De Anima (On the Soul)
Lecture 52: Reason, Imagination, and the Soul as All Things

Transcript
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Now, the human pleasures, this way of speaking here, it's suggested to me by Osterwee's article there, the Clonus there, toward an evaluation of music, right? Where he's saying that the pleasures of the fine arts, right? The pleasures, say, of music and dram and so on, right? These pleasures are too high for the beasts and too low for the, what, angels, right? But because man is an animal with reason, right, they're most proportioned to man, right? And they involve the senses, like music does, but also they appeal to your reason, right? Fiction appeals to our imagination, but also the reasons in a way. And so these pleasures are the ones that are properly human, but in the sense that they belong only to man, right? These pleasures here he shares with the beasts, maybe in a more refined way. These ones he shares with the angels in a perfect way, yeah? So I try to improve upon them, right? They aren't just beastly pleasures and human pleasures, but you should distinguish them into these, what, three, right? Okay, and so this is Mill's attempt to say that, what, you are the beast, right, huh? Because you think when I say that pleasure and pain are the criterion, right, of good and bad, right, that the only pleasure and pain I'm talking about is the ones that we share with the beast, right? Now, I put Mozart on very often and Tabitha took more interest in Mozart. I go out in the kitchen, you know, at noontime to get a little sandwich meat or something, and no matter how gently open the refrigerator and how silently I try to take out that, you know, sandwich meat or something, you know, she's right there sitting next to me, you know, waiting for a handout, see? But she'll sleep right through the whole Mozart, right? I don't know what you say. I used to pretend that she liked Mozart, but I don't think we did it. See what I mean? They're too high from these, right? But the angels are too low, in a sense, of the angels who don't have, what, senses and, what, imagination, right? Now, a sign too that these pleasures are partly human is the fact that we can enjoy these pleasures more than either of the other ones, right? So, I can't sit down in the evening and eat for three hours and continue to enjoy myself, right? As I say, there's, first of all, a law of diminishing returns in these things, right? Brother Mark said the first glass of beer tastes better than the second one. In fact, the only one that tastes good is the first sip he says. So, it's down here, right? But I could sit, you know, at a concert and listen for two and a half hours to a Mozart opera, right? You see? Moiseite is down and do something like this for two and a half hours straight, right? You see? Here's kind of a strain, right? So, these things here are most proportioned to man. By the angel, he's always understanding, right? He's always at the... And that's why Aristotle kind of admires these pleasures here, because he says, when he talks about God, right? If God has these pleasures in a higher way than we do, right? And if he's always enjoying these things, right? It compels our wonder, right? Because we're only somewhat in that high state of mind, where we can be intensely understanding something. So, that's to some extent an answer that what? Mill gives, right? But, he doesn't entirely escape the charge that his philosophy is a beastly one, because the only criterion he has, ultimately for good or bad, is pleasure and what? Pain, right? Okay. And if he puts these ones higher, it's because he says, those who have experienced these, right, say that these pleasures are greater than those down here. And it's only the man who hasn't really experienced these higher pleasures who thinks these are, what? The greatest things that there are, right? So, the little kid thinks that candy is one of the greatest things in the world, right? But that's not as enjoyable, maybe, as Mozart or Shakespeare or Euclid or something, right? But he hasn't tasted these higher pleasures, right? But a man who has experience of all of these will say, these are better than those down there, say. Okay? Even Aristotle talks about that, right? These higher pleasures, huh? And that's very important in the moral life, too, because, as Thomas Aquinas himself says, those who can't taste these higher pleasures, they're apt to go to excess in these lower pleasures because that's all they, what, know, right? Okay? So Mill, in a sense, like the English philosophers, they call them the empiricists, that they're much tied to experience as opposed to the rationalists. But pleasure is not the only reason to call something good. And, but that's the only way to sense there's no good and bad, is to pleasure. So in a way, his philosophy is still, in some sense, what? Beastly, right? Although he has some kind of answer. It's not as beastly as a philosophy to say that, what, the pleasures of eating and drinking and reproducing are the greatest goods in the world, right? You know? Like kind of the common man might think, right? I used to work with a shipping doctor in the summer sometime. The regular kind of shipping doc says to me one day, he said, what would you do if you won the sweepstakes, you know, the lottery? He said, well, I'd find a quiet place to do some studying, I said. So I messaged him, what would you do? He said, well, I'd get a hair of it, he says. Okay, okay, so he's not that beastly in his philosophy, right? Mill, right? Because he realizes he's heart pushes. But insofar as he doesn't have, what, any criterion of good and bad other than pleasure and pain, he has only the kind of criterion that the senses have. They know good and bad