Prima Secundae
Lecture 163: The Mean in Moral and Intellectual Virtue

Transcript
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What play of Shakespeare now are you currently reading? Currently? Not right now. Not presently. I remember one of the Americans said, Levalder, you know, and of course, Dion or DeConnick or somebody would be quoting Shakespeare, you know, and they'd say, this is really embarrassing, these guys know Shakespeare better than we do. I was reading about the last day of Tennessee, you know, the poet laureate of England there in the 19th century. But he asked for his copy of Shakespeare, you know, so he could read Symbeline again, you know. His eyes were kind of failing, he couldn't see it the first day, and then a couple days later he asked to see Symbeline again, can you want to read that scene there where posthumous and Imogen are reconciled again in a beautiful scene, you know. And then he finally died so they say, with Shakespeare still on his lap. You know, he was very appropriate for Port Norwich of England to die that way, right? So it's better to doubt that with the Bible in your lap. But I mean, if you read the Bible there, then Shakespeare would be a good second, you know. I guess towards the end of his life there he started to try to write plays, you know, an imitation of Shakespeare, you know, and he was going to write some historical plays, you know. So, Queen Mary had a little bit, you know, about the Catholics, you know. It's one of the ones, you know. It didn't succeed too well, you know. But, earlier he had written the idols of the king, you know, and things under King Arthur, you know. So, Aristotle and Shakespeare didn't see the distinction, huh? Maybe you guys see it too. The second it should be said, that the middle and the extremes are considered in actions, like in justice, right? And passions, like in courage and temperance, according to diverse, what? Circumstances, huh? Once nothing prevents, in some virtue, for something to be, what? Extreme according to one circumstance, which is nevertheless a middle according to other circumstances, by conformity to reason, right? My example used to be, what? Eat more on Thanksgiving Day than other days, especially if Grandma had gone to a lot of work to prepare the turkey, right? You might eat generously of the turkey that she's preparing, right? Just sit down and have an apple or something. Yeah. But in different virtues. And thus, in magnificence and magnanimity. For if one considers the quantity absolute of that to which the magnificent man or the magnanimous man attends, it is said to be an extreme and, what? Maximum. But if this is considered in comparison to other circumstances, it has the notion of a middle, right? Because these virtues tend towards this according to the rule of what? Reason. That is, where is necessary and when is necessary and account of which is necessary, right? But there's an excess if in this maximum it tends when it should not be necessary and where is not necessary or an account of which is not necessary. But there's a defect if it does not tend to this where is necessary and when is necessary, right? And this is what the philosopher says in the Fourth of the Ethics. The magnanimous man is in magnitude extreme but in that which is necessary in the middle, right? When Mozart represents the magnanimous man as he does in the 36th symphony and especially in the Jupiter symphony, right? He represents this as not being beyond the man who is experiencing that emotion of hope, right? So in the last part of the Fourth Movement, what does he do? He combines four or five melodies together, right? The greatest of ease, right? You see the idea that this guy can do great things, huh? But I think more of Thomas's, you read the opening chapters there of the first book of Sumacan Gentiles where he's talking about what is the role of the wise man, right? And that he proposes to have that role, right? Well, he's capable of that, right? And it's necessary that someone do that, right? Who's wise enough to do that, right? Now, if I was to say now, this is what a wise man does, no, I'm going to do this. I'm going to, you know, then you're going to say this is laughable, right? But when Thomas does it and then actually exceeds your exception, your anticipation, right? You say, well, he did something that was necessary to do and wouldn't it necessary to do it, right? Even defends religious three vows in the third book, right? Which was necessary in the Middle Ages there, huh? You see ritualized in the middle, they were saying, you know, and give away everything that's obviously extreme, yeah. So Thomas has to defend these things. Somebody has to do as necessary, huh? Now, to the third should be said that there is the same reason about, what? Property. Which is about magnanimity, huh? For virginity abstains from all venereal things and property from all, what? Riches. Which is an account of which is necessary and according as it is necessary. That is according to the command of God, right? And an account of what? Eternal life. If however this came about according as it is not necessary, that is according to some illicit superstition, right? Or on account of some empty glory, it would be what? Superfluous, huh? If however it does not come about when it should, or according as it should, is he vice for what? By defect. As is clear in those going beyond the vow of virginity and poverty, right? Transgressing it, right? That's what Father Hardin points