Prima Secundae
Lecture 112: Despair as Contrary to Hope

Transcript
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In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, Guardian Angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. God, our Enlightenment, Guardian Angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, or to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand all that you've written. So I guess we're up to the fourth article here, in question 40, whether desperation is contrary to hope. And just for a second, look back at the premium to question 40, and the article is following that. Where he's beginning the consideration of the irascible emotions. And he says, Consequently, we're not to consider about the passions of the irascible. It's at the beginning of Article 1 here, in question 40. And first, about hope and desperation, right? Second, about fear and audacity or boldness. I don't know, as we say sometimes. Third, about anger, right? Well, notice that, of course, hope is put before desperation, right? And fear before boldness, right? And anger is put in third place there, right? But hope and fear are two of the four, what? Principal passions, huh? So Thomas will have articles and various works on the four principal passions, which are joy and sadness, huh? Hope and, what? Fear, right, huh? Okay? So a little passage of Shakespeare here, huh? From Henry VI, huh? Part 3, Act 4, Scene 6, huh? And there's a lot of changes of fortune there in the Henry VI plays, right, huh? So King Henry's back in power, right? Master Lieutenant, now that God and friends have shaken Edward from the regal seat, right? And turned my captive state to liberty, my fear to hope, my sorrows unto joys, huh? So at our enlargement, what are they do fees, right? Take the one line there. My fear to hope, my sorrows unto what? Joys, huh? There you have the four chief passions there. Fear, hope, sorrow, and what? Joy, right, huh? And notice how that also helps to understand the difference between tragedy and what? Comedy, right, huh? Because fear and pity, which is a form of sorrow, are the emotions that tragedy moves us to, right, and purges, right? Why hope and mirth, which is a form of joy, are the ones that comedy moves us to, right? So that the chief passions are the ones that tragedy and, what, comedy divide among themselves, right? Of course, this is good, so it's going from fear to hope, from sorrow to joy, right? But if it's going the other way, your hope is turning to fear, right, and your joy to sorrow, right? And you see something like that in the constitution, the pastoral constitution, on the church in the modern world, right? I think in the English, you know, when I first saw it in English, they had, you know, hope and fear and joy and sorrow, right? They'd say something like, the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears are the citizens of this time, right? The church is sharing it and so on, right? I was looking at the Latin this morning. Of course, they have the words for hope and fear. Fear, but they, for sadness, rather, and for, they used look to us, which I guess is close enough to sorrow, the signs of sorrow. But what was it for, fear they had anger, huh? Anger, which I guess means, oh, being held by the throat, you know? Things, that's what's, like, fearful about that kind of funny word, though, you know, kind of, you know, exactly what it is, the word. But the other one's a transcendent sphere, you know, huh? So, those are the four, what, principles, what, passions, huh? And so, among the irascible ones, then, hope and fear are very fundamental, right? And this helps you to appreciate the Socrates there in the great dialogue called the, what, Phaedo, right, huh? Because in the dialogue called the Phaedo, Socrates is, gets involved in the question of whether the soul is immortal or not, right, huh? And he makes a joke saying, you know, they're always saying, we philosophers are talking about irrelevant things up in the sky and so on, you know? But you can hardly say it's irrelevant to be in the day when I die. This question, does the soul survive death, right, huh? And then Socrates gives some arguments eventually that seem to show that the soul is immortal, right? And everybody's kind of resting in the discovered truth, right, huh? But Simius and Seba's over there in the corner having some kind of a private conversation. Socrates notices it, right? And says, are you still thinking about this or are you going on to something else, you know? And Simius and Seba's said, no, no, we're still thinking about your arguments, right? And Socrates says, well, you know, share what's on your mind with the rest of us. And Simius and Seba's each comes in with an objection to one of the arguments of Socrates, right? And all of a sudden, boom, arguments of Socrates no longer seem to be, what, good, right? And now they fall into a kind of what? Despair, right, huh? And they say, how can you trust an argument that seems good one moment? And then the next moment or later moment doesn't seem good at all, right? I mean, how can you trust arguments, right? And, of course, the only way to know whether the soul is immortal or not is through some kind of argument, right? So if you can't trust arguments, you might as well despair of finding out the truth about this, right? Now, what does Socrates do at this time, right? Well, the guy who's narrating what happened at this last thing, he said, I never admired Socrates more than now, right, huh? So he tries to lead them out of their, what? Despair, right, huh? And there he gives a magnificent comparison there between the way that a man might become a hater of arguments and the way that a man becomes a misanthrope or a hater