Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 93: God's Existence and the Fool: Philosophy's Foundation

Transcript
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Then you're a, what? Fool. There's two psalms, I guess, so the psalm... Yeah, like 32 or something. I think 52 of them, they were numbering as one, and the psalm is 15, something like that. But there's two places where it says, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. And Thomas, you know, he comments on that more than once, but in the third book of Summa Argenti, as we're looking a little bit at today, he says that, and he's talking about what man's ultimate end is. Of course, man's ultimate end is, what, to know God, right? And Thomas is going through the various ways in which we know God, right? And he'll talk about the way in which everybody, even the multitude, you might say, right, who have never studied philosophy, have a certain awareness of God, right? Okay? And then he'll talk about the knowledge that the philosophers have by demonstration, right? And then he'll talk about the knowledge we have of God by faith, you know? He's going through all of these and sees any one of these, you know, satisfy man's mind, right? You know? And eventually he's going to argue through the idea that we have to see God face-to-face, right? You know, but I'm not going into that more than that. But when he's coming upon this, right? He thinks there's no God, then you are really stupid, he's saying, right? You see? Because there's so many signs, even to the ordinary person, right, who's never, you know, seen the demonstrations, right? That there is a God, huh? And it's kind of interesting comparison to be used there, because he says, just like if someone, in fact, you didn't have a soul, he would be, what? Ignorance is a very obvious, what? Sign that you have a soul, that you're alive, huh? Okay? So if you think there's no God, then you are a fool. Okay? Don't come back to think about the soul, because it's interesting to make that comparison, right? Because nowadays, you'd say, people speak as if they didn't know that they had a soul, right? Or it's news to them. Okay? And, you know, what's going on here, you know? And you go back to the Greek philosophers, right? And when you look at Aristotle's first book about the soul, right? He goes through all the opinions of his predecessors about what the soul is, right? And there's disagreement as to what the soul is. As Aristotle says, it's one of the most difficult things in the world to know exactly what the soul is. But there's absolutely no doubt at all that man, even the animals, in some sense, have a soul, right? So much so that the word animal is named from the Latin word for soul. And it matters, right? It matters if it has a soul, right? There's absolutely no disagreement at all, no doubt at all, about our having a soul. All the doubt is about what the soul is, huh? Exactly what is it? And it kind of strikes us as, you know, our mental climate today, right? People strange, right? Why doesn't it discuss, you know? It's all I get out of this to me as a song. Everybody knows that, right? Now, you fall all the way down to as late as Shakespeare, right? And it's very striking in his play there, Much Ado About Nothing. Do you know that play at all? But in that play, Hero, the young lady there, is falsely accused of being unfaithful on the very night before her wedding. And, of course, this is due to the ability of Don John, you know, who eventually is exposed. Later on, you can see the play, right? But the groom-to-be and his friend there are misled by Don John, I'm saying. And so when they come for the day of the wedding, they, what? Instead of marrying a girl, they denounce her, right? You know? And shiver in front of the whole congregation, right? She faints, right? She's completely innocent, right? And the father, you know, is like, you know, almost this is his only daughter. And he's just like, you know, he's almost going to forgive her, right? You know? But the wise friar who is going to marry her, right? He's watched the reaction of the girl who's been so charged, right? And he's a pretty well-ready character, right? That her reaction is, what, not that of guilt and like that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, but everybody, you see, are a monster or anything, right? And he's convinced that there's some filthy behind us, you see? And so, I won't give you the whole story, right? But, you know, what he does. But anyway, you know, actually, it's a bunch of people on nothing, right? No, no, no, no, okay. But anyway, it almost leads to a fight between a couple of men, right? Because Benedict and Beatrice, you know, who are always making fun of each other, but they're falling in love, trying to be tricked into love. But Benedict, Beatrice is a cousin of her, right? And she, of course, you know, she's so convinced of the innocence of her cousin, right? That she's getting Benedict, you know, to challenge the groom, right? To a duel, right? To defend the honor of her cousin, right? But because Benedict wants to be sure that Beatrice is sure of the innocence of the hero, right? And so her expression is, you know, he asks him, if you're sure about this, and he says, I'm as sure that she's innocent as that I have a soul, right? See? But notice the expression there, right? Like, if I was to say, you know, I'm as sure about that