out about poverty. In canon law, it's defined as being sober. And he says, whereas Marxism is drunken. He says, that's the envy of the poor, but that's like a drunken poverty. It's not sober, like religious poverty. These terrorists, you know, blow themselves up, you know. Excess there, but it's not virtue there, either. That's what, Chester used this for an aportiori. He said, for some of these lesser things. Yeah, yeah. You find such extreme behavior. He says, all the more, if it's something really divine, we should expect this kind of behavior. And that's because people say, religion is the cause of war. He says, well, we should expect that. That's normal. If people are destroying civilization for the cause of some political party, all the more should we do it for the sake of God. There might be some people that abstain from meat because they think it's sinful to eat the other animals, right, huh? Mm-hmm. You've got to see people like that, do you know? Mm-hmm. That's cruel. Well, it's not really a virtue in that sense, right? Based upon a kind of superstition, right? Mm-hmm. Abstain from wine. You've got teetovers. You've got teetovers and then you have... Yeah, teetovers. Yeah, teetovers, yeah. I've got a girl here in works like SPCA out in Massachusetts, and she works with these people who are... It's really amazing. So if they take... They also receive not only stray dogs and cats, but, you know, like farm animals and pigs and chicken. A lot of roosters, you know, people... Mm-hmm. They don't want them, right? They want their roosters. But there's a rule that if they have to kill them like the roosters, they start, you know, attacking each other, and, you know, they don't like that either because they're causing each other pain, so they put them down, but they can't eat that meat. Mm-hmm. They can't sell it. They can't eat it. They can't do anything, but they can't eat it. They kill the pig because it's wounded. They can't eat it. And if somebody wants to take one of those roosters, they have to promise that they're not going to kill it and eat it. I would say I was under duress if I promised a pig. Yeah. They got this 300-pound pig that they've been feeding for the last time. Of course, nobody wants to take it and say, I'm kind of not going to kill it and eat it. So, I don't know. There you go. All you got to do is just tell them you promised under duress. Big deal. It's a puzzle of bangers. Yeah. It's surprising. If you make the promise but have somebody else kill it, then you can all eat it. So typically you're not bringing it up. Shall we have a chance for another article or what? Yeah, it looks like it's not too long. To the second one proceeds thus, it seems that the middle of moral virtue is not a middle of reason, but a middle of the thing. But for the good of moral virtue consists in this that is in the middle. But the good, as is said in the sixth book of the metaphysics, is in things themselves. Good and bad are primarily in things, and truth and falsity are primarily in the mind. Aristotle says in the sixth book. Therefore, the middle of virtue is the middle of the thing. Moreover, it's an interesting argument. Moreover, reason is a power that, what? Grasps things, right? Disapprehensible. But moral virtue does not consist in the middle of grasping and apprehensions, but more in the middle of operations and passions. Therefore, the middle of moral virtue is not in the middle of reason, but in the middle of the thing. Moreover, a middle which is taken according to arithmetical or geometrical portion is in the middle of the thing. But such is the middle of justice, as is said in the fifth book of the ethics. Therefore, the middle of moral virtue is not in the middle of the thing, but a reason, but of the thing. But against this is what the philosopher says in the second book of the ethics. That moral virtue consists in the middle, towards us is determined by right reason. The answer should be said that the middle of reason can be understood in two ways. In one way, according as the middle exists in the act itself of reason, right? As if the act of reason itself is reduced to a middle. And thus, because moral virtue does not perfect the act of reason, but rather the act of a desiring power. The middle of the moral virtue is not a middle of what? Reason in that sense. In another way, that can be said to be a middle of reason, that which is laid down by reason in some matter. And thus, every middle of moral virtue is a middle of what? Reason. Reason says how much should be too much and how much should be too little. How much should be just right? Because as has been said, moral virtue is said to consist in the middle in agreement to rational, to right reason, which is prudence. But sometimes it happens that the middle of reason is also a middle of the thing. It happens sometimes, huh? And then it's necessary that moral virtue, that the middle of moral virtue, be the middle of the thing. Just as in what? Justice. But sometimes the middle of reason is not a middle of the thing, but it's taken by comparison to us. And thus it is a middle in all the other moral virtues. Now the reason for this is because justice is about operations which consist in what? Exterior things. In which the right is instituted, ought to be instituted, simply and what? As such. As has been said above. And therefore the middle of reason and justice is the same in the middle of the thing. Insofar as justice gives to each one, neither more nor less than what