of, what? Mankind, right, huh? And this is something, what? Unnatural to be a misanthrope, right? Like Tim and the Baptist, the famous play there, Shakespeare. But if a man trusts somebody that he shouldn't trust and he's let down by this man, right, huh? Or if he trusts somebody more than he should, right? He's let down, right, huh? Then he might say, well, you can't trust men, you know, they're all, you know, out for their own good, you know, they don't care about your good, right? And so on. And, but maybe the misanthrope, you know, is a man who's, what, naive and doesn't understand people, right, huh? And if he understood people, he'd realize that there are a few people that you can trust completely, right? Maybe you can trust your mother, right, completely. She's going to stick with you no matter what, huh? Maybe you can trust John Paul II or Benedict XVI, you know, completely. But there's very few men you can trust completely, right? There's some men you can't, what, trust at all. And most men are in between. You can trust them to a point. Some more, some less, right? So it'd be someone who's not wise about men, right, who would trust someone he shouldn't or trust someone more than he should, right? And then Socrates says, well, it's the same about arguments, right? And he's really kind of anticipating what Aristotle does, the father of logic, as we call him, right? There are some arguments you can trust completely, and there's some arguments you can't trust at all. And there's some arguments you can trust up to a point but not completely, right? Some more and some less, right? And if you look at Aristotle's art about arguments, right, you know, the prior and the posture analytics are about arguments you can trust completely. Sophistic refutations are about arguments you can't trust at all. And in the book on places, the topics, as they call it in English. And in the argumentative part, even the rhetoric, right, you have arguments that are good but not necessary, right? The ones in dialectic you can trust a little more than the ones in rhetoric, right? But Sackles is kind of anticipating this, right? And so he says in the Greek there that we need a technet, er, logos, huh? Technet is a Greek word for art. We get the word technical nowadays, right? And peri about logos, huh, arguments, right? And so he kind of leads them out of their, what, despair, right? Don't blame arguments, you know, but blame you for not understanding arguments, right? See, but it's beautiful to compare it to misanthrope, right? Because it's probably easier to see there's something wrong with the misanthrope than if there's something wrong with the guy who doesn't trust arguments, right? And, well, then Socrates, after he kind of restores their hope a bit, right, then he replies to the arguments of Simeas and Sibas, right? And the argument of Simeas is much easier than the argument of Sibas, right? And so bang, bang, bang, down goes Simeas, right? And now they're, you know, just whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know? It's not going to be as easy to answer Sibas, right, huh? So at this point, they're getting, you might say, overconfident, right? Over-hopeful, you might say, right, that they're going to, you know, do these things. And it's going to be, what, much more difficult to, what, answer Sibas, right? Although Socrates does manage to do that too, right? But it's giving them a little bit of fear, a little bit of caution there, right? Now that's what the teacher can do, right? If he sees that the students are getting discouraged, right, then he could, what, try to encourage them, right? Give them some hope, right, that they can know the truth, right, huh? But if he sees that the students are, what, you know, do hopeful, you know, and so on, and they don't see all the difficulty of the thing, right, then he might try to, what, include a little bit of fear, right, huh, you know? And I know my old teacher, Kasurik, you know, said that when he was at Laval there one time, he was following a class that one seemed to be on, right, huh? And he had some questions about some of the things that Dion had been saying there, you know? So he decided to go see him in the office there, right, after class, right? And in the office, once he had talked much differently than he did. And in the class, he said, and Kasurik said, well, why did you talk so differently in class? Well, he says it's the business of the professor to encourage students, right? But Kasurik was not a man who needed to be encouraged, right? He's a man who had to kind of, what, restrain and limit somewhat, right, huh? And I remember when I first met Monsieur Dion, before I went to Laval, right, he came down, you know, he paid his way down to St. Paul, the Twin Cities there, and then they questioned him what he's talking about, thinking about it, and so on. And Kasurik was saying, you know, that Dion was maintaining, you know, that logic was more important for wisdom than natural philosophy, right? And that's not true, you know, how do you know about the unmoved mover? You know, you don't know about the unmoved mover, and that he's not a body. You don't know that the soul is immortal. You don't even know they're immaterial things, right? You know, so he goes over these things with me on the phone, you know, getting me ready to, so he's gung-ho, right, see? Well, the minute I brought it up, it was in that Dion, of course, he pointed out distinction to Kasurik at the scene, right? Because the way that Dion was talking about was the way in which, what, logic has this, what, universality, and it's an immaterial science in the way wisdom is, right? And so, in that way, it's disposing for it, right? But another way natural philosophy disposes for it, when it