as that two plus two is four, right? And that's kind of what we call an hyperbole, right? You know? Because I can't be really as sure of this as that two plus two is four, right? When I say, I'm as sure of this as that two plus two is four, I mean, I'm very sure about it, right? I mean, you know, because I'm taking something that's altogether assertive, right? The two plus two is four, right? So her very way of speaking there indicates that Thomas is talking about in the Sumerian Gentiles, what you see in the Greeks, right? There's no doubt at all, right? That you have a soul. So there's some kind of real stupidity going on, you know? And why that kind of stupidity is going on is, you know, the classic explanation is by Charles DeConn, right? The introduction to the study of the soul, right? Okay? But we'll come back then when we start to study the soul, right? Okay? But it's interesting that Thomas makes a comparison there, because he's talking about this one. You know, the fool has said in his heart, there is no God, right? But the man who thinks there is no God is very stupid. Very, very dense, you might say on the back side. That's right. So, can a man be a philosopher if he thinks there is no God? Not a very good one. You know, in all these free deductions to philosophy, I get through the mail, and I keep on saying, what's up, you know, I'll adopt it, you know? They all have a section in, you know, it's usually, most of these are deductions to philosophies, they're usually grouped around, you know, number of problems, you know? Okay. And one, of course, will be whether God exists, right? As if a philosopher has got to be a man who's got a more or less open mind about this question, right? Okay? Okay? Now, is that true, right? Or does the philosopher really have to think there is a God, right? Even before he has, you know, what we might call a demonstration, that God exists, like we'll start to look at one of them today here. Does he have to already think that there is a God? Before, right? Can you really be a philosopher without thinking there is a God, right? Especially, you know, can you be a philosopher thinking that there is no God? Well, you think there is no God, and you're a fool, therefore, right? You know? It's true what Scripture says there, right? The fool has said in his heart there is no God. Well, can you be a philosopher if you're a fool? Right? You don't have to be wise to be a philosopher, right? See? The word philosopher means what? A lover of wisdom, right? You must love wisdom to be a philosopher, right? Now does a fool love wisdom? No, he wouldn't be a fool if he loved wisdom, would he? Right? So, I would say that a man can really be a philosopher if he doesn't think he is a god, right? Because a fool can't be a philosopher. Okay? So even before, you've got to see a demonstration, right? In a strict sense, you know that there is a god. He's got to know, he's got to think in some way, right? That there is a god, right? This is what you're going to see as a Christian now, right? Now, there's all kinds of signs of that going back to the Greeks. And going back to the man that they attribute the, quoting the word philosopher, right? You know, he called Pythagoras wise, and he says, Don't call me wise, God alone is wise. What shall we call you? I've got to call me something. Call me a lover of wisdom, right? Now, you see that recognition that there's a wisdom higher than man's wisdom, right? If man can be called wise at all, right? It's only in some inferior way. But that's involved in recognition that there's, what? A god in some sense, right? Who's wise in some fuller sense, right? Compared to man, huh? So you see the very origin of the word philosopher, right? Now, associated is another thing, huh? There's a certain humility in the origin of the word philosopher. See, not only the love of wisdom, which is what is in the fair etymology of it, but in the coining of the word, it also implies, what? That man's wisdom, if he has any... Subject. Yeah, he's belong to God's wisdom, subject to God's wisdom, right? Okay. Now, you go to Heraclitus, right? Heraclitus has these famous proportions, right? As a child is to a man, so is man to God, right? In the wisdom and beauty and everything else, right? Or as an ape is to a man, so is man to God, right? So man is homo sapiens, huh? The wise ape. Compared to the ape, man is wise, huh? Just like the father, man, compared to the child is wise, right? Knows everything. Daddy knows everything. But compared to God, Daddy doesn't even know anything. See? Okay? So again, there's that same humility, right? Heraclitus says the divine nature has understanding, the human doesn't. Yeah? It's the divine nature, by being God, understands, huh? Okay? So you have that same kind of what? Humility, huh? He speaks of human law as being fed by one divine law. Okay? And you find that same thing in pedicures, right? You know, it's called the speeches of the day, right? There's a contrast between man's wisdom. You get to Socrates, that's very much the evidence, right? Why did the Oracle Delphi call the synonyms of eyes in Socrates? How come someone's living would be wise among men, right? That's because men don't. They don't know what they don't know, right? Okay? So you say that lies in the way of God is wise, huh? Okay? You saw that in Aristotle, right? You know, it says either God alone should be called wise, right? Or