Prima Secundae
Lecture 3: The Hierarchy of Goods and the Supreme End of Man

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So why do McCarthy say, in war, there's no substitute for victory? That's the end, yeah. But you can say that in medicine, there's no substitute for health, right? And of the household art, wealth, right? Now Thomas says, if you read Aristotle in the first book of the politics, where he talks about the family, before he gets into talking about the city, he will say that's not so. That's not the end of the household art. But this is what the Greeks would probably say, right? So Aristotle often uses examples that are acceptable to his audience, right? Even though he doesn't maybe agree with that particular example. But he, what? He uses it, right? Until the time comes to show it's falsehood, right? Especially in logic, he does that, right? Well, it would be the children, right? Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he says that. Yeah. Now, what he's going to develop next is used by Thomas a lot in talking about the universe. When many of these come under one power, as the art of bridal making is under horsemanship, and whatever other arts are about the instruments for riding horses, in this and every other military act under the military art, in the same way others under others, in all these the ends of the chief arts are more desirable than all those of the arts under them, for the latter are pursued for the sake of the former. And in this conclusion, it makes no difference whether the acts themselves are the ends, right? Of the acts, or something beside these, as in the said sciences, right? Okay? Now, let's stop and see what Aristotle is saying here. He's pointing out something very interesting. That not only are there many arts or sciences and actions, right? And yet, different what? Ends or goods, right? But when we examine either the arts or sciences themselves, or the goods, right? We find an order, sometimes, right? In the case of the arts, the sciences, the order is seen when one art, or the man of one art, commands another art, and the what? The man practicing that art, right? Sometimes you see, on the other side, that the goods that these different arts are eating at, one is for the sake of the other, right? So take, get a Aristotle's example, or any example on the table. Let's say the medical art, the art of the doctor, right? The good that that aims at is health, right? And then suppose you have, I don't know, a pharmacist, or maybe, but that's not the proper word to use, but the man who makes the medicine, right? Okay? Let's call it the pharmacist. The art of the pharmacist. He doesn't make it, probably, the whole medicine nowadays, right? Okay? Let's say he makes the medicine. Well, there's a proportion here. You could say, health is to the medical art, as medicine is to the art of the pharmacist, right? Okay? Different arts and different goods, amen, right? But what's here, in addition to that, you'll see that one art commands the other art. So my doctor gives me a, what, prescription, right? And I take it to the pharmacist, and he's supposed to obey the doctor and give me the medicine that the doctor ordered for me, right? Okay? But if we look at the goods, we might also see order, right? Then medicine is for the sake of what? Health, right? So, depending upon your knowledge, you could reason from one to the other, right? If you see that, in fact, this art, or this artist, commands that artist, right? Then the end that this commanding artist is aiming at is going to be the end of the good that the one he commands is aiming at, huh? Okay? You see that? So you could argue from one to the other, right? If this good is subordinated to that good, then the art that aims at the lower good, right, is going to be subordinated to the art that aims at the higher good, right? Okay? So, what about the art of making violins? What's that for? Well, ultimately, but the immediate art is the immediate end of the art of making a violin. It's not a various effort to add this art, right? It is this good violin, right? Okay? But the violin is for the sake of what? Playing the height of Cortez-Simonzo, right? Okay? Okay? And it's not the keys of Curelman and so on, right? Okay? That's for the sake of the music, right? So you say, okay, I can see that. The violin might be kind of nice to look at, but it's for the sake of this violin music, right? Violin and piano, it's not as old as that, right? Now, here you've got the violinist, huh? The art of the violinist, the man, plays the violin well, right? He might discover in playing it that there's some defect in the violin, right? And so he would command the violinist, right? I mean, the violin maker, to change a little bit, right? So in that sense, he would command the violinist, right? That's because his end must be the end of this one, right? So notice Aristotle's example here, right? Thinking of the cavalry there in the army, right? Used to be at West Point there, you know. So the earlier preachers at West Point, they're practicing their horses, right? On their horses, yeah. Okay? So the art of making the saddle, let's say, right? It's for the sake of what? Riding on the horse, right? But riding on the horses for the sake of what? Was it Pickens? Was it Pickens charging horses in Gettysburg? Or at least put across the foot? Foot, yeah, yeah. Yeah, look like that. Yeah, yeah. There's not the question why. There's not to do and die. Yeah, yeah. So, in a sense, if you see this art commanding that art, right, you can, what, guess that this end of the one will be subordinate to the