argues that there exist these immaterial things and so on, right? So Kasurik hadn't seen that, right? He'd seen it, you know? So, and I remember the time I always did the time I went in, the outline of my thesis, what I was planning to do for my thesis, right? And so he was very gentle with me, and he asked me what I meant by this and what I meant by that, and a few things like that. And finally, he said, no, more serious objection, he says. And he proposed a change in the order, right? And the minute he proposed that, I could see that that was it, right? In fact, once I had that, I quit the thesis myself, you know? And he said, oh, yeah, he said, it's not good the way it is. So, oh, oh, I don't have any evidence, he says, what I'm saying, you know? So, you know, kind of caution, you know? Warren Murray used to say, you know, Monsieur Dion's principle of passion is fear. But, you know, that was good in a sense, because if you came up with a new idea, you know, his first reaction was to reject it, right? And you had better be able to defend it and do it before he would accept it, right, huh? Okay? So that's what you need in a good, what, teacher, right, huh? Sometimes he has to, what, encourage you, right, huh? And that's why Katsurik was good for me in the beginning, because he encouraged me to do these things, right? But then the kind of can make you a little more cautious, and Dion even more so, right, huh? But there's kind of a balance of hope and fear, and you can't say which needs to be encouraging the student depends upon where the student is here, right, huh? And then you see a little connection there, right, between the principle of passions, right, that you're talking about hope and fear are very important, right? Now, the other thing, like, in the, um, is in theology, right, huh? And in Thomas's commentary on the Psalms is one place where he says this, right, that if you hope in God but have no fear of God's justice, right, huh, you'll become, what, presumptuous, right, huh, okay? On the other hand, if you have only fear of the divine justice, right, huh, and no hope in his, what, mercy, you would, what, despair, right? So you'd have to kind of, what, balance it, right, huh, okay? But now it would belong to the confessor or someone of that sort, right, huh, to know when he has to, what, do one or the other, right, huh? He's got a woman who's had an abortion, and she's despairing, you know? He's not going to, you're going to hell. No, no, that's not going to be helpful right away, you know? You know, you might have to give her, what, hope in the divine mercy, right, huh, okay? But if you have someone who's, uh, careless and so on, right, and, uh, you know, as most sinners, I guess, they go back to the same sins again, the dog returns to his vomit, as it says in Scripture, um, then you might have to inculcate a little bit of, what, healthy fear, the divine, uh, judgment, right, huh? But you have to get a certain balance of these two, right, huh, okay? That's kind of interesting, right, huh? Why in the case of tragedy and comedy is kind of, you know, an emphasis just upon the hope in the one case or in the other case upon the, what, the fear, right, huh? So it's very important to, uh, see these things, huh? Again, if you go to the great Mozart, right, huh, I've spoken before here about the symmetry of the last five symphonies, huh? The last five symphonies have the, um, symmetry A, B, C, B, A, right? The symmetry that you have in, um, Mid-Summer Night's Dream, right, huh? Where it begins in the court and then goes to the house of, what, the peasants who are going to prepare something for the wedding feast, then it goes to the forest and then back to the, what, peasants' house and then back to the, what, court, yeah. So you have that kind of symmetry, the beautiful one, right, huh? And I've spoken that symmetry in regard to the parts of the Mass that are sung, right? So you have the Kyrie and the Gloria and the Credo and then the Sanctus and then the, what, Auguste, right? Well, the Kyrie and the Auguste are prayers of asking for mercy, right? The Gloria and the Sanctus are more prayers of God, right? And then C, the odd word, right, is the Credo, which is really a confession of the faith, right, huh? So it's A, B, C, B, A, right, huh? Well, Mozart's last five symphonies, huh? Thirty-six, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty, and forty-one. Did you know there's no thirty-seventh symphony at Mozart, huh? I remember myself, and I'd heard the thirty-sixth, and I'd heard the thirty-eighth, and I'd say, what's that thirty-seventh is? I'd really like to hear it, you know. And I thought, oh, there is no thirty-seventh symphony. That he'd written an introduction for Michael Hayden, the brother of Joseph, right? He'd written an introduction to one of Michael Hayden's symphonies, and they thought the symphony was by Mozart, and so they thought that was the thirty-seventh symphony, and then he realized it wasn't by Mozart, but they never changed the numbers, right? So the last five symphonies are thirty-six, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty-fourty-one, right? Well, thirty-six and forty-one are in C major, and they're a... limitation or likeness of magnanimity, right? Which is one of the virtues that Aristotle talks about in the ethics, right? And then the 38th symphony and the 40th symphony are about what? Courage, right? But there's two things in courage. One is to approach the dangerous, right? The other is to sustain blows, okay? And so the 38th is more approaching the evil, right? It's got a sense of power there in the 38th symphony, you know? Makes Beethoven look feeble compared to what Mozart does to the 38th, huh? But in the 40th, it's more like patience, you