Prima Secundae
Lecture 11: The Unity of the Last End and the Taste of Beatitude

Transcript
================================================================================

The one who goes on some trip, right, through a road, right, in every step thinks about where he's going, yeah, about his intent. So I had the intention of going to church or someplace, right, and this is the path through there, right? So when I'm walking on that path and admiring the flowers where it is, snowbanks, isn't this how I think about where I'm going explicitly? The intention there kind of remains, huh? But Thomas will talk about this, you know, later on he talks about how it's necessary to, in a sense, renew one's intention, right? Of course, a lot of people, you know, start the day with a kind of offering up of all the things that they do during the day and their joys and sufferings and so on with regard to their end, huh? But one doesn't always, during the frustrations of the day, think of what one is undergoing all this for. But one still has that intention, right, huh? But it has to be renewed eventually or you could weaken, right? Are you convinced by Thomas? Mm-hmm. This time. Well, I'm getting away with it. It's a lot of sense. Now, whether there's one last end of all men, right? When Jefferson said the pursuit of happiness, he didn't say what happiness was, or whether it was the same for all of us, right? He didn't try to say what happiness was. So maybe he thought that his, what, every man's happiness was in his own, what, things that turned him on, as they say, right? You know, so I said on the bumper sticker, it said, music is my life, you know? This must be someone who, someone else might say, baseball is my life, or whatever is the sport he's professionally committed to, right? Dinner is my life. Yeah, yeah. Hey, I have left to eat. I don't eat to live. To some, one proceeds thus. It seems that there's not one last end of all men. For most of all, that seems to be the last end of man, the, what, unchangeable good, huh? I suppose that's God, right? This is the only one that's completely unchangeable. But some are turned away from the unchangeable good by sinning, right? Therefore, not of all men is there one, what, last end, huh? Moreover, by the last end, or according to the last end, the whole life of man is ruled, huh? Or regulated. If, therefore, there was one last end of all men, it would follow that in men there would not be diverse, what, pursuits of living, right? Which is clearly false, huh? They don't live the same kind of life, all men, right? I said to my sister-in-law, you know, I have to do a few theorems that you could every day, you know, to feel right. She said, there's always something wrong with you. That's your way of life. She's probably a very practical woman. Yes, yes. Moreover, the end is the, what, limit, you might say, of action, huh? Actions are of the singulars. But men, although they come together in the nature of the species, nevertheless, they differ according to those things which pertain to, what, individuals. Therefore, there's not one last end of, what, all men, huh? I remember a student years ago when some course or other was trying to maintain that the last end of man is to perfect whatever his or her individual gifts are. Well, it's kind of like this argument here, in a sense. So that what is individual to me and distinguishes me to a greater or lesser extent from other human beings, right? The development of that is my end, see? Rather than the development of what is common to you and me, right? So which is better in me? What is private to me? Or what is common to me and others? And how would you, would you try to show that a little bit, you know? The good of many is better, good of one is one thing. Yeah, yeah. And the community, country, the common good is your good, too. Yeah, common is good, yeah. Now, if you look at what separates one man from another, individually, right, huh? And sometimes it's better or worse what separates some men, huh? Don't you kind of judge these things that are private to us or distinguish one of us from another as how it leaves us or disposes us, huh? For what is common to us, huh? So let's say I'm an irascible person, right? You know? Or I'm an alcoholic or something, right? I'm inclined to drink these things, huh? Well, these things dispose me to be more or less unreasonable in my behavior, right, huh? So what is common to all of us to have reason, right, and to live in accordance with reason? One is by what's private to oneself, either better or worse disposed towards that, right? If I have a poor memory, right, does that dispose me well for the life of the mind? In a sense, what is private to us comes from what? More our body, right, huh? Okay? The body is not as good as the form, right, huh? A lot of people have that idea, right? And there seems some, you know, probability to it, right? Should Mozart have been a logician rather than a musician? Or should Shakespeare have written metaphysics rather than plays, right? Or a guy who's, you know, Babe Ruth, huh? Should he have been a philosopher instead of a home run hitter, I mean? And there's some probability of that, right, huh? I was mentioning before a class there, you know, and Thomas was talking about how in the angels, every angel is of a different kind. There's no two angels of the same kind, huh? The reason why there can't be many individuals of the same kind is that individuality, as distinct from the kind of thing you are, comes from matter, and there's no matter in the angels. So each angel is its own kind of thing. So my old teacher could say, you