God most of all, huh? So can one really be a philosopher without that humility that you see in Greek philosophers? And could there be that humility without thinking there's a God? Now, you see, the Greek philosophers, and I saw pride as being one of the main causes of what? Deception, right? Yeah. I mentioned that fragment of pedicures, right? Which is, you know, we're creatures of the day, we don't live very long. And men having seen, you know, part of life, they boast of having seen the whole. Well, boasting, of course, is the first, what, species of pride, huh? Okay. So without the humility, there's going to be no, what? Wisdom, right? No real pursuit of wisdom. And then the Book of Proverbs, I think it is, ubi humilitas, ibi sapientia. Where there's humility, there's, what, wisdom? Aristotle talks about pride there, huh? Some parts. Through boastfulness, he says, right? And other human weaknesses. Okay? He's talking about, for example, those who possess rhetoric and think they possess political wisdom, right? Part is through boastfulness, right? Through pride. Okay? So can you really be a philosopher without that humility, huh? But humility is in reference primarily to what? God. You're placing your own mind under God, huh? But if you don't think there's any God, I think human wisdom is the supreme wisdom, like Marx says, right? We reject anyone who does not accept the human mind, right? That's the highest divinity, right? You know? Okay? So maybe you can't be, you can't have the humility of the philosopher, you can't be a philosopher in the way the word arose, right? Okay. Now, another aspect of this. You read the introductions to philosophy there among Neoplatonic philosophers, huh? They go back to Plato and they go back to Aristotle. But they give a number of definitions of philosophy. And the, one of the two definitions of philosophy they take from Plato is the famous one from the Theotators, huh? Now, have you ever heard the definition of philosophy in the Theotators? It's becoming like God so far as possible for a man, right? Okay? So they take this as a definition of philosophy from Plato, one of the, what, chief philosophers, right? Of all time. Philosophy is becoming like God so far as possible. As far as possible for a man, right? Okay? That's the very definition of philosophy. Plato, huh? From the Theotators, huh? And notice, the Theotators is the one where you also have Plato saying, what's the beginning of philosophy, right? Then that part of wonder, right, that I gave you before, huh? Okay. So the beginning and the end, so to speak. Oh, yeah. The Theotators is the key dialogue, huh? Well, if philosophy is becoming like God so far as possible, how can one be a philosopher without thinking there's a God? Because you don't know the end, you don't know the end. Yeah, you don't know what you're trying to be. Is it? Okay. Now, when you turn to Aristotle, of course, you know, there's two main kinds of philosophy, right? There's looking philosophy, and there's doing or practical philosophy. Now, the culmination of practical philosophy is what part of practical philosophy? Is it ethics or domestics or politics? Politics. Yeah, political philosophy, right? Okay? Now, when Aristotle is doing Nicomachean Ethics, right, he's kind of laying, as we say sometimes, the elements, even of political philosophy. And of course, he's talking there in the beginning of Nicomachean Ethics, what is the end or purpose of man? What is the end or purpose of human life, right? And how important it is to know what that is, right? Okay? And some demand has by nature, by the way. Okay? And, but he also asked the question, to what art or science does it belong to talk about the interproceeding of the mind? And of course he sees there's a proportion between the arts and the ends that they aim at, that the art that commands another art aims at a more, what? Noble end, higher end. Yeah, yeah. And so you see that in the distinction between the chief artist and the subordinate artist, right? So why does the doctor command the pharmacist, right? Well, the end of the pharmacist is to make a good medicine, right? The end of the doctor is what? Health, right? Well, you can see that the medicine is subordinated to health as an end or purpose. So the art that aims at health is going to command the art that aims at, what? Medicine, right? Okay? And there's how it develops at the beginning of the pharmacist ethics, huh? How there are many arts, but one art sometimes commands another art, right? And how there are many ends, but then one end is going to command another. So, in some way, he points out, the political art commands all the other arts, okay? So I can't drive an automobile without getting my license here, right? I can't practice, just go down and start practicing dentistry down there, or medicine, without having, but in some way I'm being certified by the state, right? When the president of Assumption College officially, you know, bestows the diplomas, right? He says, in virtue of the authority, that's made by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, right? And the board of trustees of Assumption College, you know? That's the official formula, right? You see? Okay? In a sense, Assumption College is licensed, you might say, right? By the state of Massachusetts, it's two grand, but degrees, in a sense, right? Okay? And he might even, you know, say to me, you know, you