is owed to him. But the other moral virtues consists about the interior passions, in which there is not able to be, what? A right constituted in the same way on account of this that men diversity have themselves to the passion. And therefore it's necessary that the rectitude of reason and the passion is instituted with respect to us who are affected according to the passions. So Aristotle gives example a mild man made a nox every day, right? The middle for him would not be the same as for a little boy, right? So the working man might eat more than the little boy, right? Or the professor or something. Okay. And to this is clear the response to the objections. For the first two arguments proceed from the middle of reason that is found in the act of reason itself, right? The third reason proceeds by the middle of what? Justice. Justice, huh? Ahem. Ahem. Ahem. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, Guardian Angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Dios, gracias. God, our enlightenment, Guardian Angels, do from the lights of our minds, own the room in our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand what you have written. Amen. So, that's another little text of Thomas there. He says, the angels, they enlighten our mind, they purge it, and they perfect it. So, I guess we're in the middle of Article 2 there, in Question 64. Risk of repeating myself, I shall go over Article 2 again. The second one goes forward thus. It seems that the middle of moral virtue is not a middle of reason, but a middle of the, what? Thing, huh? Of course, this phrase, middle of reason, Thomas will say, has a couple of senses, right? And this middle of the thing is something that you find in justice. For the good of moral virtue consists in this, that it is in the middle. But the good, as is said in the sixth book of the Metaphysics, is in things themselves. This is the famous text where Aristotle says, in contrast there, that truth and falsity are primarily in the mind, huh? And good and bad are in things, huh? So, that's in accord with the nature of the mind to, what? Try to bring things inside itself, right? So, the first act of the mind is sometimes called, what? Simple grasping, right? Well, by likeness to the hand. When I grasp something, it's contained in my hand, huh? And so, when the mind grasps something, it's contained in the, what? Mind, huh? And that's the good of the mind, it can grasp things, right? But that's perfection of the heart, to grasp, to be grasping, huh? So, we say, I left my heart in San Francisco, right, huh? So, the love is in the thing, what? Love, then it goes out to the thing itself, right? So, he says, since good and bad are in things, then the middle of virtue should be the middle of the thing. Well, this partly involves some confusion as to what the middle of reason is, huh? Moreover, reason is a power that is, what? Grasping, huh? Now, how do they translate that in English? Do you have English text there? Yeah, they don't want to use the English word, huh? They're afraid, huh? They're afraid of their own language. Yeah. My colleague used to say, but if you use English word, they won't understand you. That's what Father Owen Bennett used to say about reading translations of St. Thomas. He'd say, he'd look at the translation, he'd say, what? And then he'd go look at the Latin, he'd say, sometimes you've got to read the Latin to find out what the English means. But moral virtue does not consist in the middle of, what? Apprehensions, huh? Of graspings. But it's more in the middle of operations or passions, right? Therefore, the middle of moral virtue is not a middle of reason, but a middle of the, what? Thing. Moreover, the middle that is taken according to arithmetical or geometrical proportion is a middle of the, what? Thing. But such is the middle of justice, as is said in the fifth book of the Ethics. Therefore, the middle of moral virtue is not the middle of reason, but of the thing. I guess Thomas is going to admit this, right, in terms of that particular virtue called justice, huh? But against this is what the philosopher says in the second book of the Ethics, that moral virtue consists in the middle, towards us, as determined by what? Reason, huh? So how much do I eat, right? Well, it depends upon my size, right, huh? What I do for a living. And reason determines, huh? This is too much or too little for me, right, huh? Okay, I answer it should be said, he says, Thomas, that the middle of reason can be understood in two ways, huh? I was saying last night, Aristotle was the first man to understand the words we all use. And he understood that the words we all use are the words that are all equivocal by reason, right? And he was able to understand them by distinguishing their senses, and also by seeing the order there, right? So he's the first man to understand the words he uses. And Thomas is like that too, right? He seems to understand these things that the rest of us mix up, huh? That's kind of an actual state of the middle is to be mixed up, huh? Confused, huh? In one way, according as the middle exists in the act itself of what? Reason. As if the act of reason is being led back to a, what? A middle in some way. And thus, because moral virtue does not perfect the act of reason, but rather the act of the desiring power, either the will or the, what, sense desiring powers, the middle of moral virtue is not a middle of reason in that sense, right? That's the middle of an act of reason, right? Now