, they give us a certain wonder, which may not be exactly the same wonder as a philosopher, but it's a stepping stone to the wonder of the philosopher. And you really need that stepping stone, right? I confronted Monsignor Dion one time. They said, "Would there have been any Greek philosophy without Homer?" He says, "No."

[17:43] So Homer came before the philosophers, right? But he gave that wonder, which is the stepping stone to the wonder of the of the philosopher. That's it's a very interesting observation of the great Albert the Great. He is, known in history, as Albertus Magnus the Great. I know myself when I was a freshman in college, professor said we're going to read some plays of Shakespeare, which you probably didn't read in high school.

[18:12] And that was the occasion for me to get a complete edition of the plays of Shakespeare, and I got all of them the first year, right? Well, that disposed me to be a what philosopher, right? Philomuthas. Mr. Chesterton comments on. it. He refers to it as detective. if you like detective stories, you won't like philosophy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My brother Richard started out as a literature major, something like that, or English, and he soon got into philosophy, right?

[18:40] So that's interesting. Now, notice also here the connection between wonder, not only Philomuthas, but the Mathematikos. If you look up the word Mathematikos in the Greek dictionary, it's like a synonym for philomathes, and it means a lover of what learning. So it's appropriate, right, that a lover of learning, a very famous one, Philomathes the Mathematikos of Theaetetus, right, that he should be something of a philosopher and be filled with wonder, right.

[19:18] So the theorems in Euclid are really wonderful when you see them, right. They don't teach it, you know, the way they, you know, I think of the way algebra, I mean, geometry was taught to me in high school, you know, doesn't arouse wonder, right. When you read, you know, Kasurik said to me when I graduated, get a copy of Euclid, and I said, why? Go get a copy of Euclid.

[19:39] He didn't argue with me. Just said it at once. and so, but it arouses wonder, right. So it's appropriate, right, that this great statement about wonder being the beginning of philosophy is in a conversation with the Philomathes, and Plato says that, right. A philosopher must be a Philomathes, you gotta have a lover of, you gotta be a lover of learning to be a philosopher, right? That Yeah that was the door of the school Let no one ignorant of geometry come in here.

[20:08] Yeah. You can say that no one ignorant of Homer come in here either. You know. De Koninck used to say you should have read great literature before you doing, did philosophy, right? Okay. So even the little child can be a Philomathes, right?

[20:27] So that's the first thing he's saying about the kind of knowledge this is. It's looking knowledge. It's not knowledge for making or doing, right?

[20:38] And then he gives a sign of it in the bottom paragraph on page four. What happened? Witnesses this. When almost all necessary things, like farming and hunting and householding and so on, tailor's art, and those for recreation and amusement existed, right? There's music and things. Then such knowledge began to be sought, right? So it is clear that we seek this knowledge to no other what need.

[21:25] Then the third thing he says, huh? But as we call a man free that is for himself and not for another, right? Now the one who's for another is a slave, right? Huh? Slave exists for the good of his master. But the free man exists for his own sake, right? So this alone is free among the sciences, huh? For this alone is for the sake of itself.

[21:55] That's why we speak of the liberal arts, right? Huh? Because they're for the sake of knowing, right? They're kind of a beginning, the Trivium and the what Quadrivium, huh?

[22:07] The mathematical part is the Quadrivium, right? Trivium is the verbal part, right? Logic and so on. Rhetoric, grammar. But now the next thing he says about it. Hence it might justly be thought that it's not human possession, because we have all these needs, right? For in many ways the nature of man is enslaved.

[22:38] Yeah. Yeah. I remember the professor Plinio Prioreschi of La Valle used to say, you know, talking about the ancient world there we had slaves, you know, but today since each man is his own slave. And you have to. So I take out the, take out the trash, you know, I'm my own slave, right?

[23:03] Yeah. Now we we sense expand upon the ways that man is enslaved right. I mean the needs of his body right all these needs right. Maybe he's got family he's got to provide for them. But then in addition some people are enslaved to their passions right. So a man who's irascible you know is enslaved to his anger right. Maybe known some people like this. And even some saints you know had to fight this.