shall practice, to any purpose, the military art, starting tomorrow. You for it? You know? So because the political art, in some way, demands the other arts, right? It seems to be the chief art, and therefore it must be aiming at the chief end, right? Which is happiness, huh? Okay? But then Aristotle makes the important distinction there. He says, it's lovable, he says, right? To help achieve happiness for one man, he says, right? If you as my friend, I could be a happy man, right? Or if I help my son or my daughter or something to be happy, right? You know? That's lovable, right? And desirable, right? But he says, it's more godlike, right? To achieve happiness for a whole what? City, right? Okay? So the nobility and the excellence and the desirability of political philosophy is seen in terms of its being what? More like God, right? Like God, of course, moves towards the good of the whole universe, right? We can't do that, right? You know, all these galaxies out there, I don't know, I have no control over them. I don't control this galaxy, it's the social system. But if I'm the head of the state, I could at least do it, you know? So the very desirability, you might say, is seen in terms of its being divine, right? Okay? Now, when you get to looking philosophy, the culmination is what? Wisdom, right? If you recall, from looking at the premium to wisdom, after he shows the wisdom aims of the first causes, right? Then he goes on to show that it's looking knowledge, right? That it's liberal, that it's what? Not a human possession, right? But it's the, what? The most honorable and the best knowledge, the most desirable knowledge, because it's the most divine knowledge, right? And he shows it's the most divine, because it's the kind of knowledge that God most of all would have, and because it's about God, right? Okay? So the desirability of the culmination here, wisdom, right? is again in terms of what Plato is saying, right? He's striving to be like God, and actually when you come to know what God is, you'll realize that God knows himself. And by knowing himself, he knows everything else. And so you become most like God in knowing God himself. Okay? So he's striving to be a like God. Now in some way, this is being done every universe. Everything is striving to be like God, so that we saw in natural philosophy there, in the critique of the Plato there about matter and lack of form, that form is something God like, right? Because God is pure act, and form is an act. So when you're forming something, you're making something like God, right? Even making the chair. And Plato in the Symposium, and Aristotle in the second book about the soul, they talk about reproduction, right? Not just in man, but in the other animals, and even in the plants, right? He says, in reproducing, the animals and plants are trying to be like God so far as possible. So, God is immortal. The plants and animals are not immortal, but by reproducing, that kind of animal, that kind of plant, gets a kind of what? Immortality. So they're seeking to be like the immortal so far as possible, right? Isn't it? So it's not just there's some, you know, unheard of thing here in the universe, and man is trying to become like God, because of the philosophers so far as possible, but plants themselves in their own way, right? All nature is trying to be like God so far as it can, right? Form is something God like. And so they see that, right? Now, at the end, if you study the Kimmachian Ethics, at the end there, when Aristotle has gone through all the virtues, and you see that, in a sense, the virtues of reason itself are the supreme virtues, and that the clinical foresight is the supreme virtue in the practical reason, right? And wisdom is the supreme virtue in the looking reason, right? And then he compares them, right? And he says, which is better, right? Which is better, clinical foresight or just wisdom, right? And he says, well, the clinical foresight is something human, right? And wisdom is something divine. God is something better than man, right? Therefore, this has to be even higher than that, huh? You see? So this is a very, the very idea that you make this wisdom your goal, which it puts the word love, wisdom means, right? And wisdom is your end, your goal. Anything else you can drink of that? The great desire is really good, that is seen in terms of it's being something like God, right? So we don't think there's a God, all of this, what? Don't this make any sense? So, even without going, you know, to Christian theology, right? And criticizing Heidegger and other people for, in the light of that, which is perfectly okay, right? But that's a task of the theologian, right? But even as a philosopher, we might say, can you really understand what philosophy is, or have the humility necessary to pursue it, right? Or have the desire, right, for it, without thinking that there's a God, right? So you don't have to know God that well, right? But that there's a God who is, you know, much more wise than we are, right? That's providence and so on, huh? If you're a fool, how can you be a lover of wisdom, right? What does the great Greta say, the German poet there? Now, there's one quote, I think it's very interesting to remember. We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. Who says? Greta. Oh, Arthur Faust. We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. That's the way they translate it sometimes. So