only in a particular way, right? As pleasant or painful to the, what, senses, huh? Okay? Why reason can see much other reasons, much better reasons for something being good, huh? So reason understands useful, but it also understands, what? The noble, right, huh? What is it? An end or a goal. So reason can see that understanding, let's say, in general, but understanding God ultimately, there's something good apart from the fact that it might be very pleasant to understand God, huh? You see? But you can see it's good to know the truth and not be mistaken, right? Apart from, you know, and somebody might be mistaken and he's pleased with what he thinks, but reason can see there's something bad, right, in being mistaken, huh? Apart from questions of pleasure or pain, huh? So, as Thomas points out in the commentary there, you have three steps in a sense, right? In the senses, huh? That they first sense something as suitable or not, and then they experience pleasure or pain, and then they, what, pursue or avoid, huh? Okay? By reason can affirm something to be good or bad before any experience of pleasure or pain. And to be enjoying and to be pain is to be at work with the sensitive means, going back to the common sense there, in regard to what is good or evil or such. And then the last sentence there, the next sentence is kind of obscure, but as Thomas says, he's thinking that, what, the sense desire is not necessarily in a different part of the body from the, what, senses, like Plato said. If you read the Republic of Plato, right, he had the senses and the sense-desiring powers in a different part of the body, right, huh? But even if they were in the same part of the body, they would still be different in, what, definition, right? That's what you did, that fit. That's what you did. That's what you did. way of speaking, but their being is other, right? Now he's going to start to assimilate reason in a way to the senses and make the comparison between them. To the thinking soul, however, I think the word there, I think I mentioned that word before here, but let's just check it here again. The dia noitike, psuche, right? I spoke of that word before, the word dia noitikea. It's kind of interesting that Aristotle uses that word dia noia, kind of English here, as kind of a sense of what, understanding through something else, right? It has something of the sense of what Shakespeare calls what? Discourse. Discourse, yeah. And you can see that, as I mentioned before, I think, in the beginning of the Postero Analytics, and in the beginning of the Postero Analytics, he's saying that all deanoetic knowledge, right, is through preexistent knowledge. It's all a result of what Shakespeare calls a discourse, right? You're coming to know something to knowing something else. And if you read that first part in Postero Analytics, Aristotle refers back to the mino of his pastor, Plato, right? In the mino, you see, Socrates makes the famous statement that learning is, what, recalling. And is that true or false that learning is recalling? Well, there's some distinctions that you have to make, you see. If you're talking about the senses, learning is not recalling. So if I taste candy, or licorice, or chocolate, or something else for the first time, it's a chocolate, hmm, I like this mummy. That's an immediate thing, right? See? I'm not tasting the chocolate, I'm tasting something else. I'm tasting the chocolate director, the licorice director, or the, you know, whatever it can be it is, right? And even, you know, as an adult, right, if someone says, you know, this is really good, you say, can I taste that? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You see, you're enjoying it, right? Mmm, yeah, that is good. See? But that's kind of an immediate thing, right? Immediate means what? Not to some minerals or whatever. Now, this does have some truth, though, if you're talking about learning by, what? Reason, right? Or learning by discourse, to use Shakespeare's word, hmm? But even there, you have to see a distinction. Because when you learn by discourse, you don't recall what you learn, but that through which, or from which, or by which, you what? Okay? So learning is recalling not what you learn, but that through which you learn, hmm? That from which you learn, right? So, when you learn a new theorem, say, in geometry, right? You're not recalling this theorem, but you have to recall things that you already know, and put them together to see that it's there. When you define, you're coming to know distinctly what you're defining, but you have to recall things that you're going to put together in the theorem. So, it's appropriate that Aristotle, when he talks about denoetic knowledge, and he's saying that it's through what pre-existed now, is that he recalls the discussion in the, what? Mino, right? Okay? But you have to sort out the Mino, because Plato, in the dialogues, never gives you the whole truth about anything. And I think the reason for that is that he's respecting the human mind. And the human mind is apt to see a part of the truth before it sees the, what? Whole truth, right? And therefore, you need a certain humility, right? As the great Empedocles says, right? And then he says, having seen but a part of life, they boast of having seen the whole. So, having seen a part of the truth, right? Men, often out of pride, right? Attribute to themselves more understanding than they really have, right? If they've seen the whole one. And this is a common thing, yeah? I think we mentioned that when we were talking about the definition of the soul, right? The two most probable opinions about the soul is that it's a, what? An immaterial substance, independent of the body, right? In no way really connected with the body. That's like, you