later on, in the next third article we're talking about whether in the intellectual virtues there's a middle, right? But it's not a question. He's talking here about the moral virtues. In another way, that can be said to be a middle of reason that is laid down by reason in some, what? Matter, right, huh? And in this way, every middle of, what? Moral virtue is a middle of reason, huh? Because, as has been said, moral virtue is said to consist in a middle in conformity to a white reason, huh? So what are the Greek wise men, the seven wise men famous for saying to a local Delphi? Nothing too much, right? Nothing too much. Know thyself or nothing too much. Yeah. And maybe that's to be understood nothing too little, too, but people more often too much than too little, right? You get in trouble more about being too much than you are by doing too little, so we have to emphasize made an agon on nothing too much. But then he brings an interesting point, but sometimes it happens that the middle of reason is also a middle of the thing, right? Okay? Now, so I'll take a simple example there of eating, right? How much should I eat, right? Well, if they bring in a turkey, right, huh? Should I eat half the turkey? That would be the middle, right? Or if they bring in a gallon of whiskey, should I drink, you know, half of the gallon? You know? Well, it's not a middle of the thing, right? But how much whiskey is either too much or too little for me, right? Right, huh? Thomas says one should drink usque adi laritata, right? But not to the point of being, what, drunk or interfering with one's activities and so on, right? And so it's a middle, what, towards us, right? Okay? But sometimes it's a middle of the thing, right? So if you come into my bakery and you're going to buy a loaf of bread, well, what is the going price for a loaf of bread, right? And then I should pay you neither more nor less than that, huh? And it's not how much I love bread or how much you love bread or hate bread or whatever it is, but it's the middle of the thing, right? That's the middle for what? Reason, right? But sometimes, huh? When do we? It happens that the middle of reason is also a middle of the what? Thing. And then it's necessary that moral virtue, the middle of moral virtue would be a middle of the thing as is the case in what? Justice. Sometimes, however, the middle of reason is not a middle of the thing but it's taken in comparison to us, right? And therefore, the middle might not be the same for you and for me, right? And if you give the grandchildren a bit of wine at the table, you don't give them very much. And they don't give women as much, you know, as they give a man when you drink, usually, right? But then there are individual people, right? And if you're an alcoholic, maybe you can't drink at all, right? Maybe you shouldn't touch it at all, right? And so. So on. And thus is the middle in all the other moral virtues except, what? Justice, right? Justice is kind of an unusual thing. So there's a style of Nicomachean Ethics. He takes up those moral virtues in 3 and 4, and then 5 is devoted just to, what? Justice, huh? And he says the reason for this is that justice is about, what? Operations, which consist in exterior things, huh? I'm going to pay you for painting my house or something, right? In which the right is instituted simply and by itself, right? It's not a question of, you know, I wonder how much you like money or something, you know, and then I'll decide what I give you. No, no, that's not the way you decide those things. And therefore the middle of reason, the reason would establish injustice, is the same with the middle of the thing. Insofar as justice gives to each one what is owed him, right? And neither more nor what? Less, huh? Is that what I do at the bottle when I give it to you? Either more nor less, huh? I see you've had too much, you know, I put the bottle away or something, right? But the other moral virtues consist about the inside, the interior, the inward passions, huh? The emotions, right? In which there is not something right constituted in the same way, on account of the fact that men have themselves diversely to the, what? Passions. And therefore it's necessary that the rightness of reason and the passions be instituted with respect to us, right, huh? Who are affected according to the, what? Passions, huh? And Thomas is very brief about the objections. And to this it is clear the response to the objections for the first two reasons proceed about the middle of reason in the sense that we said was not relevant here, right? The one that is found in the act itself of, what? Reason. And the third one deals with that exception in the sense, the middle of, what? Justice, huh, Thomas makes those distinctions. Now we get to my virtues, huh, the intellectual virtues here, in the third article, huh? We get to my virtues, huh? We get to my virtues, huh? We get to my virtues, huh? We get to my virtues, huh? We get to my virtues, huh? To the third, then, one goes forward thus. It seems that intellectual virtues do not consist in the middle. For the moral virtues consist in the middle insofar as they are conformed to the rule of reason. But the intellectual virtues are in reason itself. Thus, they do not seem to have a higher, what? Rule, right? Therefore, the intellectual virtues do not consist in the, what? Middle, right? Moreover, the middle of moral virtue is determined by intellectual virtue, as is said in the second book of the Ethics. That virtue consists