I'd say to students, I'd say, if you love disgusting things, you're already disgusting yourself, right? If you love beautiful things, right, then you are, in a way, somewhat beautiful yourself already, right? If you love wise things, right, then you already are, to some extent, what? Wise. If you love foolish things, You are already to some extent a fool. So, if a man loves wisdom, he can't be a fool, I don't think. But if he thinks there is no God, he's a fool. Somebody you could defend, right? In terms of even the philosopher. And also if you can't do philosophy well without humility. Oh, I couldn't give you the exact number, but it's going to discuss what philosophy is. It's not hard to find, though. I'll find it for you. But it's much better if you just went through it and found yourself. It shows you the importance in the way that Theotetis, apart from the main discussion, right? In the discussion of what episteme is, right? But you have the beginning of philosophy, right? In a way with the goal it is, right? But we saw that passage, too, where he talked about wonders being the beginning of philosophy. He's very clear about that, no? There is no other beginning of philosophy. But then he has this kind of wonderful statement there where he says, And it wasn't a bad genealogy, the man who said, it was Hesiod, the poet who said it, right? That Iris is the offspring of what? Thalmas, huh? And Iris is the what? The messenger of the gods, right? And Iris is the what? Rainbow personified, right? And Thalmas is wonder personified, right? So he's saying that Iris is the offspring of wonder, right? Like I mentioned how Iris appears in the vision there in Shakespeare's last play, Farewell to the Stage, Farewell to Life. The Tempest, right? When Iris comes in, you know, someone says, Hail, many-colored messenger! Many-colored, the rainbow, but messenger, right? Right? Okay? But why is Iris both of those? See? Is it by chance that Iris is both what? The messenger, huh? Of the gods, and the rainbow personified. There's some connection between those two. Which you have in Homer, right? When Iris is spoken of. What does the rainbow and the messenger have in common? Messenger of God. Yeah, yeah. So the rainbow unites heaven and earth, the place of man with the place of God. So the rainbow unites man and God, right? It's kind of a natural sign of that, huh? That's why God uses it in the Old Testament, too, right? After the flood, right? He points to the rainbow as a sign of the reconciliation between man and God, right? So it's a natural sign of the union of man and God. What does the messenger do? The messenger of God unites, yeah, man with God, right? So what he's saying there in the great Plato or Socrates is that, what? Wonder unites man with God. And it does so on the side of our reason eventually, right? Because it makes us look for the cause. And if the cause has a cause, it's the cause of the cause. And ultimately, it makes us look for the very first cause, but the first cause is God. And so it seems to me, you know, through the great Greek philosophers who are not Christians, right, and have no introduction to Christian theology, and as far as we know, they didn't know the Old Testament either. But it would be kind of inconceivable for them, right, to talk about philosophy without supposing that there's a God, right? And so it seems to be kind of a modern hang-up, right, that to be a philosopher you have to have, you know, an open mind as to whether there is or is not a God, right, huh? A closed mind about whether there is a God. And even like in geometry, huh, if you don't think that a theorem is true, if you don't guess in a sense that it's true, right, you probably would not look for a, what? Yeah, a reason why, you know? I was taking a very simple example, you know, from the fifth there in St. Euclid, which says that in a, what, triangle where these two sides are equal, you would guess that the two angles here at the base would be equal, right? That's right. And I think, you know, if I never studied Euclid, and you would talk to me about an equilateral triangle, right, to me it just seems kind of natural to guess that those three angles will also be, what, equal, right? See? But you can demonstrate from this theorem here, right? Okay. So before I demonstrate that, before I have a syllogism or continuous syllogism showing that these angles must be equal, I've already guessed that they are equal, I've already guessed that they're equal, the same way here, right? And, um, but if I didn't think that, I wouldn't look for, what, the proof of it, right? You see? Just like, you know, the, I think you committed the, the murder or the crime, right, or something, you know? So I'm going to go poking around your quarters there looking for evidence, and so on, but I wouldn't be looking around your corners in particular and checking up on you if I wasn't already thinking that you're the guy. Do you see? You know? So, I mean, if a man didn't think that there was a God, he probably wouldn't make, what, a much greater effort necessary than for knowing this. Even to know that, he probably wouldn't make the effort unless he thought it was so, right? See? But unfortunately, how would he ever make the effort to know God or even to, you know, to know the demonstrations of God like we're going to, we're looking a little bit at today, if he didn't already, what, think that there