know, according to the Platonists, you know, migrate from one body to another, right? The famous story is told about Pythagoras, somebody who was beating a dog, and he says, stop beating him. I recognize the soul of my dear friend so-and-so. It's kind of the dog now, right? You see? So, that's one opinion, though, that the soul is an immaterial substance, right? Entirely independently of the body, right? Distinct from the body. And the other opinion is that the soul is the, what? Accidental form, like the organization of the body, yeah? Okay? Well, each of these opinions sees a part of the truth. What the soul is, as we found out before, is a substantial form, right? So, the one who says it's an accidental form is seeing part of the truth. It is a form. But it's not in the genus of accident. It's the genus of substance. And those who said it's a complete substance, independent of the body, had seen a part of the truth that it is something substantial, but not the whole truth, right? But Aristotle brings together the parts of the truth that are divided amongst those men, huh? So, but it isn't necessarily through pride that a man thinks he's seen the whole truth, huh? But it certainly is the nature of our mind, you see, to see a part of the truth before he sees the whole truth. And so Plato, in the dialogues, I mean, as you read the dialogues, and there's quite a few of them, you'll notice that part of the truth comes out in one dialogue, and maybe some other part of the truth in a, what? Another dialogue, and maybe Plato wants to, what? Respect the nature of our mind. And I know from experience, you know, in teaching college students here, Aristotle's text, I mean, here you've got the whole brought together, right? Yeah. And they never see the whole, even though it's there in front of them on the page. You see? So, you realize the human capacity to understand the whole isn't there all at once to understand the whole, right? It's only gradually the way you see it there. So let's go back here now to 349. To the thinking soul, you know what he calls it. However, the phantasms, the images, we can call them in English. That's what we get from phantasms is where we get the word fancy, though, right? Okay. And that's kind of interesting, the history there, the word fancy. But, you know, in English, fancy came to mean what? Yeah, but also it means romantic love, right? Do you fancy her? Oh, yeah. You see? But that's pointing to the role that the imagination plays in what? Romantic love, huh? So if you read Shakespeare's sonnet, he's talking about that kind of love, he says, O me, what eyes hath love put in my head, that hath no correspondence with two sight. Okay. So, um... So, um... Strictly speaking, romantic love is not exactly the same thing as sensual love. I mean, there's maybe a connection, right? Romantic love is tied up with the, what, imagination, huh? And so the object of romantic love is things like charm. But charm is something that appeals to the, what, imagination, huh? Just like, what's his name, the English poet Keats there, right? He complains, you know, when the philosophers get a hold of something, all the charm goes out of it. We poets, we write these charming things, see? But once a floss gets a hold of it, all the charm is gone. It should be gone, because they're appealing now just to reason, right? But the poet is appealing to imagination, huh? And the key passage in Shakespeare is the one in Midsummer Night's Dream where he says, Lovers and madmen has such seething brains, huh? Cool logic. Such shaping fantasies, right? That apprehend more than cool reason ever, what? Comprehends, huh? And he goes on to the next line and puts a poet in there. The lunatic, another name for the madman, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact. He goes on to illustrate how they, you see? But I think that's a beautiful connection there between the lover, the madman, and the poet, huh? And, as Shakespeare says in Love's Labour's Lost, right, huh? Never did a poet dare to, you know, put pen to paper, right? Ink to paper, paint to paper. Until he had, what? Experienced love's size, right? Okay? So there's a connection there between the lover and the, what, poet, huh? Kierkegaard has something very interesting on that in the banquet, huh? He says, whoever heard of a man becoming a poet to his wife, huh? Okay? But what he says is, he says, one time, one of the speakers is praising women. He says, men have become, what? You know, saints, you know, through women, huh? They become poets, right? Well, it's never through the woman they got, the woman they didn't get, right? Of course, the standing example is that of Dante and Beatrice, right? See? Yeah, but the same thing with Kierkegaard, right? It's an unfortunate termination of his engagement, right? Okay? But kind of, you know, unhappy love, right? It kind of releases the poet for some reason. So the poet is a little bit like the lover, huh? And Plato says that, too, in the symposium, huh? But he's also a bit like the madman, huh? And when Aristotle's talking about how the good poet has to be able to assume the character of the person he's writing about so he can speak the way that person would speak, right? Either he has to be, as he says in the Greek there, euplostos, huh? He's immodible, right? Or else he has to be a little bit of a madman, right? And you really think he's this man, huh? And there's some truth in that, huh? When Dostoevsky was writing Crime and Punishment, huh? He was pacing the floor, you know? And the landlord down below thought he really was plotting a murder. But he's so interested into this character, right? So he's a little bit like a madman who thinks he's Napoleon, but he isn't, right? But temporarily he does, huh? I was talking