end of the other, right? And vice versa. Now, if the American government there, right, the president is the command in chief, right? So we say that the military is under the political art, right? That helped us, yeah. So, you have to say that the good that the MacArthur names that, which is victory, right, is ordered to the good of the, what, city, right? The preservation of the city, right? MacArthur tells the students at West Point there, this last speech there, you know, if you were to feel the nation goes down, right? Okay. So, victory is ordered to the good of the city, right? So, therefore, the political art should command the, what? Military art, right? But the military art might command the, what? The art of those who make the weapons that they fight with, huh? I guess when the German... ...in Russia, right, huh? They found that some of the Russian weapons were better for the cold weather than their own ones. They had to redesign their weapons and even their tanks, I guess. So if in the use of the tool or the instrument or whatever it is, you see a defect, then you go back and do a command. You say, now you've got to change this, right? So my father's an engineer, you know, he'd say to me, you know, you've got an interesting idea here, you know? And now we're going to make something according to his idea. And then they go out and go to the experimental farm and they tested these things, right? And then you discover the, what, defect, right, huh? So I guess if you don't have enough steel on your wagons, farm wagons, the steel snaps and then the farmer is mad as hell. Yeah, so my father always put more steel on his wagons, I said, oh, you're the best wagons. Grain king was, it was a trade deal, my father's wagons. Grain king, impressive. But I mean, the engineer was saying, huh? In the sense, in the use of it, right? By the farmer on the farm, right, huh? You might discover defects in the construction of it, right? And therefore they go back and... So you follow the history, you know, the invention of the European, all these funny pictures, you know, kind of tragic in a sense, but the first attempts to fly, you know? And then they go back and redesign the thing, right? And they had to do this many times before they finally got something that worked, right? The same with these rockets, right? So our style was pointing out, then, an order among the goods that the arts aim at, in some case, and corresponding to that, an order among the what? The arts, right? And you could argue from what? Either one, if it's known to you, to the opposite, right? And Aristotle will argue later on here that because the political art seems to command all the rest, right? That therefore the political art must be aiming at the good of man, right? The ultimate end. If it commands all the other ones, right? Because he's going to raise the question here, to what art or science belongs in consideration of the, what, chief good of man, huh? The end or purpose of man, right? He's going to argue it's going to have to be the art that commands all the rest. What art is that, huh? Well, I always say to the students, you know, if you ever go to graduation at Assumption College, right? And when he confers the degrees, you know, in a formal way upon the students, right? You know, there's a formula that they'll use, see? In virtue of the, you know, authority or whatever it is, invested in me by this Commonwealth of Massachusetts, da, da, da, da, da, and the Board of Trustees, you know, so. But in other words, in a sense, the Commonwealth allows Assumption College, right, or commissions, that you might say, to practice the art of teaching, right, huh? And so on, right? And they might come in and say, you know, we don't think you're going to be practicing the art of teaching for a while, Mr. Brookley's going to be practicing the military art, because we need somebody like you in the military, right? You know? My, was it my, I was in my algebra teacher in freshman high school, right? He got yanked out for some military service, right, huh? So you no longer practice for a while the art of algebra, however it is. You got to practice the, what? Military art, right, huh? See? But I mean, even to practice the, you see, the medical art, right? You have, what? You know, you see this on the wall, the doctors, like that, right? If you believe the thing that you see there. But in a sense, he's commissioned to, what? Practice, you know, you know? So in some sense, he's, and they could tell him to stop practicing. Sometimes they take away from the doctor, because of, you know, practice of some sort, right? He can no longer practice this art, or he's not considered suitable or competent to practice that art, right? And even, you know, to practice the art of baking or cooking, you know, sometimes they go down to see if there's cock-witches running around here. I used to work at the package store there, and next door at the bakery, right? And about every few months, they were coming in to spray for the cockroaches, so I don't know what was going on outside there. Remember, one restaurante was kind of good in Worcester there, and you'd get, like, a prying rib, you know? And if you wanted a second one on the house, it was, you know, it was on the house, second one. And so that's kind of a good deal, I thought. And they were pretty tasty, those prying ribs. And I had a good appetite in those days, you know? But all of a sudden, you know, I don't know, before this restaurant got closed down or something, I don't know what they're doing. It's one of the best restaurants. But in a sense, even the art of baking or