was a God, huh? You know? If he thinks there's not a God, he'd probably look for reasons why there's no God. You can find such reasons, right? You know? You know, he's going to start off prejudiced, you know, against any arguments for the existence of God, huh? Now, in both Summas, Thomas gives, as you maybe know, five arguments for the existence of God, right? But they're not altogether the same in the two Summas, huh? Okay? Now, when I was in graduate school, I had a course from Charles DeConnick on the five ways there in the Summa Theologiae. It was kind of like a seminar there with last year students, you might say, right? And, but each of us had to give a paper on one of the five ways, huh? But a paper discussing some author's presentation of that argument, right? And you could take either a modern Thomas, so-called, right? Or you could take a modern philosopher, right? And I happened to take Descartes because I was writing my dark book thesis on a comparison of Aristotle and Descartes and I was kind of familiar with the text of Descartes. And Descartes, of course, had misunderstood the major premise and he had misunderstood the minor premise of the argument he was discussing, see? But this was true about everybody we read. They had misunderstood the very proof that they were trying to, what? Yeah, yeah. So DeConnick said he thought he could demonstrate this is of God, right? He would not be so presumptuous as to say so, he said. But he's kind of cautioning us there about the difficulty of the, what? Proofs, right? Okay. And how we're very much dependent upon either this common knowledge we have of God, right? Or upon the faith. We have, right? So DeConnick said he was more convinced that God existed from what his mother told him than from this, right? I think there's a lot of common sense of what he was saying, right? There is a bad tendency in some ways, good and bad, I suppose, good intention, but bad in some ways. It was kind of in the older days, you know, when the Catholic colleges were more Catholic in a sense than they are now, you know, the idea of teaching, you know, young beginners there the pruses of God so they can go out and convince the world by an argument that they don't themselves probably understand fully and couldn't maybe defend, right, and so on. So dangerous in some ways, right? Kind of a naivete about the difficulty of the arguments, right? So on the one hand, you want to see something of the argument, but you want to be slow to, that you comprehend it fully, right? Okay? And that it's something that you come back to many times, right? Okay? And the reason I'm doing it now is not because, you know, given the difficulties, I want to exhaust any of the arguments or come to an adequate understanding of them, but just so we'll tie up some of the things we've studied already, right? So you see how they're being used, right, in the very first arguments, huh? Now, what we're going to be looking at here is the first two arguments in the Summa Congentiles, and at least the first one here today, I don't want to get through the whole first one, but the first one. But the first two arguments in the Summa Contra Gentiles are both drawn from motion, huh? Okay? And then the third argument in the Summa Congentiles is the one from the maker or efficient cause, as they call it in Latin, huh? Okay? Now, we're not going to be looking at that, but that's the third one in the Summa Congentiles. In the Summa Theologiae, only the first argument is from motion, and the second one is from the efficient cause, huh? Okay? Now, we could talk about the last three, but just to emphasize that first part there, right? Okay? So, in the Summa Congentiles, there's two arguments in motion, based on Aristotle. In the Summa Theologiae, only what? One. Okay? And that one, in some sense, corresponds here to the first argument here, the first of the two here. But, as you'll see as you start to read this, if you compare it with the Summa Theologiae, there's basically two premises that Thomas or Aristotle has to back up, right? Two premises that are used in the chief argument, right? Sometimes you see the technical term, you know, pro-syllogism, meaning a syllogism to back up one of the premises in the main syllogism, right? I sometimes like to call them backup syllogisms or secondary syllogisms, right? Okay? But in the main argument, the chief argument, that I have the conclusion that there's an unmover, you have two basic premises which Thomas will say here are in need of being, what? Proven, right? And there'll be three proofs of each of those. In the Summa Theologiae, there's, what, one of those three proving one of those premises, right? And one of the other three proving the other premise, right? So as you can see, the Summa Contra Gentiles is much more, what, explicit, right? Much more developed as far as that first proof is concerned, huh? It's a much fuller statement of it, huh? Now, I think I mentioned how in reading Thomas, if you get a text like, say, the Mariette text, let's say, right? Mariette text is very nice when you read an article in the Summa. It usually has a footnote there which will give you references to other places where Thomas discusses that, right? So you may discuss the same question in the Summa Theologiae and in this Summa Contra Gentiles. You may discuss it also in the question of Disputate, right? It may be talked about in one of the commentaries