in a middle by, what? Determined by reason, insofar as the wise man, right? Virtuous man determines. If, therefore, intellectual virtue again consists in the middle, it would be necessary that it be determined through, a middle for itself, through some other virtue, right? And so on, not in nauseam, not infinitum, right? And thus one would go forward forever in the, what? Virtues, huh? Moreover, a middle is property between, what? Contraries, huh? Right? The colors are in between white and black, right? Or lukewarm is in between hot and cold, and so on, right? As is clear through the philosopher in the tenth book of wisdom, that's where Aristotle talks about the one and the many, right? That's where the consideration of contraries are. But in the understanding, there does not seem to be any contrariety, since even the contraries themselves, according as they are in the understanding, are not, what? Contraries, huh? But they're understood together as white and, what? Black, huh? Healthy and, what? Sick, right, huh? So it's the same art of medicine that's about health and about sickness, right? And the doctor says, I've got high blood pressure. He must know what healthy blood pressure would be, right? One is known to the other and helps you to know the other, right? So they don't seem to be opposed as they are in the mind, huh? And that incident is one of the arguments he uses for the materiality of the mind, right? Health and sickness in matter in the body, one excludes the other, right? So if I have high blood pressure, I don't have normal blood pressure, or healthy blood pressure, right? And vice versa, right? But as they are in the mind, one helps the other, right? This is a famous thing. You find in Socrates as well as in Plato there in the dialogues, that there's the same knowledge of opposites, right? So in logic, we study both correct reasoning and what? Fallacious reasoning, right? So Aristotle wrote the book on cystic refutation, as well as the prior and the posterior analytics, right? And so on. So if a middle is in between two contraries, right? Well then, you don't have contrariety in the reason, well then, I don't think you have a middle. Okay. Whereas Thomas will point out, in spite of this, the way that there can be contrariety in the mind, right? We'll see what that is. But against this is that art is intellectual virtue, as is said in the sixth book of the Ethics, huh? And the sixth book of the Nicomaginetics he's referring to here. But that's the book on the intellectual virtues, huh? And Aristotle begins by saying there are five, right? Understanding, episteme, wisdom, foresight, and art, right? And then he goes into those. So art is one of the five that he mentions there. And nevertheless, of art there is some middle, as is said in the second book of the Ethics, huh? So Mozart complained that the golden mean was no longer observed in music, especially by those romantic composers that came after him, right? But even in his own time, you can see this, right? So Einstein marks him the wisdom of Mozart, right? And I think I mentioned how when Aristotle, in the earlier books, he talks about virtue consisting in the mean, right? He begins, you know, by pointing out how the good in art depends upon the mean, too, right? You cook the meat too much or too little, right? You season something too much or too little, right? You get something, what, bad, right? As if they were kind of more known to us, right? And more admitted, huh? Yeah. That's the supreme gift of the artist, right? It's knowing when to, what, stop, yeah. Yeah, that's what Sherlock Holmes says, right, huh? This guy was trying to get even with this woman who had flouted in with something. He was younger and he was trying to make him appear to be guilty of some horrible crime, right, huh? And he made it look pretty incriminating, right? So even Sherlock Holmes was a little bit, you know. And he went a little too far. And so at the end when, like, in some of the stories end up, you know, with Sherlock Holmes and Watson talking about the case a bit, you know. So he lacked the supreme gift of the artist, knowing when to stop, right? I have a book on, you know, Italian art there. And the guy's talking about Titian, right? And he writes, Titian is kind of the greatest of the painters, right? But above all, he knew when to stop, right? And people writing on Mozart say, he always knew when to stop, you know. And other people don't know when to stop, right? That's part of the idea. Now, Thomas says, I answer it should be said that the good of something consists in the middle, according as it is conformed to the rule or the measure, which can be, what, transcendent or gone beyond, huh? Or fall short of, right? Now, the intellectual virtue is ordered to the good, just as the moral, right, huh? Whence according as the good of moral virtue has itself to a measure, so it has a notion of a middle. Now, the good of the intellectual virtue is what? The true. The true, huh? And of the speculative virtue, it's true to what? Absolutely. Absolutely. But in terms of the, what, practical virtue, it's truth according to the conformity to rectified appetite, right? And this is true especially about, what, prudence or foresight, right? You've got to have more virtue before you can have prudence, huh? When you have the letter of Mozart, right, he's talking about representing the anger of Osman and the abduction from the Surali, right? And, of course, he gets very angry, right? And he says, well, when a man gets very angry, he loses control of himself, right? So the music has to represent this, right? And he says, not in a way that becomes displeasing to the ear. Or, in other words, cease to be music. You see, the rectified appetite on both sides, right? That's what the end of music is, huh? It's got to please the ear. It's not music. It's noises. It's like the chef might say, you know, it's, you know, it's got to be healthy maybe, the food, but it's got to please the taste, yeah. A lot of rough music seems to express anger. Yeah. In a way that seems to be music. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's nice, yeah. Now, what is the measure of the speculative intellect? The truth of what? Our understanding, absolutely considered, is as something measured by the thing, right? For the thing is the measure of our understanding, as Aristotle says in the 10th book of Wisdom, right? The metaphysics. For from this that a thing is or is not, there is truth, both in the opinion of the mind and in the, what? Speech that signifies that, huh? Okay, so if I say you guys are, what, sitting now, right, huh? Then I'm speaking truly, right? If I say you are not sitting, I'm false, right? If I say you are standing now, it's false. I'm conforming to the thing, right? So it's measured by the, what, thing, right? Aristotle has an example there in the 12th chapter, the categories, when he's talking about the senses of before and after, right? And he gives the four central senses, and then he says there seems to be another sense. He brings in the sense which causes before and effect, right? And he takes the example there of the truth of a statement, right? And how the cause of the truth of the statement is the thing itself, huh? And so they're together in time. One is not before the other in time, so it's not the first sense of before. It's not even the second sense of before, which is if this can be without that, but not vice versa, right? Because as soon as you're sitting, it's true to say that you're sitting, right? And whenever it's true to say you're sitting, you must be sitting, right? They're simultaneous, right? And yet one is before the other as the cause is before the effect, huh? So he says the good then, huh? Of the speculative intellectual virtue consists in a certain middle, right? By conformity to the thing itself. According as it says that that is, that is, right? And that is not, that is not, right? So truth is saying what is, is, and what is not, is not. And falsehood is saying what is, is not, or what is not, is, right? There's two ways you can say the false, the ways of truth. And notice that they are going to be in statements, as you'll point out, right? The contrariety shows up. Now the excess, that is according to a false affirmation, through whom or by whom it is said that something, what? Is, that is not. And the defect is taken according to the false negation, to which it is said not to be what is, right? Now, notice what you're saying there, right? I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, right? Now who was at the bar at 10 o'clock last night, huh? I wasn't there, Your Honor. Well, I suppose John and Thomas are there, right, huh? And they're my friends, so I don't want to get them involved, right, huh? So I say John and Thomas and what? Bill were there, right? Bill wasn't there. So I'm what? We're adding to the truth, right? I'm saying that what is not, is, huh? So this is a false affirmative statement, huh? That Bill was there, right, huh? Okay. Or suppose all few of those guys are there, and I say that, but Jim was not there or something, you know, one of the guys was not there. Well, then I seem to be, what? Subtracting, right? I'm saying that, yeah, yeah. And that's by the false statement, right, huh? Now, when we say, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, right? It might seem at first sight, you know, that when you say the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you're just emphasizing again, I couldn't tell the truth. But is that, in fact, what you're doing? Or are you saying something different? You say, you know, after you're saying, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, right? Tell the whole truth as opposed to what kind of falsity? While saying, falsity of the affirmative or negative statement. Falsity of negation. Yeah, see? Because when I say that what is, is not, right? I seem to be, what? Yeah, taking away from it, right, huh? Okay. And then nothing but the truth, right? Yeah. When I have the, what? Yeah. Seem to be adding to it, right, huh? Okay. Now, Shakespeare expresses this in a certain different language, but he'll have, like, in King Lear, right, huh? King Lear. Kent says, all my reports go with the modest truth, right? Because modest truth implies it's the middle, right, huh? Nor more, nor clipped, but so. In Shakespeare, grammatically, they'll say, nor, nor, for neither nor, right? And we'd say neither, you know, or they'll say, or, or, for either or, right? Okay. So he says, all my reports go with the modest truth, nor more, nor clipped, but so, huh? What is more? What kind of falsity is that, huh? Now, he's saying that what is not, is, huh? He's saying, because we're more than the truth, right? In clipped, you're saying, what? Kind of subtracting the truth. You're saying what is, is not, right, huh? So really, those two added phrases there are not simply reiterating what you intend to do to speak the truth, but they're excluding the