to an actor one time who had played Shylock there, right? And this guy was a Catholic, and as far as I know, a good Catholic, you know? And every time he'd go by church he'd always bless himself, you know? But when he was in the role of Shylock, he hated Christians, you know? It's like he could feel he hates for Christians, you know? But I mean, he sounds like a madman, right? You see? He's taking on that, huh? You see? And sometimes you try to read a play and really get into the parts, you know? You figure yourself kind of, you know, going a little bit mad, you know? You see? But that's interesting, huh? The likeness between the poet, the lover, and the madman, huh? And lovers are given to poetry, as they always say, and so on, huh? But they're all tied together by the, what? Imagination, huh? And that's why the lovers are attracted to charm, but the poet also is, what? Writing something that's charming, huh? And the magic, getting to the imagination. But now there's a connection here between the thinking soul, nevertheless, and the phantasms. To the thinking soul, the phantasms, or images, are like the sensibles, right? But when it says or denies the good or the bad, it avoids or pursues. And notice the difference there between that and the senses, right? Because the senses don't really, what? Affirm or deny, huh? But experiencing pleasure is like affirming. And experiencing pain is like, what? This is bad. Like denying it, right? But notice he says in 348 there, talking about this pleasure and pain and so on. It pursues or avoids as if affirming or denying, right? It doesn't mean that it affirms or denies. Only reason does that, huh? But the thinking soul says this is good or bad or reverse, huh? And it doesn't have to go through pleasure and pain to see that, huh? Okay. So when someone, you know, tells me, you know, that, um, you know what a syllogism is? No. Well, what's a syllogism? Well, that's an argument in which some statements lay down another one follows necessarily. It's the only kind of argument where the conclusion follows necessarily. A reason right away sees what? That's good to have an argument where the conclusion actually follows necessarily, right? Is it because of some feeling of pleasure that somebody recognizes as being good? No. You see in the fact that the conclusion follows necessarily the importance of this kind of argument, huh? You see? And so, well, maybe I should learn something about the syllogism of Elena, you know? Okay. Or someone says to me, you know, you know, the best things to know you have to learn them through argument, right? Well, I don't know. Well, it's agreeable to have to argue all the time and define and, you see? But I might see something good, right? Maybe I should learn something about how to argue and reason. Maybe I should study some logic, right? It's not as if I've tasted logic, oh, it's such a pleasant thing, I want some of this. No. I see that it's useful and necessary maybe for the good of my mind or reason. Now, he's going to say this again in the next reading but this third sentence in 349 there. Whence the soul never understands without a phantasm, huh? That follows not from the second sentence but it follows from the first sentence in 349, huh? Okay. He's saying, and this is the proportion of Aristotle, let's put it in the form of a proportion here. He's saying that the images or the phantasms, you want to use the Greek word, the phantasms is the Greek word, the English word, the Latin derived word is more known to us, right? That images are to reason, as the exterior sensible is to the senses. There's a certain length there, right? So, I can't see the color of the painting over there, if you take away the painting, right? I can't see the color of your robes, right? If you take away your robes, right? Okay. You leave the room, right? Okay. I can't see the redness of the signature over there, whatever it is, without being there, right? And reason can not what? Understand what it is, as something imagined, right? Without you imagining. And that doesn't mean that understanding is in the, what? Phantasms, right? Any more than this means that my seeing is in the painting, or my seeing is in the... Exchemish over there. But, the likeness is this, huh? When I see the red of that thing, I'm seeing the red of that thing out there, right? When I see your clothes, I'm seeing the blackness of your, what? Garment, right? I'm seeing the color of something outside of me, right? Okay. So, I can't see the color of something outside of me, without there being something outside of me for me to see, right? Okay. And I can't understand what it is, of something sensed or imagined, without at least, what? Imagining that, huh? Okay. Now, if you look at the De Trinitacti of Thomas Aquinas there. I mean, Thomas Aquinas, right? I mean, Thomas Aquinas, right? Thomas Aquinas, right? One of the objections about thinking about God is that you can't imagine God. So, if you don't think without imagining something, and you can't imagine God, how can you think of God, right? See? Well, obviously, that can be the first thing you think about. But, how can you think about Him at all? See? Well, one way is by what? A relation to what is being what? Imagined, right? Or another way might be by what? A negation of what is being imagined, huh? So, when I say God is not a body, I'm imagining a body. I'm not imagining God. I'm imagining what I'm negating, right? And I can't negate body unless I understand what a body is. And I can't understand what a body is about imagining a body, right? Okay? And that's natural for our soul when it's in the body that it turned to the image of the sun. But our understanding is insensible in that sense. And that's natural for our soul. And that's natural