even on Scripture, right? Or in the commentary and the sentences of Peter Lombard, right? Okay? So maybe, you know, five, six different places where the same thing is talked about or more. That's kind of handy if you're zeroing in on one particular question when I go into it and various things. And sometimes you'll say something in one place that he won't say in the other, right? And sometimes it's more developed in one place than another place, right? Okay? Now, but notice a contrast here between thinking and writing. In thinking, we go from the confused to the what? Distinct, right? Okay? So in the course of time, we think things out more what? Fully, more distinctly, huh? We spell them out more, huh? Mm-hmm. But now, is that same thing true about writing? that a later writing of the same author would spell it out more than the early writing? Oh, that's a separate thing? No, no, see? A man in some writing, he might, for some reason or other, go into this thing more, right? and spell it out more. And then the next time he takes it up in the later writing, he's more brief, right? And leads it to you if you want to go into it more, to go back to the earlier writing where he was more explicit, right? Okay? And I find that myself all the time, right? In my own writing, that sometimes I'm really working on something and I really work it out in some detail and so on. And then maybe what I've worked out and the conclusions I've reached I use in later work, and I may briefly refer back to what I did. You know? So sometimes my later writing is, on the same thing, is less, what, full than the earlier writing, right? Sure. Okay? So, I mean, you have to realize that, like I think I mentioned, you know, one very great thing for me in my thinking about order and distinction and so on, that I was being misled almost by the later writing of Thomas where he's so brief, you know? The question on his disputate de potencia there. But then I went back and I looked at the commentary on the sentences, which is quite early, you know? Well, totally speaking, wrong comments of the works. I was more explicit about things, right? And I really needed that more explicit consideration and I might have been, what, kind of, would have misunderstood the letter text, right? Okay? So the Summa Contra Gentiles was written before the Summa Theologiae. Okay? And on the first, on the argument for motion, it's much more, what? Yeah, much more complete, huh? Okay? In the Summa, it's much more contracted, right? And it's interesting because when he takes up the five attributes, you know, the divine substance, he has the same five in both Summas, but the order is somewhat different and in the Summa Theologiae, you know, the order is, God is simple, God is perfect, God is infinite, God is unchanging, and then he's, what, one, one, yeah, two comes in after the operations, right? Okay? So, there, among the five, he's unchanging as number one, right? Here, it's the first one. In fact, he takes it almost for granted when he gets through with these because he's, he's developed so much in here, right? He goes right away almost to the Trinity of God which is attached to the unchangeable ness of God, right? See? That's kind of a reflection of the fact that he's been so thorough talking about the argument for the unmoved mover, right? You know? I get people one time comparing the two Summas, verses there, you know? There's something to be learned from both, right? Because given the order which he shows that he sometimes reasons from one to the other, right? And, so the reason, let's say, from perfection of God or from the infinity of God or from the simplicity of God is being unchangeable, right? More explicitly in the Summa Theologiae because he takes up the unchangeableness after those three. Right here, it's the first one, right? But there's something to be learned. From this, too, as I find out in my paper on the subject. But now, see, if you compare what he says about the soul in the second book of the Summa Congentiles, it's not as developed or explicit as the Summa Theologiae. The Summa Theologiae, you multiply the questions about the soul much more in detail than you do here, right? So, although you could start with what he does in the Summa Congentiles and says about the soul, you get kind of a more complete and more detailed picture of the soul and its powers and so on in the Summa Theologiae, right? And again, with the Treatise of the Angels in the Summa Theologiae it's much more detailed, particularly, right? But here, again, there's some very fundamental questions here about them that maybe are more explicit and more developed than, you know, that there are angels, for example. You know, there's some arguments here that are more developed, but, you know, assuming that there are angels or knowing that there are angels then going into more particular questions about them, right? Maybe the Summa does it more. So, you get to the Trinity, right? The Summa Theologiae, you might say, goes into more questions about the Trinity than the Summa Congentiles does. But the Summa Congentiles goes much more into the, what? Scriptural texts that indicate that there's a Trinity and the understanding of those texts and the refutation of the heretics, you know, who misuse some of the texts and misunderstand some of the texts, right? So, if I was going to study the Trinity from the two Summas I would begin from the