don't really, you know, you meet the angels, you don't start counting them because they're so different, one from another, right? You wouldn't think of saying, you know, the two of us are a kind of different thing. And so, but then Thomas went on and said, you know, that the angels are much more perfect than we are, huh? And one way that they're more perfect than we are is that each angel has the whole perfection of his, what, kind. And down here, right, no human being has all the perfection of his kind. So I only had the perfection of Mozart and Shakespeare and Euclid and Aristotle and Thomas and Augustine and all these things wrapped up in me and I'd be one hell of a guy. If I had this, you know, but I don't have the whole perfection of my kind, right? This is dealing with the imperfection of man, right? And so by what's individual or private to me, right, I'm either well or badly disposed towards the kind of thing I am, an animal with reason, right, huh? Towards being reasonable and developing my reason, right, and living in accordance with the reason and knowing by my reason and so on, huh? But against this is what Augustine says in the 13th book about the Trinity, that all men come together in desiring the last end, which is what? The attitude, right? You know, Thomas is going to see a distinction, right, huh? Thomas is always seeing a distinction. Where does that come up in Shakespeare's definition of reason? Yeah. See, when Thomas talks about before and after, he points out that it presupposes distinction. So I sometimes speak of the axiom of before and after, that nothing is before or after but itself. And so there's always some distinction between what is before and what is after. And so you can't see that this is before that. We see no distinction between this and that, huh? Now you might see a distinction between this and that without knowing which is before and which is after, right? So I might know two students, let's say, and distinguish between them without knowing who's the better student, right? But could I know that this student is better than that one if I didn't know that this student is different than that one? No. So when Shakespeare says looking before and after, that includes looking for distinction, huh? Just like when he says that reason is the ability for large discourse, he didn't mean that reason was not capable of a small discourse. In fact, it's even more capable of a small discourse than of a large discourse, huh? But if you want to give the full power of reason, you say it's the ability for a large discourse. And then it's understood, well, of course, it can do a small discourse, right? And likewise, if reason looks before and after, of course, it can look for what? Distinctions, right? If it can see the before and after sometimes, it can certainly see a what distinction? So it's understood. Except you didn't understand the definition, right? If I say you can lift 200 pounds, can you lift 100 pounds? You see how complete that definition is, huh? Okay? I was mentioning how Thomas in another article there was saying, giving is a reason why our reason is derived from God, right? He said our reason discourses, like Shakespeare says, huh? And discourse is a kind of what? Motion. Motion depends upon an unmover, so our reason must depend upon a mind that is what understands without motion, without discourse. Thomas has a beautiful phrase there in the questiones disputate, disputed questions about spiritual riches, that the understanding of our reason is per modum motus, huh? A way of motion, right? Our reason understands, he says, by going from effect to cause, or from cause to effect, or from light to light, or from opposite to opposite, right? He distinguishes there, you know, kind of in a complete way, right? The discourse from one thing to another, right? If by discourse you mean coming to know the unknown through what you do know, right? So from your knowledge of the effect, in some way you can come to know the cause, and from the knowledge of the cause, you can in some way come to know the effect. And you can know sometimes a thing from what is like it, right? And you can also know one opposite, in a way, by its opposite, huh? And today I was going to ask you, you know, we're saying that the matter of the second part is the same as that of what you pray for in the Our Father, because you pray for the end, and then you pray for the means to the end, and then you pray for the avoidance of what to make you deviate from the end. But why does Thomas divide the second part of the Summa into two parts and not into three, then? Yeah, yeah. And it's the same knowledge of opposites, right? It's especially clear when you get to the second part, where he goes through all the virtues, right? And with each virtue he takes up, it's the vice opposed to it, right? So that's why he divides it into two rather than into three, right? It wouldn't make any sense to, you know, to talk about the end, and then talk about the virtues, and go through all of them, and then finally talk about all the vices, right? When each vice is kind of known in comparison to the virtue that it's opposed to, right? So that's why he divides it into two, right? So, that's a very interesting explanation of unfolding of what Shakespeare means, right? That reason is the ability for discourse, right? You come to know what it doesn't know, what it does know. By running from effect to cause, usually, but sometimes from cause to effect, like in geometry, and sometimes from like to like, and sometimes from opposite to opposite. Beautiful, beautiful. Of course, Shakespeare saw all that, too, because