for our soul. And that's natural for our soul. And that's natural for our soul. I'm kind of curious on the dependence that our thinking has, too, upon words, which are something sensible and imaginable. We seem to think in words, right? Just like also when we calculate, when we add, subtract, multiply, we calculate in these figures, 7, 6, and so on, right? You need something sensible, right, in which you consider these things. Is the phantasm just the imagination, or does it require, for memory and experience, is it really the object of the estimated fact? Yeah, you've got to be careful here, because images here don't mean necessarily the poetic image that the poet has, what they call the creative imagination, that sort of thing, right? It can immediately be the image that's from memory, right? So it doesn't have to be something originally formed, right? There's a tendency nowadays to use the word imagination for something that is formed for the first time by the imagination. Like if I imagine a glass mountain or a gold mountain, right? I've experienced mountains, I've seen mountains, and I've seen gold or glass, right? But I've never seen any, what, gold mountain or a glass mountain. I remember reading the kids' story about the prince trying to get this glass mountain, you know, as a horse grew up. But you're imagining this glass mountain, huh? But that's really not what he means here necessarily at all, right? If I'm thinking about what a triangle is, I will have to imagine a triangle, right? Because I'm understanding of what it is, of what I've imagined. If I understand what a square is, I will have to imagine a square. If I understand what a man is, I will have to imagine a man, right? Okay? And that's why a blow on the brain, as we were saying before, or alcohol going to the brain, right? It affects the images, right? It can affect the what? Thinking, right, huh? Okay? Or disease or something of this sort, right? It can affect that, huh? And especially, of course, you know, in the singular, right? People have Alzheimer's or something like that, right? They don't even know those who are closest to them, right? I remember a child he used to work with in the package store there, and he had something like Alzheimer's there towards the end of his life in his 70s or something like that. He didn't know the guy he had worked with for 20 years in the, in the, what, store, together. Oh, you know Dick. You know, you've worked here. He worked for 20 years with Dick. They say with President Reagan, you know, that he's got Alzheimer's, right? It's kind of very bad now, see? But they can show him, you know, his inauguration, he doesn't know what it's all about. You know, that you're a president of the United States, and you don't know this, see? Because the singular is very much tied, you know, especially to the images, huh? And I guess it's getting so he already knows, you know, Nancy Reagan doesn't know if he knows her anymore. He doesn't know his wife anymore. You know, it's really, yeah. So, you've got to see this connection here, right? But, I mean, you see, just as, it doesn't mean now that, that, that people, you know, make the mistake of thinking because of this, they think that understanding is in the brain, right? You see? But understanding is no more in the brain where the images are, than my seeing the color of your clothing is in your, what? Clothing. What I see is in your clothing, yeah. Something of that. But my seeing is not in your garment, huh? Right. You see? My seeing is not in the painting over there. But if you take it away, if you walk out of the room, I can't see you anymore, can I? If you take the painting away, I can't see anymore, right? Okay? You know the seeing is not in the painting. But what I'm seeing is something of the painting, right? You have to realize that, huh? But reason is understanding is that what it is is something sensed or imagined. So you have to imagine it in some way, huh? And if you can't imagine it, either you can't think about it at all, or you have to know it by negation of what you imagine, right? Or by some kind of, what, comparison to what you understand. Like God is the unmoved mover. Aristotle lays out the natural road is the senses, then memory, then experience, then natural understanding. And it puts experience in there. And I had to connect that with the collated faculty. The experience is necessary in order to arrive at the universal, right? So you have to, in a sense, compare, right? The many singulars of the same sort, right? Before the acting upon understanding, the agent-elect, so-called, will separate out what they have in common. But even after you've done that, right, when you want to understand, right, again, this universal, you have to form an image, right? You have to go back through your whole experience, right? But you have to form an image, right? In which, in a sense, you consider what a triangle is. But again, you don't want to confuse what you're understanding and what you're imagining, because you might be understanding what a triangle is in general, right? Even though you're imagining an isosceles triangle or an equilateral triangle, right? And that's where a lot gets mixed up, right? Because he's saying, what is the general idea of triangle? Is it isosceles or scalene or equilateral? Well, he doesn't know what to say, so he says it's all or none of these. But you can't imagine triangle in general, but you can understand triangle in general. So if you've learned some geometry, you realize that reason is able to understand triangle and to demonstrate something about triangle in general, like every triangle has its interior angles at the right angles. But when I understand that theorem, I'll be imagining a triangle, which will maybe be