two ways you might depart from the truth, and one by making affirmative, and the other negative false statement, right, huh? Okay. Or false staff, and he's practicing one of his, you know, lying things and so on, but he wants his buddies to back him up, you know, huh? If they say more or less than the truth, he says, huh? They are villains of the sons of darkness, right? Okay. But here he had to turn more or less, right? So when are you saying more than the truth? See? Yeah. When are you saying what is not, is, right, huh? When are you saying less than the truth? You're saying that what is, is not, huh? So truth is in between, right, huh? To one of which is more than the truth and the other is less than the truth, right? So those are all different ways of saying it, right? The courtroom, you know, way of saying it, and the way that Kent says it, and the way that our friend false staff says it, right? I started reading the Mary Wives of Windsor, right, huh? And false staff there exemplifies what Thomas says, you know, that he says, if you commit adultery for the sake of robbing somebody, you are formally a, what? A robber. Yeah, see? Only materially an adulterer. Well, that's actually what false staff is, right? Because he's making proposals to the Mary Wives of Windsor and Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford, right, huh? In order to get to their, what? Their money, right? Because he's short of funds, right? So he's formally a thief, right? And materially trying to be an adulterer, right? Of course, the two men, you know, one of them, there's no suspicions of his wife at all, Mr. Page, and the other one, of course, has, that he's given to, what? Jealousy, right? This is true, this way, people are, some of them, you know, are very hard to have their jealousy aroused. And I went to the guy, you know, his wife was insanely jealous, right? He was scared, you know, that he experienced. You know, I think I told you this story about Charlie, and I didn't know the, the, we were working in the back of the story together, and the woman would come over from the bank, you know, to get their soda pop, you know, their break, and so he'd make conversation with them, you know, and he said, where are you going on vacation this summer? They're talking about this summertime, you know. And it seems they're going to vacation, the same place where Charlie and his wife are going to go on vacation. He said, for heaven's sake, if you see me, don't say hello. I mean, he's serious about this, you know. He's there, he's setting it off, you know. Who is that, you know? Some strange woman says hello to you. I mean, and this is the way Mr. Ford is, right? And so, of course, he makes a fool of himself in the course of the, what, of the play and all the other things. But when I talk about the four kinds of plays of Shakespeare, right, I take at least one play from each of the four kinds, dealing with the same situation where a man is, what, jealous of his wife, right? And in the case of Mary Wise Windsor, it's recognized as, what, laughable, right? At the other end, you've got, you know, a fellow, you know, a man killed his wife, you know. And then in between, you have ones where he doesn't kill his wife, but there's, you know, serious problems, and eventually there's forgiveness and so on, you know. But it's, you kind of see the character of the four kinds of plays, just to that same kind of scene, right? And the way it's handled, each of the plays. So. So, it doesn't go on forever then, this business about what? The measure, right? If one virtue is measuring another virtue, another virtue is coming to measure that one, and so on, right? You're measured by the, what? The thing, right? Now, the truth, he says, of a, what, practical moral virtue, or intellectual virtue, rather, compared to the thing has the aspect of a, what? The thing measured. Of a measured, yeah. In the same way, one takes the middle in comparison to the thing in the practical intellectual virtues, as an expectative one. But with respect to the appetite, it has the notion of a, what? Rule and measure, right? Whence the same middle, which is of moral virtue, is also that of, what? Prudence, huh? With directitude of reason. But it's of prudence as ruling and measuring this middle, right? It's of a moral virtue as measured and, what? Ruled, right, huh? So Prudence says, I've had enough to eat, right? This is enough for me today, right? It's enough for this meal. Now, they say that the restaurant owners know that they tried to overfeed you, right? Making us fat, I guess. And I guess the reason is that if you go away from a restaurant and you're still hungry, you're not going to go back again, they figure, you see. So they've got to stuff you, you know. So they're actually trying to make you be, in a sense, vicious, right? Eat more than you should eat, right? And there's no problem in the practical order, right? Right, huh? But sometimes you've got a woman there, too, you know, who's trying to overfeed you, too, right? Yeah, yeah. And they're, you know, if you don't eat generously, you know, they're insulted, right? Insulted, yeah. Yeah, so. These are problems that happen in the practical order. Of course, I won't have to worry about that after the resurrection. Yeah, yeah. But again, the practical reason might say that on Thanksgiving Day, you eat more than you normally would eat, right? Especially if Grandma's gone to a lot of work, right, huh? You've got to do justice to the meal. You've