[23:34] And then the man the lustful man is enslaved to his other passions right. And the coward is enslaved to his fear right. So. Thus according to Simonides who's a poet, God alone can have dishonor, right knowledge for its own sake. It's something too great for man right. Man however is not worthy to seek knowledge for itself. That's what Simonides said. If the poets are saying something Aristotle says and the divine is able to envy.

[24:08] It's likely especially to happen about this. And unfortunate are all those who excel in knowledge. But the divine is not able to be envious. So God can't see the excellence of creatures as what in agreement with his excellence right reflection of his. Yeah. And according to the proverb poets say many false things.

[24:33] Yeah that's his definition yeah. And then finally he says the fourth thing here. Nor must any other knowledge be thought to be more honorable than this wisdom right. For the most divine is most what honorable. And he says this knowledge is most divine in two ways.

[24:57] For that which God most of all would have, is the most divine the sciences. And if it were of what divine things yeah. Now sometimes I I it's not equivocation of divine here. I use the amphibole right of knowledge of God right. Okay. So as they tell Lady Wisdom their wisdom is a knowledge of God in two senses. It's a knowledge about God. And it's a knowledge that God himself alone or God most of all would have right.

[25:36] So it's a knowledge of God in two ways. He's saying the same thing here Aristotle right. It's the most divine in sciences. It's a knowledge that God most of all would have right. And it's the knowledge which is about the first cause which is God right. For God seems to all to be among the causes right in the beginning. He's going to prove that God is the first beginning later on in the twelfth book right.

[26:02] And such knowledge, God alone, or most of all, would have. So either God alone should be called wise, or only God, in the full sense.

[26:19] So this knowledge is looking knowledge, right? It's liberal for its own sake, right? It's free, that is to say, it's not a human possession, but more a divine possession, right? And it's the most what divine knowledge, right? Huh? Most honorable, because God is most honorable. Okay. So he ends up by saying other kinds of knowledge more necessary. You got to have food, right? You got to have clothing, right?

[26:46] You got to have maybe some shelter and so on. But none is better. I was thinking about that this morning. Yeah. The church tells in her laws. He tells all religions their first duty is contemplation of divine things. Yeah, yeah. In some way, religions, the church says, this is necessary. We did the contrast of of Mary and Martha, right? Mary hath chosen the better part, which is the contemplative, and it shall not be taken away from her, because it will be continued in next life, perfected there, right?

[27:23] While the practical life ends with this life, right? I told you some of my students say. well, then, we've, got to be practical this life, and we'll have a next life. But, it's better to be Mary, right? Huh? To begin this, right? Huh? And and look forward to having it perfectly, right? Huh? Because I think when when you see God as He is, as Saint John says, or face to face, as the the psalms say, and Saint Paul says, then the knowledge you have of God in this life, in in first philosophy, or even in in theology, would seem to be ignorance of God, right?

[28:03] In comparison to the knowledge of God when you see Him as He is, right? Face to face. Like you more, you know, Thomas, you know, God took him at the age of forty-nine, right? When the mind is best, as Aristotle said. But he was getting some kind of supernatural knowledge, right? Huh? And so these, you know, summas seemed like straw, right, to him, right? Huh?

[28:35] So theology will appear to be ignorance compared to the beatitude, right? You know, the opinion of ignorance. He left you some straw. Yeah. Thomas sometimes speaks of theology as a consolation for the soul, before it sees God as He is, right? Food for the mind Yeah Yeah Yeah If he had lived to be ninety think about it

[29:08] His mind is best at forty-nine. God took him when his mind is best. It is necessary, he says, however, to place the possession of this in the opposite for us of the searches in the beginning, because the wonder would kind of what cease, right? Huh? Once you know the cause, right? Okay. But there's another sense of wonder, you know, which you can speak of as but admiring the excellence of the thing, right?