isosceles or scalene or equilateral, right? I'm understanding something universal about this, right? Directly. Okay. Now in 350 there, he's developing this comparison, right? That the images or the phantasms, as the translator has here, are like the sensibles, huh? And he's comparing, in a way, the reason to the common sense, huh? But just as the common sense, in a way, is a common, what, term, right, of all the altered senses, huh? So in a way, reason is common to, what, all the, what, things of which you might have images, huh? Okay. So just so you have, you know, the whiteness of, what, sugar, right? And the blackness of licorice, right? Or even the whiteness of sugar and the sweetness of sugar and the crunchy sound of sugar if you eat it or something, right? Okay. And they all come back to the common center, right? Okay. So you have all these images, right? That reason is what? Able to think about, right? Okay. That's what he's saying there, basically, in there, huh? It's a little bit obscure, huh? The A and B there are, what, the sensibles and C and D, as Thomas tells us, are the, what, the phantasms or the images that he's talking about, huh? Now he goes on here, talking about the practical here in 251. The intellectual part understands the species in the phantasms, huh? Now, if our soul was this immaterial substance like an angel, and there was this world of species or forms that Paolo talked about, then you'd be knowing them, what, independently of the senses, huh? But because our soul is the form of a body, right, huh? Its object is the, what it is, is something that's in the body, huh? Okay. So it understands the species and the phantasms. Okay. Then he goes on to say that you can, what, talk about something in the past or present or in the future with the reason, because you're going to have an image, right? I can say, now, tomorrow I'm going to go to such a place and, you know, I'm going to go to London before too long. So I'm saying, I'm going to go and visit the, oh, it's in marbles, right, you know? That's the most famous thing in the British Museum, right, huh? Okay. I guess Greece wants them back, right, because they came from the Parthal now. So I can imagine something and be making plans, but I desire this thing, right, do you see? Okay. Because you can imagine the past or the future, right? Okay. And is in those is defined for it. Let's see if I forgot to translate it there. So apart from sensation, when it's concerned with phantasms, right, it is moved, right, huh? So I might be what? Imagining something in the past and then I laugh about it again when I think about how stupid I was or something, right? Or if I imagine something embarrassing in the past, you know, then I groan maybe again. Oh, ooh, what's the matter? What's the matter? I just don't remember the past. There's one guy I knew in graduate school, right? He always told a story, I guess. He was going by the parish house, right? And he had to go to the bathroom just terribly. So he kind of knew the landmine or what it was or the thing. I used to go to the bathroom. Well, yeah, I guess. That was fine, but something went wrong with the toilet. And he couldn't stop it. He just kept on, you know, it wouldn't shut off. You know, coming out, filling the floor. So you remember this. He could laugh about it. I mean, but it was a terribly embarrassing situation to be in. You know, you saw his bathroom. I mean, he kind of, you know, by the way, I mean, he doesn't use the bathroom. And then all of a sudden you get rid of this problem, you know. So, so, in the case of sensing, right, Aristotle says, well, he might sense, let's say, that the town is on fire, right, huh? Because the enemy are attacking, right, huh? And so you start to, what, to act on that matter, huh? But reason might do the same thing, but with regard to the images, right? You imagine something, right? And you start to plan, right, to pursue it, right? or to avoid it, right? You foresee this thing is coming, right? Or you imagine something that could come and you're going to act for it, you're going to try to avoid it, huh? Now that's going to be important later on when he gets into talking about action, because he's going to be saying, like Shakespeare says, that man is the animal that has the, what, sense of time, huh? If you remember how Shakespeare defined reason there as looking before and after, and as Aristotle points out in the categories, the first meaning of before and after is in time, huh? So there's a way in which man lives in time, more so than the other animals, huh? The other animals live more for the here and now, but man is always, what, if he's using his reason, he's looking before and after, right? And this is very important, because that's where you first, what, start to see the use of reason, huh? Even in the pursuit of these so-called, what, beastly pleasures, right, huh? A stark example I use in classes, it's apparently a fact of life that freshmen get sick to their stomach from drinking beer more than seniors do, see? Well, what's that result of? Not looking before and after, right, huh? Because you're thinking, just a here and now, this extra beer or this extra drink, right, is attractive here and now, right? But it's going to make you, what, sick in a short time, and you're going to feel lousy all night, won't be able to get you a night's sleep, right? The next day you don't even want to see that stuff, see? Now, but if you experience that a number of times, you see, well then you realize that if you don't drink so much, you won't be sick, you'll get a good night's sleep, and you've got to get up to the next day and start yourself again drinking, right? Okay? That's not a very high, high, high life you're pursuing at this point, right? But, but just