know? Courage in the sense of patience, right? But the odd word is the 39th, right? Which is in E-flat major, right, huh? It's more like joy or something, right? But if you take the two beginning and the two last, right, huh? Courage is in a sense about what? Fear, right? And magnanimity is about what? Hope, right? So fear and hope, right? Now Thomas also says irascible seems to share in reason more, right? Because you do one thing for the sake of another, which is a reason, right? As opposed to concupiscence, which is kind of an immediate thing. And so that's part of Mozart's, you know, more rationalist music, right, than that of any other composer, you know? But so, you can see that in the premium here, right? Hope and then desperation, that's kind of, that's the opposite of hope, right? And then fear and boldness, right? But fear is put before I think, yeah, right? And then anger is put last, right? You see, the order there is not accidental, right? And there's not really a question here on desperation, but it comes in here in the article we're looking at now today, right? Article 4, whether, you know, this is the opposite of hope, right? To the fourth end, one proceeds thus, article 4, it seems that desperation is not contrary to hope, right? Well, to one thing, one thing is what? Contrary, as is said in the 10th book of the metaphysics, huh? So there's a consideration of contrariety there in the 10th book of wisdom, right? We'll go into the reason for that, I'll just recall that for more. And Aristotle, and Socrates did this before, right? Socrates and the Portagoras, right? He has an induction there that there's only one, what? Contrary, right? Which is talked about, kids, what's the contrary to sweet? And some people want to say, you know, well, it's got contrary, sour and bitter, right? But though it's really, what's furthest away from the sweet is not sour, you know, sweet and sour pork and so on. But bitter, right? Because what's really furthest away, huh? Oh, it's well that didn't swell, you'll find out about sweet and bitter. Contraries, right? But to hope is contrary fear, right? Well, go back to the passage there from Shakespeare, right, huh? As you know from the first book of natural hearing, the physics, changes between what? Contraries, right? My fear to hope, my sorrows unto joys, right? Well, sorrow and joy are what? Contraries, right? And you change from sorrow to joy and comedy, right? And it'd be the reverse, from joy to sorrow, right? In what? Tragedy, right, huh? Like a fellow goes from joy, huh? To great sadness, huh? Well, if fear is to hope as sorrow is to joy, that isn't the contrary of fear? Isn't fear the contrary of hope? Okay? And isn't tragedy and comedy contraries? You know, one moves us to fear, and get it to what? Hope, yeah. The one to joy, get it to sadness, right? It's beautiful, beautiful argument there, right? Moreover, contrary seem to be about the same thing, right? But hope and desperation are not about the same thing, for hope regards the good, why desperation is an account of something bad that impedes one from obtaining the, what? Good. Therefore, hope is not contrary to desperation, right? Moreover, to emotion is contrary emotion, right, huh? Why rest is opposed to emotion as a, what, privation or a lack, as we'd say in this, right? But desperation seems more to imply immobility than motion, right, huh? Therefore, it's not, what, contrary to hope, which implies emotion of extending yourself to the good. It's hope. Hope for, yeah. There's an article where Thomas talks about, you know, how, you know, the theological virtue of hope, you know, is named from a passion, hope, right? And it's kind of unusual that a virtue should be named from an emotion, right? But there's a certain likeness between hope for your, what, going towards a difficult good, right? There seems to be something virtuous about striving for a difficult good, doesn't it? So it has a certain likeness in this very nature of this emotion, right? To what? Virtue, right, huh? Now, of course, the theological virtue of hope is not in the emotions, it's in the, what, the will, right, huh? But it's for a good that is difficult to, what, to obtain, right, huh? But desperation seems to be, you know, you give up, don't do anything, right? I know I tell this story there when I was first in philosophy. I was at some kind of a social affair, I forget what a social affair it was, but I happened to get talking to a doctor's wife, you know, huh? So we were making a conversation, and she asked me what I was studying, and I said philosophy. Oh, she says, let me tell you about this young man that I know who went to the University of Minnesota. So she read author A, and author A said one thing, and then you read author B, and he said something else, and then author C, he said the third thing, and he got more and more mixed up, he couldn't, you know? And finally, he just, you know, threw the books down, and he goes out and lives on a farm, and he refuses to pick up a book now. So she was concerned about me, you know, huh? You know? I said, well, that's, you know, just give up, right? You know, in your despair, you know? It's all over now. It's going to sit here and mope, you know? I'm not going to move or do anything, right, huh? Right, motion up and motion down, right? Those are what are conjuries, right, huh? But it seems to be motion and rest, right, huh? It's interesting that joy and pleasure sometimes, though, spoken of as being quite rest or quiet, huh? But we'll see how public difference is, huh? But against this is that desperation is named through contrariety to what? Hope, huh? I guess it is the word, isn't it? Maybe the etymology of this, right? From Hatton, huh? Well, Thomas says, I answer it