cooking, you know, comes in some sense under the, what, government, right? It doesn't always, you know? And in a sense, the art of teaching does too, right? And unfortunately, the military arts and so on. And I can't, you know, I practice this art of driving the car. And even then, I'm licensed by the state of Massachusetts, you know, to operate this pedestrian killing. Flying car. So Aristotle's going to argue, on the basis of what he's developing right now, right, that when one art commands another art, its end is above the ends of those other arts. And the ends of the other arts are subordinated or means to, in some way, or ordered to the end of the commanding art, right, right? So he can argue from the fact that the political art seems to command all the other arts, right, in some way, that you can only practice the other arts with the permission or the, you know, according to the rules set down by the government, right? Even a college has to be authorized, you know, to grant degrees and so on, right? That the end that the political art aims at must be superior to the end the other arts aim at. And their ends, their goods, must be for the sake of this, right? And since he's going to bring out, you know, this thing we call happiness in English, is the end of man, right, the chief good, then political art must be about that chief art, right? And so Thomas says the commentary, the nearest I was saying in a way, that ethics here is the elements of what political philosophy, right? So our politicians should know the Nicomagian ethics. They should know what the end of purpose of man is, right? So they can, what, direct us towards that, right? And it's kind of interesting because it's kind of a, you know, per se notum, you know, that the government is supposed to encourage virtue and discourage vice, you know? And they'll be kind of a shock today to say that to the, to the, uh... You'll be discriminating. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll be limiting people's freedom. Yeah, yeah. And, uh... Now, of course, the reason why we went to something bigger than the city, right, was for economic and military reasons, huh? So I kind of lost sight of what this was about, huh? But, uh... You can see the way our style is going through reason that it belongs. Remember how, you know, I had to, especially a class of adults and they were kind of shocked, you know? The purpose of man is being actually a flick of art because, obviously, these politicians didn't know what they were doing in their own personal lives or what the purpose of man was or the oversized idea, you know? But, uh... In fact, you only have these, uh... these large debates there, you know, with the political candidates for the presidency or something like that, you know? Well, what is the purpose of man? See what they would say? They'll say it's above my pay grade. Yeah. Okay. Can we take a little break? Yeah. Thank you, yeah. Now in the next paragraph here, he's going to be talking about, is there some end which is supreme, right, for man, right, that everything else is subordinated to that, something that is desired for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else, right? That's interesting, if you talk to the man in the street, which you should do, you'll ask about everything, what's it good for? It's just everything is good for the sake of something else, right? Now if everything was good for the sake of something else, would anything really be good? In other words, A is desired for the sake of B, and B is desired for the sake of C, and C is desired for the sake of D, and everything is desired for the sake of something else. You never come to something that is desired for its own sake, not for the sake of anything and further, and everything else for the sake of it. This never comes to an end. Everything would be in vain, right? Because A would not be desirable unless you achieved B, but B would not be desirable until you achieved C. So neither A nor B would be worthwhile until you got to C, and C would not be worthwhile until you got to D. But is this even possible that this could go on further, right? Because if I desire A for the sake of B, I have to desire B before I desire what? A. And if I desire B for the sake of C, I have to desire C before I can desire either B or A. So if everything is desired for the sake of something else, I'd always have to desire something else before I could desire anything. In which case, I would never, what? A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. A. Political knowledge is possessed to any extent, but you can see even in this crap government we've seen that we do say you've got to study certain things, and, you know, government has been right, you know, more or less. And then he says, and we see the most honored of powers under this. And that's what he gives us the most honored ones here. Part of this is truth, part of this is what it makes you think. The military art, right, huh? And that was held in very high respect, right, huh? And we hold these military amendments very highly to our generals, right? We elect Grant as president and other generals, right? Eisenhower and so on, okay? And the household art, right, huh? Lots of rules or laws about marriage, right? Okay? Now it's kind of crazy things going on. You see? But, I mean, down to history, you could say that there's much law about who can marry whom and what age and so on, right? And blood tests of people before they get married and so on, right? And the art of speech there, huh? What is Augustine? He was a... Redovation, wasn't he, before? His conversion, right? But