in terms of the Epicurean principle, right, huh? To maximize your pleasures and minimize your pains, huh? And the same thing with pain, you know, I mean, sometimes you have something wrong with your tooth or something like that, and sometimes you're not from experience, it's not good to put off going to see the dentist, right? In the long run, you're going to suffer more, you may even lose a tooth or something, right? So it's better to go and have an unpleasant session with the dentist, right? And get it over with, right? If you're putting it off, you're worrying about it, and you've got some irritation, and you're going to probably suffer more in the long run, huh? So, it's the beginning of the use of reason, not the highest use. And the other things you've got to look before and after to see are more important than drinking maybe or something like that, right? But just in terms of drinking, right, you have to use your reason a bit to maximize your pleasures and your pains, huh? Now, in paragraph 352, as Thomas says, he's, because he's been talking about action here, he contrasts very briefly the, what is sometimes called looking reason, theoretical reason, or speculative reason in Latin, but if you use English for looking reason, and practical reason, right? What's the difference between the two, huh? He says they're basically about the same thing, but the, what, looking reason is more, what, universal, right, huh? That's what he's saying, he says, unless they differ by considering things simply in relation to someone, huh? Now, let's just expand a little bit upon that, huh? Looking reason, or practical reason, or I don't mind the word practical reason too much, but theoretical or speculative reason have all kinds of other connotations in English today, you know? In Greek word theoretical, in Latin word, speculative, or originally looking, right? Okay. Well, looking reason and practical reason are really the same reason, but they differ in their, what, in their purpose, huh? Okay. And here the end is, what, basically truth, right? And here the end is some kind of doing or making, huh? Okay. Now, it's interesting, when Thomas, in the Summa Theologiae, he comes back to the five virtues of reason that Aristotle distinguishes in the sixth book of Nicomachean Ethics. Thomas divides the five virtues of reason, the intellectual virtues, so-called, into those virtues of looking reason and those virtues of what? Practical reason, huh? Okay. And so, the three virtues of looking reason are natural understanding, and then reasoned-out understanding, wisdom, huh? But in Greek, it would be, what, nous, just understanding. In Latin, they call it intellectus, the first virtue. And this one in Greek would be called, what, episteme. In Latin, they call it scientia, the science of geometry or something. And then wisdom, which in Greek is sophia and sapientia. So, nous, or intellectus, or, I call it natural understanding. And episteme and sophia were the three virtues that Aristotle distinguish that are in looking reason, huh? And then in practical reason, you have, what, well, you just see the terms prudence and art, but if you want to use English, it would be foresight, huh? Foresight or prudence and what? Art, huh? So Aristotle is contrasting these two, see? But looking reason is more concerned with truth and therefore with the universal. And practical reason is more concerned with the ad hoc, the singular, huh? At the cardio this morning, right? And so on, I'm looking at the big details, right? So I'm looking at the news magazine there and kind of the waiting room there where the prayers are being. So here comes out the old, you know, the old slogan, you know, that I used to always quote as being the British, you know. We have no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests, right? And they're talking about how the application, though, there's an article that they're filled with now in the news magazines about Iraq, right? See? And when we were in kind of a fight with Iran, right? And they had, yeah, and so on, then we were, what, encouraging Iraq to make trouble for Iran, right? So Iraq is our friend. Now Iraq is our, what, enemy, right? Okay? And the case of England there, right? In the Napoleonic Wars, France is the enemy, and Germany is the ally, right? But in the First and Second World War, France is the friend, and Germany and Austria are the enemies, right? Okay? So there's something singular and ad hoc about the practical, isn't it, huh? I don't know who your friends are, who your enemies are, but they're always changing, they're changing the course of time, right? But the looking reason would say, what is a friend, what is an enemy, right? That doesn't change. But here, it's like, what, kind of extension, right, down to the singular and particular, right? Aristotle, in the, what is it, the second book of wisdom there, when he's contrasting, when he's going to show that wisdom is primarily about the truth, the truth belongs primarily to wisdom. And he says that the practical reason there, the end or goal is not really truth, it's to do something, right? Okay? But he says even the kind of truth they're concerned with sometimes, is kind of the contingent truth, right? Who's our friend, huh? Who's going to go along with us, right? I see? Who's going to oppose us, right? And that is what? As the examples of our act shows, or France, and Germany and so on, right? Okay? It can change, right, huh? Okay? Well, looking reason isn't concerned those things that are changing, isn't it? He's concerned those things that are always true, right? A triangle always has its interior angles, its interior right angles. Iraq is not always our friend. So he's contrasting a bit the looking reason with the practical