I assume, I assume, huh? I assume. I was going to talk at Thomas Aquinas College one time, you know, and I was unfolding one of these fragments for the Greek philosophers, you know, and there's so much in it, you know, and so on. And someone said, well, did Heraclitus really see all that? Well, he was a scientist, so I said, well, did Max, I mean, did, what's his name, they discovered the quantum there? Oh, well, Planck. Yeah, did Planck really see, you know, that the atom and the light would be explained by the quantum, huh? You know, Heisenberg says that when Planck discovered the quantum, he went for a walk in the park with his son. He said, I think I've discovered something as great as Newton, you know, as if he realized there's something great about this, right? But did he foresee all the, what, the conclusions, you know, because five years later, in 1905, Einstein explained the photoelectric effect by the thing, and then 13 years later, Bohr explained the atom by the thing, you know? This was the greatest change in physics since Newton, huh, this quantum introduced. Did he see everything, huh? Maybe. Yeah, but St. Thomas said about hierarchy, when the angels, one angel purifies another, not like with us, moving sin, but it's like pointing out an effect from the cause of, you know, the angel effect. So he said, it's like leading the higher angel, showing the lower angel an effect that you might not see, you know, he sees the cause. But the lower angel has not jumped to conclusions, you see, before he was in light today. Not like us, you know? Thomas says, he's being purged of ignorance, but not of air. Well, we're being purged usually of air. Mostly. Of course, we did kind of get through the talk, and kind of, not the accurate, formal question period, but the people coming up afterwards and saying, well, Meryton says, somebody comes up. And he kind of says, Well, he's mistaken there, he said. So, Thomas is going to see a distinction, right? And it should be said that about the last end, we're able to speak in two ways. In one way, according to the what? Ocean, right? The definition of what a last end is, right? In another way, according to that in which the notion of the last end is found. We haven't really come to that yet, and it's going to be in the next question. Now, as regards the notion of the last end, all come together in the desire of the what? Last end. Because all seek to fulfill their own what? Perfection, huh? Notice that word mat in there, adumbler, right? To fill up, as it were, right, huh? Which is the notion of the last end, as has been said. So, it's kind of a confused notion, right? Because that unfolds exactly what it consists in. But as regards that in which this notion of thought is found, all men do not come together in the last end, huh? For some want wealth, as it were, the what? Consummate or complete good, huh? So, when I was in high school there in the homeroom there, the professor there, Mr. Burns, was saying, well, money isn't everything. Of course, this guy says, yeah, but what it isn't, it'll buy. That's a shrewd guy, that one. Mr. Burns appreciated that, huh? Mr. Burns was the brother of the bishop. Howdy, yeah. In fact, we had two brothers of the bishop there in high school. One of them went on to become mayor of St. Paul, but I don't know what a job he did, but... The bishop resided at our parish, right? He was an auxiliary bishop at that time, you know. He was a pious man, but... You'd see the days we got to communion. There was another priest giving out communion to the bishop. All of these are us here to get communion for the bishop. I think it's a better thing to get it from the bishop. We were someplace on vacation once, and there was a bishop there with his secretary. And we went to a shrine, I guess, and the priest said to me, what would you like me to have it? They'd be a blessing for you. Oh, okay. And I looked at him and I said, was his blessing any better than yours? Kind of left the wind out of his sail over there. I didn't know about a dull incident, so... I used to get a couple of hot weeks, like in July there in Minnesota, you know. Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, so it's humid, it's the kind of heat, it really, really, really gets you down, you know. But you would say, now this is for your sins, that the Lord has sent you this. It's hot, human weather, you know. Now they're probably just air-conditioned. Now, you know, the church doesn't get air-conditioned. It burns just to preach on hell around. It burns. Some see, what, pleasure as the ultimate good, right, huh? And some, something else, right? And there was a corn-and-clothes boxer, you know, he said, some of these guys, they really go for this, developing the body, you know. Like, this is kind of the end of their life, you know, to have a developed body, you know. So maybe, what else? Some want, what, power, right, huh? Now, it's kind of interesting, the comparison that Thomas makes here, the lightness he has, huh? Just as to every taste is delightfully, what? Sweet. But some find most of all delightful the sweetness of wine, huh? Some the sweetness of, what? Honey. Honey. Or something else, right? But that sweet is simply, what? More pleasant, right? In whom most of all delights the one who has the best, what, taste. So what do you think of that example of Thomas, huh? Aristotle himself, in the Nicomachean Ethics, he says that the last end is something, what, pleasing. Everybody, in some sense, knows that, right, huh? I suppose sweet, you know, has got almost a sense of, certainly a metaphor for pleasant, as Thomas says in the commentary in