that was held very highly, right, huh? Now, of course, the military art and the art of speech are kind of tools, you might say, of the political art, right? Because you use partly persuasion and partly, what? Force, right? So you need these two arts, the military art and the art of persuasion, right, huh? So Churchill was kind of a good speaker. I mean, he had a good voice, naturally, but he was a good speaker, right? And so, you know, if you study his speeches in Parliament and so on, they're effective, right, huh? And he would move the, you know, the English people, too, by his speeches, huh? So those are two arts, though, but they're both subordinated, huh? You've got to some extent persuade most of the citizens and force some of the other ones, right? You're going to boot camp, you know? You've got to be drafted, right, huh? And so, and then the household art is for a different reason, right? But, you know, when Thomas talks about marriage there, he says that it's partly ruled by nature, right? So it's a natural inclination for a man and woman to come together, and this is, you know, to preserve the race, right? You know, there's something natural, right? And then he says it comes under the regulation, to some extent, by the city, because this is the way you, what, get citizens. Eventually soldiers and some pieces, but city citizens, right? And unless you have new citizens in France or Germany or Italy or whatever it is, it's going to disappear, right? Because they are disappearing now. And so that they should regulate these things, right, huh? And so now these few attempts, you know, to give a bounty for having more children, you know, and so on. And it also comes under the regulation of the church, right? This is the way that new memories of the mystical body are brought, right? So the reason why marriage, in a sense, is, it should be ruled by nature, right? That's why it should be a man and a woman. It's just a little nonsense. But also why the government, you know, has some right to make some rules about who can and not be married and certain things like that, right? And even the old law about the bans of marriage being published, yeah? And there's a reason for that, right? Because it was some former liaison that was not known to the people, you know, some people getting into the marriage, right? And so I remember reading about the guy who's going to prepare one of these terrible practical jokes, you know? And so the guy in there says, if anybody has reason for they should not be joined, let him speak now or forever hold his peace. Somebody comes running in, you know, you know, he drives into shock on everybody, you know? So, you know, he runs up there, he says, oh, wrong couple. Terrible, a terrible thing. Maybe there's a reason why this was, you know, you know, the band, right? And I was reading there about Shakespeare, I guess, that they needed to get married, you know, for I assume. And so in England at that time, you could get away from bans, but you had to have certain witnesses that would testify, right? And would be, you know, like bonds, you know, financial and so on, that they would be responsible. This was not up and up, this wedding, right? So you had to make a special application, you know, to get married in a hurry without the bands, right? And so there are rules in it about, you know, you couldn't get married without the bands or without some other things. And if you wanted to get married without the bands, there were all kinds of things where your uncle was financially and your daddy or somebody who were legally responsible in ways that they would not want to be unless they knew what the situation was. So it's not by chance that he emphasizes those three, right, huh? But I think the military art and the art of speech are more for the two arms, the art of persuasion, the art of the military. There's something like that in the household, too, right? I mean, partly the parents should persuade the kids to do this, and partly they should use a little bit of military power, too, huh? But if they're not, you know, as he says, they're, as Thomas said, right, you know, if the kid gets too hard out of hand, then the government will stick in, step in, you know? That's what he says in the Schemake of the Hill is about why naturally a man and a woman are necessary, because a woman alone can't correct the children. Yeah, yeah. I guess, you know, now I was a little bit, because my father was not around the house all the time, and he'd be working, so, wait till your father can know him, you know? And so, you know, my father told me to sit in that seat, you know, and I would sit there, and I wouldn't get out or move until he allowed me to. My mother would kind of be amazed at this, you know, this authority that he had, right, you know? I watch sometimes, you know, the little miles, the little boys, you know, and the way their father, you know, tells them the, you know, the rules of the house, you know? They kind of look up at him, and they seem kind of, you know, very attentive to him, you know? In a way that, you know, your mother is with you all day, mixed up with you, kind of, you know? So, me is very good, though, too. My father said to me, I got my first credit card and co-signed on it, and when he signed it, he said, you pay your bills. That was enough. I knew. That's using the rest of the practical sciences, right? So, you know, you know, carpenter is, you know, like I said, my brother-in-law there is a carpenter. We're not practicing now full-time, but he's doing other things, but he still does carpenting on the side and so on. But there's all