should be said, that it has been said above. In changes, there is found a two-fold contrariety, huh? One according to, what? Excess to contrary terms. And such a contrariety is found only in the passions of the, what? Incubisible. As love and hate are, what? Contrary, right? And I suppose you say the same thing about joy and, what? Sadness, right? Okay. In another way, through excess and recess with respect to the same term. Going to it and fleeing from it, right? And such contrariety is found in the passions of the irascible. What a smart guy, this guy is, huh? So you understand the difference between contrariety in the concubisible and contrariety in the, what? Just like with fear and boldness, right? You know? You and I are about to have a fight, right? So if I have fear, I run away from you, right? If I have boldness, audacity, I go towards you, right? That's kind of contrary to you having the irascible, right? Between fear and what? Boldness, right? Pick a fight with the guy in the bar, right? And as he steps up, you realize he's really much bigger than you are. Oh, excuse me. Come look at the car. Time to get out of here. So he says, the object of hope, which is a bonum arduum, it's a good that is difficult to achieve, right? He said, there's no difficulty, right? You know, like you got a bowl of candy to eat sometimes. You're reading something, or you're watching TV, or somebody's watching TV and watching the game, and they're eating popcorn or something, you know? Is that hope? They hope to get the popcorn, you know? It's so easy, just reach down. You do it automatically without even thinking, you know? And, you know, pretty soon you took the whole bowl, right? But the object of hope is a bonum, what? Arduum. It has the aspect or the notion, the character of being attractive, insofar as it's considered with the possibility of being obtained, right? And thus there tends toward it hope, right? Which implies a certain approach, going towards, right? But according as it is considered with the impossibility of being obtained, right, it has the character of something repulsive, right? For, as is said in the third book of Aristotle's Ethics, right, huh? That when it came to something, what? Impossible, right? And then men, what? Depart, right, huh? Give up. And thus regards this object desperation, right, huh? So the friends of Socrates there are at one point kind of in despair of knowing the truth about the immortality of the soul, right? Because the only way to know the immortality of the soul is by arguments. And arguments that seem good can suddenly appear, what? Not good, right, huh? So how can you, what? Trust these, right? Mm-hmm. I was meeting Thomas the other day there, and he was quoting Augustine, right, who was talking about how Plato and how the philosophy before Plato had despaired of our coming to know the truth, right? And it's because all they knew was about the sensible world and the senses, right? And the sensible things they thought were always changing. So Heraclitus, he kind of summed it up by saying, you know, that it's a river, right, huh? And the river is always, what, flowing. So how can you say anything definitely true about it, huh? I used to, when I was teaching, I'd always, you know, say, you know, where is Berkman? Well, he's in front of this chair. Well, no, he's in front of this chair. All you can do is point, because if you try to say where he is, he won't be there when you finish saying where he is, you know? And then the senses are, well, we say, well, you know, the one guy says it tastes good. The other guy says it doesn't taste good, right, huh? The one guy says it's cold, you know? And the other guy says, no, that's fine. It's not too cold, you know? And the man who's sick, you know, tastes bitter, the food, you know, and the other person. So you don't get the same judgment, you know, from different people, right, huh? So neither the senses were by you would know if you could know, right? But the things you're trying to know are not knowable, right? So how the heck can you ever know anything, right? So they'd actually despaired of what? Of truth, yeah, yeah. And then, as you say, Socrates kind of turned away then from natural philosophy, right? And went to study, you know, politics and so on and ethics, right? See if you can find out anything there, you know? But now Plato, in kind of desperation, right, Socrates had begun to develop the idea that, hey, by definition you can seem to know things, huh? And if you can define, you know, what a square is and what a circle is, you could know that a square is not a circle, right? But if you could define a square and a quadrilateral, you could know for sure that a square is a, what, quadrilateral and so on. And so Socrates was the first guy to want to redefine things, right? And Aristóteles says, you know, he was trying to syllogize, right? Because the basis of syllogism is really the definition, huh? And then Socrates, and then Plato came along and said, well, if we know by definition, we're not knowing by our senses, right? But by our reason, right? And are we knowing something that's always changing? Is what a square is always changing? No, it's something unchanging. And that's introduced this world of what? Forms, yeah. And then Thomas says, you know, Augustine trying to follow Plato so far as he could in harmony with the faith, right? Try to, you know, see the things we know as being based in the ideas of God, right? You know, and so on. And he goes on to those things. So, you can see Plato's trying to overcome that despair, right? But maybe he's made a mistake about these things, right? And then finally goes into talking about how Aristotle did it, huh? But anyway, so Socrates leads them in some way, those guys