the Psalms, right, huh? So they say something as sweet as they say it's pleasing, right, huh? Okay. And Thomas, Aristotle says, they're not mistaken in thinking that the last end would be something pleasing, right, huh? But they have never tasted, he says, the higher, what, pleasures, right, huh? Okay. And so they seek it in these lower things, huh? And Thomas himself says, you know, that no man can live without pleasure, right? And therefore, if he cannot taste the higher pleasures, he will probably go to excess in the, what, lower ones, right, huh? Because they're not very satisfying. So you've got to go to excess, you know, if you make your end in these lower things, huh? Okay. So that reminded me a little bit of Aristotle's speaking in the, what, yeah. How does the Psalms say, taste and see how sweet is the Lord, right, huh? Thomas goes into a long explanation of it, huh? He gets the best explanation of the metaphor there. It's a metaphor, right? What, the metaphor is always based upon likeness, right? And Thomas kind of unfolds the likeness there between the sweet and what it's, what, you're trying to get at, huh? Because the sweet is pleasant, right, huh? And that's what it was emphasized here. But the sweet is also, what, refreshing, right, huh? Okay. And the sweet is also, what, what? Restful. Restful, yeah. And so you notice how people will speak, you know, if you have beautiful scenery or something like that, you know, say, oh, how restful, right? And so it's beautiful, and beautiful, of course, is what pleases when seen, right? What's also called, what, restful, right? Now, if you live next to the city dump and the trucks are out all the time, it's not very restful, right? Or something, you know, huh? Or people don't want to be on a busy street or something like that, you know. But it's got a place, we've got a, you know, a beautiful view or something, right? And so on. You see, finally, it's restful, right? And we speak of beautiful girls, a sight for sore eyes, right? That the sweet is something, what, refreshing, right? That's what people are, you know, running to the Cambridge thing for to refresh themselves. And so the, but these things are, what, true especially of, what, God, right, huh? So. It's a beautiful example he takes then, right, huh? It's really a key thing you'll see when you read the Psalms and you read the Nicomachean Ethics, right? There's a reason why he takes that, huh? So, I mean, you can use the word taste in more than one sense, right? And taste is tied up, you know, in its extended senses with the idea of judgment, right? You say somebody has no taste, you know? You've been no taste in music nowadays, you know, the junk they play all the time, and read it in the stores, right, huh? You know, like a friend Warren Murray, you know, goes into a restaurant to eat dinner, and he gets up and leaves. Yeah. Yeah. There's a great story told about Father Boulay, I guess, that's in the restaurant, and these guys are playing this awful music up there, you know, and he sends money up for them to stop. And they didn't stop, right? They didn't stop, right? Father Boulay liked good music. And he says, that should be judged to be simply what? But sweet, right, more delightful, in which most delights, the one having the best, what? Taste, yeah. But notice, you know, if you take, you know, as a little boy, you know, I like soda pop, right? And there is a little store there where they had one of these things at the cold water, you know, and all the things in there. You know, I used to go by there, you know, and after walking, you know, in the summer, you know, and you get one of these orange or soda pop. But now, maybe the first time you taste wine, it doesn't, what, taste as good as a soda pop right now. And you have these kind of mixtures of soda pop and wine that they sell, you know. So, that's always how soon they say, you've got to taste one of these, these are really good, you know. I didn't say anything, you know, I didn't mean polite and so on. But notice how a person drinks a soda pop. Now, if you tasted, you know, drank wine that way, you would be, you know, spitting it up, you'd be. But, you know, you wouldn't, you know, take a soda pop and you wouldn't let Coke or something, you know, come down to close to room temperature so you can taste it. There isn't much to taste there, right, huh? You know, you might have, you might like it right away, but it's not as much to, what, taste, huh? And my cousin Donald, who used to play the violin a little bit and love the instruments, but, uh, uh, used to like the Baroque more than Mozart, right, huh? And then he realized you've got to be listening to Mozart. Once you're not listening to Mozart, then you start to see how good he is, huh? When my two brothers brought home the magic flute, the first time I heard it, I listened to the whole thing beautifully. I'm sort of docile and so on, but I didn't really hear anything, I don't think. And then I listened to these things more and more, right? Then I realized they're much more beautiful than, yeah, yeah. So little boy used to always, you know, go to the radio to find a march, you know? In a march, I still like marches, you know, but it's a very obvious kind of pleasure from a march, right? You know, like, there's a slogan there, everybody likes to pray, right? You get the march, you know, so. But I don't get as much pleasure from a march now as I get from a Mozart symphony or a Mozart concerto or a Mozart aria, you know? So it's your sense of hearing develops, right? And you hear more, right? So that's what he's talking about, right? The man who is, what, what seems