reason, huh? Sometimes Aristotle says that the looking reason becomes practical by extension of it being extended down to the, what, singulars and the particulars, huh? You saw that contrast a bit back in the premium to wisdom, right, where Aristotle was saying how the man of experience may succeed better than the man of art or science in doing something, because his knowledge is closer to the singular, and the singular is what you, what, do. You don't cure a man, but you cure this man, right? Okay? So, now, because he's been talking here about the... ... ... ... ... connection of reason with the senses. In these last two paragraphs, he goes over it to talk about those things that are kind of removed, more or less, right, from the sensible world. And how does reason, right, knows those things, huh? And in 353, he talks about the things which are really material things, but they're understood without matter, like number and shape and extension and so on. And then 354, he reserves to wisdom the consideration of those things that are, what, altogether immaterial. So he says, the mind thinks the so-called abstract things just as if someone should understand the snub, not as snub, but separately as curved and aft. You would understand without the flesh in which the curved is. Now this is Aristotle's stock example there of the stubbed nose. Apparently the snubbed nose is kind of a curved nose, right? And apparently none other than Socrates himself had such a nose. And so everybody knew about this, and it's kind of right in your face, right? The example, huh? And what's the difference between talking about a snubbed nose and talking about a curve? On the snubbed nose, you have all that cartilage, whatever this nose is made out of, right? But in the curve, all the matter is, what? Gone, right? Okay. Thus it understands, he says, the mathematical things not being separable in existence, right? Like Plato thought that there was a world, a mathematical world, right? Corresponding to pure mathematics. There's only the sensible world out there corresponding to it. But it understands them as separated, right? Okay? Whenever it understands these things, huh? So we talked about that back in natural philosophy. Verstel says there's no falsity in understanding cube without wood or ice or anything else, right? Or understanding sphere without earth and sun and rubber ball and so on, right? Because it is knowable without that, right? And curve is knowable without nose or flesh, right? Now if you say that such things, because they are understood without matter, they also exist outside of our mind in a world of their own, right? That, Aristotle thinks, is a tonic mistake, right? But notice, the fact that we can understand things in the material world, like shape and extension without matter, is a sign of the immateriality of our understanding. Why should I understand material things in an immaterial way? Why should I understand things that are found only in reality and matter? Why should I understand them without matter, right? Well, because you're understandable without matter, right? But that's because of the understanding itself. Now, he says, One must inquire later whether it can understand something among the separated things, whether it's not itself separated from magnitude or not. Can one understand the angels, or God, so long as our soul is in the body, right? And, of course, Aristotle doesn't answer that question here, right? It belongs to wisdom to answer, right? What are you talking about? In wisdom, you know, one of the first questions is, Are there immaterial things, right? It's only after you know that there are immaterial things that you ask, Well, when or how can we know them, right? So when St. Paul was called up to the third heaven, right, he didn't know he was in his body anymore, right? He was drawn from his senses. So take a break before we look at chapter 8. Here we go. We never said our prayer today, did we, huh? God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Pray for your prayers. Help us to understand all the truth of it in the old age. It's Alzheimer's, right? Forgetting the year or so of God's at a mass there, and the priest started to consecrate the blood before the bread. Everybody's kind of shocked. So they realize, what's the awful, though, to be up there, you know, and not to be sure, you know, what you've done, right? I mean, get to a point where you can't. Now, chapter 8 here is concluding the consideration of both the senses and reason, huh? And he's going to draw some things about the soul as a result of this. Now, however, summing up the things said about soul, let us say again that the soul is somehow all beings. It's all what? All things, huh? In Greek it just says, in some way it's panta, all things, right? Okay, all beings. In Greek it just says all. For beings, yeah, okay, I told you there's a Greek panta there. For beings are either sensibles or what? Understandables, huh? Okay. And in some way science is the what? Understandable, huh? Okay. And sense, the what? Sensible, right? Now, in a way, the earlier philosophers had said this too, because, to take Empedocles, the one that he emphasizes a lot in this area, Empedocles says that we know earth by earth, right? And water by water, and air by air, and fire by fire, and love by love, and hate by hate. Because we have all these things in us, right? Because, in a sense, we are all these things, right? Then we, what? Know them all, right? Well, Aristotle is seeing an element of truth in that, right? That the soul is, in some way, all things, but not in the way that Empedocles thought, right? Okay. And to begin with, you can say that all things are not in the soul in a material way, right? But they're also not actually in the soul to begin with.