Summa Congentiles because you should start from Scripture, right? And make sure, you know, that you understand it and what Scripture is saying about the Trinity, right? And then go into these other questions that we raise after we have that basic understanding of what Scripture is saying about the Trinity. Go to the other Summa, right? You see? So, if someone thinks, you know, they understand the argument for motion, see, in the Summa Theologiae, they say, well, let's go back and go into that a little bit more, you know? And here you see, in a way, almost it's a summary of the teaching of the whole of the eight books of the natural hearing, the whole of the so-called physics, right? You may not notice that, right? From the other one. Do you see that? Okay. So, let's have to look here at the first proof. So, you all have the text there in front of you, chapter 13. Okay, I'm going to kind of translate it the Latin text here. I'm just going to take in my, give it a chance, you know, or see an opportunity to buy the, kind of the, the Leonine edition of the Summa Gentiles. They, they'd be a special one, you know, for all of us. You know, it's got a nice low volume. That's got a nice, it's a bigger print than that, very, you know? It's a very nice one. I want to keep it home, want to keep it in the office, but it's raining so bad, so I'll, I'll, I have it on my computer, too. You know, I'll just print it out. So, I'm going to expose these. Push this books to possible room. Water damage, you know? Okay, so let's look here at chapter 13 now. Reasons to proving God to be. Having shown that it's not vain, right? To make the attempt to demonstrate that God is. Now, in both Summas, before he takes up, or attempts to demonstrate that God exists, he takes up the question, whether the existence of God is what? Yeah? And before that, whether the existence of God is what? Obvious, right? Okay? I'm not going to go into that now, but, he'll argue against the idea that the existence of God is obvious, right? Even though, as we were saying before, right? There's some evident signs of him, right? Even to the average person who's never studied philosophy, okay? And then you take up the question, if it's not obvious, can it be demonstrated, right? And there are people who deny it can be demonstrated, right? Okay? And so, he'll argue against that, right? Okay? It's kind of interesting, huh? That those two positions that Thomas rejects, they are, what? Extremes, huh? Because one is saying that the existence of God is altogether obvious, huh? Now, you may remember when he talked about nature. Aristotle investigated what nature is, that cause. When he got through investigating what nature is, he said, we haven't considered whether nature exists, right? And he says it would be laughable. It'd be laughable to try to demonstrate that nature exists. Why? So obvious. Yeah, so obvious, right? And a man who would try to demonstrate that nature exists would be a man who couldn't distinguish between that which is known through itself or by itself and that which is known by another, right? Okay? He'd be a man who thinks he knows, doesn't know, but in fact he does know. And Aristotle stops and says, this is a strange position to be in, right? Now, Socrates had manifested that men were often in the reverse situation of thinking they know what they, in fact, do not know. And so that such a condition exists, people are quite aware of through the work of Socrates. And Heraclius had said this before, right? Men do not understand the things they meet every day, although they think they do. Okay? But, what about the reverse? Could you know something and not know that you know it? That seems kind of strange, doesn't it, huh? And so Aristotle uses the reverse case, whose possibility is well known, or better known to us, to show that this is possible, right? Because if a man can make the mistake of thinking the unknown is known, right? Because he can sometimes not distinguish between the two, right? Well, if you can not distinguish sometimes between the two, then you can make the mistake going in the reverse direction, right? An example I always use in classes, if you can make the mistake of thinking a man is a woman, I take Michael Jackson, see? See, I'm all aware of it. If you can make the mistake of thinking Michael Jackson is a woman, right? Okay, well, he's a parented man. You can benefit the doubt. Then couldn't someone make the reverse mistake and think sometimes that some woman is a well? Yeah, yeah, see? If someone could think that an orange is an apple, if someone ever made the mistake, because they couldn't tell a part of an orange is an apple, right? Well, couldn't they make the reverse mistake? Or if they can think Budweiser is Miller, couldn't someone make the reverse mistake and think Miller is a Budweiser? You see? Okay. Gave someone a peach-flavored wine in the day. He says, this is Earl Grey. See? So if you could think that the peach-flavored wine is Earl Grey, couldn't someone make the mistake of thinking Earl Grey is a peach-flavored wine? Yeah? I'm going to give him some Earl Grey. The next time he comes, I'll say, want some more of that peach wine? Do you like it? Yeah, this is good, this peach wine. I got all fooled when I went around. He knew I had Earl Grey. He knew I had peach wine. You see what I mean? Okay. So. But these people are making the mistake of thinking that what they don't,