to the man who is well-disposed, right? That's the judgment you should, what, follow, right, huh? My friend there had a biography of Pius XII, you know, and came across the time when Pius XII was made pope and he was going to move into the papal quarters there, right? And he was explicitly concerned that his Shakespeare would be there, you know? And I read that Paul VI, his favorite poets were Dante and Shakespeare, right, huh? Well, you know, then see, I can say, well, okay, then. Good judgment. Yeah, see, yeah. Good judgment. So, those people are the judges of what he's really most delightful, right? What he's really the end, huh? So Thomas speaks of that taste and see how sweet the Lord is as a kind of experimental or experiential knowledge, right, huh? Not the kind of knowledge you get from, you know, doing the summa filogia, right? But something where the saints would have tasted these things, right? It's more pleasant in the things that we spend our time, you know, as ordinary human beings, right around after, huh? I often used to, when you had a candidate, ask, you know, what's your favorite beverage, you know, coffee or tea? What's your favorite beverage, beer or wine, you know? But she used to annoy my colleagues, no Indian, that she'd ask these questions. But the guy, you know, doesn't have any judgment on these lower things. How could he have judgment about the higher things? I mean, I've known many people who appreciate, you know, good beer. They know what good beer is, right? And they appreciate wine. But none of those men that I've known of that sort think that beer is tastier than wine. They all think wine is, what, tastier than beer, right? Those who think beer is better than wine are people who don't have any taste in wine, right? And so, I mean, you wouldn't, you know, maybe take their judgment, right? Develop sense of tasting, you might say. You drink beer, I drink a soda pop handle. Cool, cool, cool. Yeah, yeah. You don't savour it, right, huh? Well, not as much, anyway. I'll switch around the bottom of your tongue there and get it. Ah, let's pass some of that stuff, yeah? Okay. But Thomas' example is well-chosen, right? It might strike me first as odd, you know? But it turns out with Scripture and the Magnifics and so on. It's quite natural for him to do that. And likewise, that good ought to be most complete, which is desired as a last end by the one having his affections, well, what? Disposed. Now, to the first, therefore, it should be said that those who sin, right, they are turned away from the, what, unchangeable good in which our true beatitude rests, huh? They are turned away from that in which is truly found the notion of the last end, huh? But not, however, from the intention of the last end, right? Which they seek falsely in, what? Other things, huh? That's what he says in the first song, all that come together in one, uh-huh. And one thing in common, you know, want to be happy. Different two things, the road to take the happiness, the other road. So you can see in this first article, in a sense, you're knowing happiness in a kind of, what, indistinct way, right, huh? Kind of a general way, right, huh? Under the notion of the last end without saying, well, exactly, does the last end consist, right? We saw a little bit in Aristotle when he first draws a line around happiness, right? And we said, well, it's a perfect good, and so on, right? But maybe that seems like kind of a commonplace, you know, and let's go a little bit further in, right? And then actually goes further into it even more in the 10th book, right? That's what's gone through the riches. Now, the diverse studia, the plans of life, you might say, right, of living happen in men and encounter the diverse things in which is sought the, what, notion of the highest good, huh? To the third, it should be said that all actions are of the singulars, huh? Nevertheless, the first beginning of acting in them is, what, nature, nature, which tends to something, what, one, huh, okay? That's something to think about, I think, though, you know, is what is common to us to be an animal with reason, or reason itself most of all, is that better than what is, what, private to us, you know, unique to one of us, right? Or distinguishes one from another, right? Because isn't it what's unique to us that we are well or badly disposed towards what is common, huh? But the end is better than what is for the sake of the end, which is better, right, huh? My common nature or my private nature, you want to speak that way, huh? It's also that the, all the private things are geared toward the common, in other words, because none of us has the perfection of our kind, so we need, everyone needs to, Yeah, but also even just that idea of also the reflection of God only comes about for each person's, just like there's different saints to show the different perfections of God, but that's just how you are in it, too. Well, yeah, I suppose that the different saints have got different virtues that they might excel in, right? But in a sense, the saints are taking what is individual in them and subordinated to the common end of us. I think it goes back to the fact that what's private to us comes from matter, right, huh? And what is common more to the form, and form is better than matter, right? So the end must be found in something that's common to us, rather than something that is private. So it shouldn't celebrate diversity too much. No, no. You've got bubbles to grow up. That's a great verb. Okay. Okay. You've got bubbles to grow up. You've got bubbles to grow up. You've got bubbles to grow up. You've got bubbles to grow up.