out of their despair, right? And they have some hope that they can maybe attain it, right? But Socrates at that point, the first time in history that I know of, was someone says, we need an art about arguments, huh? A technique, very logos, right? And I don't know of anybody who before Socrates had said we need an art about arguments, right? But an art that would help us distinguish between a good argument and a bad argument, and among the good ones, between a necessary one and one that was probable, right? But eventually Aristotle developed that art, right? But kind of anticipated by the great Socrates or Plato, huh? Wint's despair, he says, implies a motion of a certain what? Withdrawing, yeah. An account of this is contrary, let's say desperation is contrary to hope, as recess to excess, right? Okay? Going towards something and going, what? Away from it, right? As I can say, it's more striking here in boldness and fear, right? Because in fear, you're really going away from it. Okay? But in the case of despair, you're giving up the, what? Seeking of it, right? So when Peter denied Christ, did he despair? No. Now they wept, huh? But the other guy there, you know, he seems to have dispaired right now. He hung himself, right, huh? In the tree, right, huh? Hope's a very necessary thing, right? And there's hope of the Christian, but also hope of the philosophers are very important, too, right? Now, how does Thomas reply to the first objection, which says there's a contrariety, it seems, between hope and, what, fear, right, huh? That's kind of indicative of Shakespeare's words there, right, huh? That fear is contrary to hope according to a contrariety of objects, right? To it of the good and the, what? Bad, right, huh? And this contrariety is found in the passions of the irascible according as they are derived from the passions of the, what? Concupisable, right, huh? But desperation is contrarian. But desperation is contrarian. But desperation is contrarian. But desperation is contrarian. But desperation is contrarian. only according to the contrariety of excess and recess, which is the contrariety proper to the irascible, right? Okay. There's a kind of opposition between hope and fear, though, in the last, right? You see, I hope to know the truth, but I might fear that I'm mistaken, right? And Socrates, you know, talks about that wonderful fear he has that he might think he knows, but he doesn't know. That's a really bad state to be in, right? Yes, sir. It's a very common state to be in. When there was always speaking, you know, about the early Greeks and their thoughts about knowing and so on, he says they tried to assign the cause of knowing, right? But they didn't assign the cause of error or mistakes. And that seems to be more common, he says, than knowing the truth, right? They should have explained. If they're going to explain what you're finding in man, even the other animals, right? We should talk about, what? Mistake and error, right? But notice that opposition, if there is opposition between knowing the truth and making a mistake, right? Hoping to know the truth, right? But one is about the good truth and the other is about the bad error, right? And that comes back to what? And that comes back to the concubisible, right? I love to know the truth and I hate to be mistaken, right? If I didn't hate to be mistaken, I wouldn't fear to be mistaken, right? Thomas says in the Summa Contra Gentiles, error as magna par as miseria. Error is a great part of what? Yeah, yeah. And even Aristotle and Thomas, it seems, were mistaken to say about the nature of the sun and the moon and the stars, right? That they were mortal bodies and so on, right? You know, Thomas, you know, does say at one point there, you know, that maybe a change in the heavenly bodies takes more time than the lives of many men, right? And that's what we don't see. There's some awareness that there might not be an altogether necessity in the argument, you know, huh? But nevertheless, he had a key following Aristotle. I think that the sun, moon, stars are made out of a different kind of matter than the things down here, right? And that the form of the heavenly bodies exhausts the ability of the matter so there's no corruptibility, right, huh? And even there in the 12th book of Wisdom in Aristotle, it's thinking of these three kinds of substances. So, error as magna par as miseria. It's a great part of misery. Richard gets right to be mistaken, right, huh? So Thomas would hate to be mistaken, right, huh? That's what St. Augustine says somewhere, and I forget, if somebody's not sure if he loves the truth, ask him if he likes being deceived. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or where you can show him by the opposite. But that's more in the, what, love and hate, which are in the concubisal or the emotions. Maybe in the acts of the will, actually, but they've been analogous to the, you know, the ones saying the concubisal, right? That's another thing, this thing, you know, it's difficult in many cases to know the truth about things, right? And so unless I have that, what, hope, right, I'm going to give up, right? Now, Heisenberg, you know, talks about the time when he and Niels Bohr were trying to understand the quantum theory, right? And they have these long discussions all day long, you know, and then they go for a walk in the park afterwards, and he says, you know, can nature really be as absurd as it seems to us in these experiments? And finally, Bohr and Heisenberg got on each other's nerves, you know, because they were talking about this all day long, right? And finally, Bohr said, I'm going to go out skiing. I'm going to go up to Norway and go skiing. The heck with this. And Heisenberg stayed in Copenhagen, and Bohr