these rules that they have about, you know, the size of pipes and the size of wood and all kinds of things. And so they do say, you know, you cannot make a house out of paper. A lot of other things, I mean, more precise than that, right? About the kind of wood you can use and, you know, and how deep the poles have to be and all that sort of stuff. That's all. They do interfere with the operation, or they do command something about the operation, right? And at the end of you, you've got to be, you know, registered kind of as a carpenter. Thus, using the rest of the practical sciences and further ordaining by law what one ought to do and what to stay away from, right? The end of this science must embrace, right, must be superior to, right, those other sciences. So that this will be the good of what? Of man, right, huh? And so you get to the politics, huh? Aristotle, of course, will, you know, speak of, you have to talk about what government is... the best, right? It's a government that would be aiming at the end or purpose of man, right? Then what government is the best for most men, given the amount of virtue that most men have to have? And even what is the best for these people, which may not even be the best for most men, right? So it's all the way down to that, right? The fear is I'm not naive about these things, right? In the rhetoric, when he's talking about the emotions there, he's talking about fear, right? What is to be feared? One thing to be feared, he says, is to be in the power of another man. The reason he gives is that because, as a rule, men do evil whenever they can. So he's not. That's a rule. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has a moral certitude. Based on his experience. I remember when I was first teaching, I was seeing Mary's, you know, there's still a little bit of easing allowed there, you know, by the upperclassmen, right? And so I ran into a sophomore there that I'd had in class as a freshman, right? He had a freshman there carrying his books around for him, right? And so I kind of laughed. And he said, well, all park rups, you know? It's a little bit of power he had that freshman, you know. So, you know, you can see how he's kind of abusing it, you know, but he can imagine he had an absolute power in this poor guy, you know? But he's worse because he's making excuses for his sins, though. Yeah. What time do you have to stop? 4.30. Okay, let's just finish it up to you in this first part here, right? Okay. For if it be the same for one man in the city, right? The end, right? Nevertheless, it is better and more perfect to achieve and preserve that of the city. For it is worthy of love when done for one man only, right? It's worthy of love that if I teach one man what the purpose of man is and how it is to be achieved, I've done something, what? Worthy of love, right, huh? But it's more beautiful, he says, and godlike when done for a nation and the cities, right? So Thomas will point out in the commentary, God acts for the good of the whole universe. We can't do that, right? But when we act for the good of the whole city, we're more godlike than when we act for just the good, let's say, of our family, right? When we act for the good of the family, we're better than we just act for the good of oneself, right? But he says it's lovable even to show one man what the purpose of life is and how it is to be achieved, right? But it's more godlike to achieve this for the good of the city, right? So who is it, who is it, who is it, great king of England, Alfred the Great, right, you know? He was quite a man, you know, but he was, you could see him acting for the good of his country, right? And also, but you know, it's all the way down to Boethius, right? You know, ancient Boethius being translated into the vernacular and so on, right? He's a great king, you know, huh? But Thomas often goes back to this as a starting point, you know, that the common good is better than the private good, huh? Because the common good is the good of the whole, the private good is the good of the part, and the whole is obviously better than the part, right? So he argues, you know, that God is a sumum bonum in the summa contra gentiles and so on. One of the arguments will be that God is the common good of the whole universe. The common good is greater, therefore, God must be the sumum bonum, right? You know, he's the good of the whole universe, right? It's a very style saying, right? It is better and more perfect to achieve and preserve the other city if you can make your city a happy place, right, huh? For it's worthy of love when done for one man only if you succeed in bringing happiness to one man. That's good and lovable, right? But it's more beautiful and godly than done for a nation and the cities, right? So the Pope has got quite a responsibility, right? He's every soul. Yeah, yeah. The knowledge then aims at these things being something political, right? So that's the end of the first of the three things he's going to do in the bringing, right? So we'll look at the other two things next time. As time allows, we'll start to see how Aristotle draws a line around the Indian man, right? And then we'll go to the prima secunda, you know? And then we'll go to the other two things next time. And then we'll go to the other two things next time. And then we'll go to the other two things next time. And then we'll go to the other two things next time. And then we'll go to the other two things next time. And then we'll go to the other two things next time. And then we'll go to the other two things next time. And then we'll go to the other two things next time.