[29:38] And in the twelfth book, he says that God compels our wonder, right? Because you see the excellence of God, right? So, for all begin as we have said from wondering if things are thus, as about things that happen wonderfully. By chance, huh? Or about the turnings of the sun, or the incommensurability of the diagonal. For it seems wonderful to all who have not seen the cause that something is not measured by the smallest, huh?

[30:16] Well, now when Thomas talks about this example here of the incommensurability, wonder is aroused most of all when we what? When you wonder why something is so, but what is so seems to be contrary to what you expect, right? This is the example of it, right, huh? Einstein gives the example, you know, of his father bringing home a magnet, right? And the magnet seemed to move things without what touching them.

[30:52] That seemed to be contrary to Einstein's experience, right? You got to touch something to move it. And now it seems like, you know, this thing is moving something, so it arouses his wonder, right? Of course, is there some kind of a touching going on that's, you know? I mean, Einstein's the guy who developed the idea of the field, right, and so on, huh? But I mean, it arouses wonder because it's contrary to what you expect, right?

[31:22] Well, you see, if your friend acts in the way you expect them to act, you don't wonder. Because they're acting strangely, right? In the way you wouldn't expect them to act, right? Then you start to wonder, what's, yeah, what's what's going to happen, you know? You know, that becomes interesting, right? And I sometimes, in doing geometry, I try to look for theorems, you know, that arouse your wonder in that way.

[31:57] One thing that struck my my wonder a lot was the fact that you can have in quadrilaterals you can have more perimeter but less area. Sounds kind of strange, right?

[32:15] And a square will always have more area than a oblong, right, with the same perimeter. And you can even have a square with what more area but less perimeter, you know? So let's say a a square that is five by five would have a perimeter of what twenty, but an area of twenty-five. But an oblong, let's say, two by ten, would have what a perimeter of twenty-four, which is more than twenty, right?

[32:55] But the area is only what, yeah, twenty. So I used this as an example, you know, for brevity to solve it, because you can have a perimeter that is less but contains more. And so the wise man with less words says more, right? The fool multiplies his words. With more words, he says less. So is that possible? Was it possible to have, you know, less perimeter and more area?

[33:23] Because there's a famous Russian story, I guess it is, of the man who was going to be given all the land he could run around one day, and he tried to run around too much land. He died of a heart attack or something. But I mean, it might make some sense in what you know, kind of a figure you are drawing. You know, the square you could run less and get more land, right?

[33:45] How'd you do that, right? And they said the geometry, you know, it's buy and sell done by perimeter, you know. So I end up, you know, giving you more, more perimeter, you know, but I'm giving myself more land. Because I do geometry. That's kind of

[34:02] contrary to what you'd expect, right? Or I used to say to kids, you know, you can do numbers so simply. If the sum of two numbers is greater, is the the product of those two numbers then greater? And you think it would be, wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah. But just same thing, right? Proportionally, right? Five and five are what? Ten. And two and ten are what? So two and ten are more than five and five, right?

[34:36] The sum of them. But the two times ten is what? Twenty. And five times five. Yeah. So the sum of five and five is less than the sum of two and ten. But the product, you know, but you would think, you know, that if the numbers add up to more, that they're gonna their product will be greater, right? So the same principle as in geometry. And so these things that kind of arouse your wonder, right?

[35:08] Because they what? Now you don't know why it's so, but it doesn't seem that it should be that way. I said simple example is when you wonder about a friend and they're acting a bit strangely, right?

[35:25] Why is he Why is he acting that way, right? So I mentioned that many I've heard that many great scientific discoveries were not made by Eureka, but gee, that's weird. That's odd. I didn't expect that. And then they discover something. Yeah. So

[35:49] so you end up right by taking away the the wonder that's seeking to avoid ignorance, right? Because you know why it's so now, right? But then there's this other kind of wonder, where you admire the excellence of something, right?

[36:06] Okay. And then there's an epilogue there, where you recalls the two things he's done, right? Okay. Now, what are you going to do next? Now.

[36:19] I only know. Read some Shakespeare, maybe. What you got up your sleeve? All kinds of things you can do, right? Maybe we should talk about other things, time.