went on, and Heisenberg started thinking, you know, huh? And then finally, he thought he saw the way out of it, right? And so he went down to the lab, and he started to calculate, right? And he's so nervous, you know, so excited, because he's making stupid, you know, additional mistakes and calculating, you know, like even Einstein made sometimes, you know? But finally, he calmed down, and everything came out and said, perfect, you know, that's enough. So he had a solution to it, right? And then Bohr, right, off skiing, he'd got another solution to it, right? And then they came back, and they compared it, and they said, harm me, what are you doing, you know? But, no, they were kind of almost despairing, you know, how can you, you know, it's like Schrodinger, you know, and he didn't want to go that way, right, you know, and he says, you know, you don't get rid of these damn quantum jumps, he says, I wish I'd never gone into physics, you know? He said, you know. He's trying to get a, you know, theory that's a little more, you know, compatible with Newtonian physics, you know? Well, there isn't Newtonian physics, but, you know, if Heisenberg and Bohr had not persisted, right, you know, then they never would have discovered these things, right, huh? So many times people kind of, what, despair, right, huh? And I was trying to solve something, and I couldn't solve it as an undergraduate, and then it became relevant somehow to my thesis, you know? And I was reading Thomas, and I was listening to Mansiindian, and I put two and two together, and I was like, I have the answer, you know? And I runs down to see Mansiindian about, you know? And because it started out very logically, you know, he said, I know where you're going, Dwayne. And I said, damn it, I said, can I go there? He'd read, you know. But you got to, you know, you can't give up, right, huh? But a lot of people do despair of knowing the truth, huh? It's like, you know, Whitaker Chambers talks about the time when he became a communist, right, huh? Of course, the communists, as you know, were staking up a lot of things. But they thought they knew the truth, right, you know? Why his fellow students there at Columbia University, right? They had really given up the pursuit of truth, you know? But the way he describes them, he came back to talk to them, you know, he says, they treated ideas like ping-pong balls, right? Well, it's a beautiful metaphor, because the ping-pong ball, they knock it back and forth, right? You know, you do that, that, bang, bang, back, you throw it back and forth. You don't care much about the ping-pong ball, you know? It's no big deal with the ping-pong ball. It's a little thing. And that's the way they do, you know? You knock ideas back and forth, you know? But it's kind of like ping-pong, right? I knock it to you, and you knock it back to me. Sometimes you miss it, sometimes I miss it, you know, and so on. Sometimes it goes off the table, you know? But, you know, he found that, you know, he found the communists much superior to that, right? At least they took these things very seriously, right? Enough to start a revolution, right? Yeah. You know, so, but they were mistaken, right? They had not despaired in going the truth, but, you know? The first time he talks about starting to doubt the communist thing was that he was looking at his daughter's ear, right, in the kitchen there, you know? And the ear is not the most unusual thing in the world, but it's kind of struck him, you know, that couldn't happen by chance, that ear. Yeah. You know, he's kind of looking at it. You know, he kind of admired the ear of his little daughter, you know? And, you know, something struck him, you know? There's a doubt in his mind about the communist things. They're so stuck in material, that's the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's beautiful that we applied the first objection, right, huh? Because they're seeing a certain truth in it, right, huh? Okay. But it's what? In the passions irascible, according as they are derived from the passions, like he gives them, right? Why the approach to and withdrawal from is proper to them as irascible emotions. So it's more the contrary, more despair than fear, right? But this is a kind of contrary to open fear, right? It's really properly in the Gipsville Act. Now, what about the second objection here, right? That hope and despair are not... about the same, right? But the second should be said that desperation does not regard the evil under the character of something bad, right? But sometimes, Gratidens, it regards the evil insofar as it makes for the impossibility of obtaining something, right? It's a very bad thing, that sense, despair. You despair of knowing the truth, right? Like some of the Greek philosophers did, and the modern philosophers did, right? Then you might as well, there's something bad, right? There can be desperation from the, what? Excess of the good only, right? See, people give up trying to think about God because he's just too much above us, right? Kind of the way that the Jews there didn't want to believe Christ, that he could be man, or he could be God, or the son of God, or he could be equal to the Father, right? You know, this is too hard to think. And so they would give up, right? Now, to the third it should be said, that desperation does not imply only the lack of hope, right? It's not just deprivation of it, right? It's not just a lack of hope. But it implies a certain, what? From the thing desired, right? That's the original sour grapes, right? And he really wanted the grapes, right? But he couldn't reach them, right? And then kind of, he said, well, they're probably sour anyway, you know? I said, the guy, he really wants the girl, but, you know, he's not