got to be a crust and bread. I've had enough, Grandma. I remember when my paternal grandmother was staying with us, you know, in the last part of her life there. And she was having, you know, losing her appetite so much, you know. But she had been brought up and said, did you want to clean the plate, right? It was a real problem for her, so. The understanding was that any time she confessed, she just tore my plate and I ended up. The kid, I was, you know, you had a big appetite. And so, she was thankful that, you know, then she'd have to be embarrassed by leaving a plate with something, you know. So, we had no understanding, we'd do understand. Now, the first effort should be said that intellectual virtue also has, right, its own, what, measure, right? And by conformity to that, it is, what, takes its middle, right? And that's conformity ultimately to the thing, right? The second should be said that it's not necessary to proceed forever among the virtues because the measured rule of intellectual virtue is not some other genus of virtue, right? But the, what? I think it's saying. Yeah. Now, when you go to Nicomachean Ethics, right, you've been told in the definition of moral virtue that it's a, what, habit with choice existing in the middle towards us is determined of the right reason. But you don't know exactly what the right reason is until you get to the sixth book, right? And so, you might look for something, you know, another kind of virtue to regulate right reason, right? But no, it's a thing, you know, regulating it, at least the moral virtues, I mean, the speculative virtues. So, the measure and the rule of intellectual virtue is not some other genus of virtue, right? Like there's some third genus and then a fourth one and so on forever, right? But ipsares, the thing itself, okay? So, Niels Bohr was always saying, right, measured by the thing, you know? About your theories and correspondence with things. What about this interesting objection here from Contraryote? Well, one way there is, another way there is not Contraryote in the intellect, huh? To the third, it should be said that Contrary things, huh, themselves, do not have Contraryote in the soul, right, huh? So, health and, say, sickness, right, huh? Or virtue and vice, right? They don't have Contraryote in the soul because one is the reason for, what, knowing the other, right? There's a famous statement that opposites alongside each other are more, what, clear, right, huh? So, you have, what, black and white, right? True for the senses a bit, huh? And, but, what about the second active reason where you affirm or deny one of these simple things, right, huh? And then you can have Contraryote, huh? But, nevertheless, he says, in the understanding, there is a Contraryote of affirmation and negation, right? Which are Contraries, as Aristotle says in the end of the book, Perihermeneus, right? That's the second book, and logic has come down to us from Aristotle, right? And the first book was the categories, right? And, but the second book, Perihermeneus, is about the, is about statements, huh? And is an affirmative and a negative statement about the same subject and predicate, are they Contrary? They're both, what, Statements, right, huh? And one is true and the other is, what, false, huh? They're Contraries, huh? Although, to be and not to be are not, what, Contraries, but they're opposed, what, Contradictory. What's the difference between the Contradiction and Contraryote, and then what's the kind of opposition that is in between those two? Contradictory, one has to be true and the other has to be false. Oh, just going back more generally, though. When you talk about, Aristotle distinguishes opposites, and he does so in the categories, right? Before he takes up, before and after, right? And this is significant, right? He does the same thing in metaphysics in the fifth book, where he takes up before and yet, right? Before and after again, but he takes up opposition before, right? And Aristotle is the only philosopher I know, and the ones who follow Aristotle, who distinguishes carefully the kinds of opposites, right? I think I mentioned how when I was a student at Laval there, you go in the library sometimes, and they had found copies of doctoral theses that had been passed and so on before you. We sometimes go in there and read one of these theses, right? If you're interested in the topic of the doctoral thesis, and sometimes you get an idea of how to write a doctoral thesis and some of the, you know, itty bitty stuff in here. But there's one doctoral thesis on Marxism, right? I think I mentioned this before, right? And Marxism is always talking about opposites, right? Dialectical materialism, right? I say the matter develops by, what, opposites, huh? Borrowed the word dialectical there, right, from the Greeks. Doesn't dialectical reasoning do you reason, what, from probable opinions to opposite conclusions, right? So this is central to Marxism, right? Opposition, right? Class warfare and all the rest of it now. But nowhere does Marx distinguish the kinds of opposites, right? He doesn't understand the words. He's using all the time, right? And so when Aristotle distinguishes the opposites, he does so before he takes up before, because opposition is the basis of what we call formal distinction, huh? But how many kinds of opposites does Aristotle distinguish, huh? Where he distinguishes contradiction, right? And contrariety, and what? 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