clever enough to win the girl. And so he said, well, she'd be spoiled anyway, you know? And he'd get to me, you know? Don't be satisfied with one guy anyway, you know? She'd be spoiled, you'd have to be like a queen all the time. She wouldn't cook your meals, and do your stockings, and wash your stockings, and so on, you know? So she's not really desirable, you know? But I meant despair to give you the truth, that life's not really important anyway, you know? Love is what's important, right? You know? That's what people say nowadays, right? Okay. Whence desperation presupposes desire, just as what? Hope does, right, huh? Okay. So, I want this, right, huh? I want something good, but because that good is difficult to obtain, right, huh? My desire for that good can be followed either by hope, if I think I can overcome the difficulties, right? Or it can be followed by what? Despair, if I think I cannot, what? Overcome the difficulties, right, huh? Okay. For about that which does not fall under our desire, right, we have neither what? Hope nor despair, right? Okay. So you see the order, right, huh? That's Shakespeare's definition. Yeah. The ability for a large discourse, looking before and, what, after, right, huh? Okay. So, as I often point out, what does reason always see before it sees a before and after? No, that's... Yeah. What does it always see before it sees a before and after? Distinction. Yeah, yeah. So you have to see some distinction between hope, let us say, and despair and desire, right, huh? Before you can see the order of these, right, huh? Desire comes before either hope or what? Despair, right, huh? And it's not always, though, followed by hope or despair, right, huh? If there's no difficulty in getting what you desire, just be children and boy, get you popcorn, or you're watching the game or something, right? Okay? And, uh... But in order to see why desire comes before them, you'd have to see the distinction between desire and hope, right, huh? But hope is a movement towards the good, difficult to obtain, right, when you think you can overcome those difficulties, right? But you wouldn't have that hope that, you know, rising up, you know, huh? Jupiter's Symphony, right, you know, powerful thing, yeah. I thought you, you know, at the last movement to the Jupiter's Symphony, you know, Mozart, I'd heard the symphony many times, and Warren says, you know what he does in the last movement? And I said, well, kind of, and he says, well, he combines, you know, four or five melodies, and I said, he does? You know? You get this impression, you know, that, you know, this guy can do two things, three times, four or five things together, you know, huh? I guess he does that in Don Giovanni, huh, you know, in the ballet, in the... when they're dancing, right, huh? There's two different dances, and then he finally combines them all together, you know, incredible things he does, you know, but he's a sense of power, you know. Man completely in control of the situation, you know. The glorious music of Mozart, as my friend Washington Irving says. And on account of this, also, both of them are about the good, right, huh? Which falls under, what? Desire, right, huh? Because you've got to think about, you carry this over to the theological virtues, is why does hope come before, what? Charity or love, right, huh? You know, in the beautiful quranium there to Dei Verbum, right, huh? They quote Augustine, you know, that by believing, we might come to hope, and by hoping, we might come to love, right, huh? So, there you have an order of a different kind than the one St. Paul says, right? And he says, these three remain, and the greatest of them is love, right? What order is St. Paul talking about there? Which of the four orders that Aristotle distinguishes he's talking about there? No, no, he's saying that charity is the greatest of these three, faith, hope, and charity, right? The fourth sentence. The fourth sentence, too. Which is better, right? Than the 12th chapter categories, right? And I got to think about, you know, I mean, look, look, we're after some times. Which is better, hope or faith? Everybody knows what St. Paul says, right? He says of the three, charity is the greatest, right? So, that's first, right? Which is second, which is third? Which is second, which is third? I'm inclined to say hope is better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember raising the question, yeah, he was very cautious about, you know, you know, I wouldn't say it right away. But then Warren Murray pointed out to me this text of Thomas in the Disputed Questions, I think, is about hope, right? Where Thomas clearly says that hope is greater, right? But when Thomas sometimes, you know, speaks about the three virtues, he says, by faith, we in some way know what our end is, right? By hope, we tend towards it, right? By charity, we already in some way, but joined to it, right? You know, like St. Therese of Lisieux, you know, she says, I don't know what more I can have in heaven, you know? Our union with God is already complete, she says. But then you're talking about the union of what? Of love, not the union of the mind, of the vision, right? Augustine would never say that, you know? He says, Augustine, you know, you know, they always call it, the vision is a holy war, you know? Yeah. Okay. But notice what you say, huh? By faith, we in some way know what our end is, what our goal is. That's why it ends up with eternal life there in the Creed, right? But by hope, we're tending towards that difficult good, right? That difficult end, right? So that, in a sense, you're closer to the end, right? When you're tending towards the end, right? Well, if I had disappeared, right, you know, I wouldn't get to them at all, right? Okay?