Ethics
Lecture 9: Virtue in General and the Division of Human Virtue

Transcript
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feed in the city. I was coming up here and I had the radio on and they're talking about enforcing this law about fastening your seatbelt, right? Coming up to the holiday, you know, they're going to start. But how many laws are there to protect human life, right? And every time they invent something like a car, they have laws about the use of the car and licenses to drive cars and so on. And no matter what they invent, they will, what, have laws that are fed by the law to not take innocent human life. So, if you want to understand human virtue, you should understand before human virtue, what? Virtue in general, right? Okay? How can you understand human virtue in particular? I should understand virtue in general. And human virtue is going to be to the act with reason done well, right? What virtue in general is to a thing's own act done well, right? Okay? Now, what's the connection between virtue in general and a thing's own act done well? Or for that matter, what is the connection between a thing's own vice and its own act done badly? Yeah, yeah. Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics would give the definition of virtue in general, right? What makes a thing good and its own act good, right? Perhaps you could say that it's the quality or disposition or the condition of the thing, right? Which enables it to do its own act well, right? And therefore, it makes it a good thing of that kind. So, this is a good knife because it, what? Cuts well, right? But what is the virtue of the knife? What is the knife's own virtue? Well, you have to figure that out by knowing what the knife's own act is. And then figuring out what condition of the knife, what condition, let's say the blade, enables the blade to cut well. And even I can kind of figure that out. That's sharpness, right? Okay. But as you know, some knives don't cut very well, huh? And some of these steak knives companies, you know, you can actually send the steak knives in and they'll give them their virtue, right? Restore them to virtue. Convert them. From being bad knives to being good knives, right? So, the dullness is the knife's own, what? Vice, huh? Okay. So, notice a thing's own act and a thing's own virtue, or a thing's own vice, are not the same thing, are they? But they are connected, right? Because a thing's own virtue enables it to do its own act well, while a thing's own vice will result in a thing doing its own act badly, yeah. Did you know that pianos get out of tune? And so, even the master pianist sing down, right? He's going to complain, right? You expect me, the great pianist, to play on this piano? It's not a good tune. That lacks the virtue, right? That's the virtue of a piano. An out-of-tune piano is a vicious, yeah, a vicious piano, right? A bad one, right? Yeah. Now, you can see also there's a third question, and that is, how do you give a thing its own virtue, right? Okay? And the way you'd give a carving knife in the kitchen its own virtue, right, is not the way you'd give a piano its own virtue, right? And I know someone who knows how to tune pianos, right? So he knows how to give a piano... its own virtue. Someone else knows how to sharpen a knife, right? So he knows how to give a knife its own what? Virtue, huh? Well then the same questions come up, right? About anything that has its own act, right? But in ethics we're concerned with now, what is human virtue, right? What is man's own virtue? And since there's the same knowledge of opposites, what is man's own vice, right? And so you could restate the definition even of man's end or purpose. Once you understand this connection between the virtue of a thing and its own act, you could say it's man's own act, or it's the act with reason, according to human virtue, right? Throughout life, right? And then you see very clearly the need of studying what? human virtue. Now at the end of the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, after Aristotle's drawn this line around the end or purpose of man, and seeing the connection between that now and the question of what is human virtue, at the very end of the first book, he divides human virtue into two kinds. And one kind might be called moral virtue, and the other kind could be called intellectual virtue, or the virtues of reason itself. And so in books two through five, he'll take up moral virtue, and in book six, he'll take up human, I mean, the virtues of reason, okay? And there you might think he's, what? Done, right? Okay? But in the seventh book, he takes up sub-human vice, right? And supra-human virtue, okay? Okay? A vice that is what? Not even human, so bestial. Like his example of the vice of the siphians, right? Okay? Cannibals and so on, right? Okay? Terrible things. Then he talks about heroic virtue, right? And that name is interesting because a hero in Greek mythology was a man who was what? Yeah. He had two parents, but one human and the other divine. And it could be like Achilles, his father is a man, but his mother is a goddess. Or it could be like Hercules, maybe, whose father is Zeus, but whose mother is a mortal woman, right? Okay? So there's something, what? Partaking of the divine, you might say, in heroic virtue. And therefore, it's above ordinary, what? Human virtue, huh? Okay? It's interesting when Thomas Aquinas takes up the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, he recalls what Aristotle says there, right? Because these are going to operate in a way that's above even human virtue. Okay? So it's, you know, you see the quickness of Aristotle, right? That he adds this seventh book, huh? Where he takes up virtues or vices that are not really human, because they're either below the human, bestial vices, right? Or the kind of divine, above the human mode, huh? And then in the eighth and ninth books, he takes up what? Friendship, right? But as we saw a bit in our study of friendship, the fullest kind of friendship is tied to what? Virtue, right? And the simplest way of seeing that, that even, you know, if you ask, you know, general class of students in college, you know, is a friend someone you can trust? And they'll spontaneously agree, your friend is someone you can trust, right? Now, can you trust a coward on the battlefield? Huh? No. Can you trust? Don Giovanni with your wife or daughter or sister? No, you see. Can you trust an avaricious thief with your money? So in a way, you begin to see that the person you can trust is a person who is courageous and moderate and so on, right? If you're a glutton, I can't trust you with the cake, right? If you're a drunkard, I can't trust you with my bottle there, right? I drink the whole thing. I drink the whole thing, you tingly say. But it's often been observed, you know, the great interest that the ancients had for friendship, right, which you find missing in the, what, moderns, huh? And of course, in the Middle Ages, charity was seen as a kind of friendship, and you have the treatises by the all-rated living on spiritual friendship, huh? I was kind of struck by one thing there when he went to the place where Padre Pio was, huh? Because the monk who spoke to us, I want to get a little, they show you a little film about him, you know, as a monk who was there. But he had known Padre Pio, right? He was still alive. And, but it kind of struck me, because I just, you know, I've been looking at the, a little bit of the Gospel of St. Matthew before I went away. And Thomas, or one of the church fathers, Thomas, he was calling, was observing, you know, how the first apostles he calls are brothers, right? But he calls two pairs of brothers, James and John and Andrew and Peter. And this is like in the Old Testament, where he called Moses and what? Aaron, right? But there he has one pair of brothers, here he has two pairs of brothers. Because the New Testament is even higher than the what? The old, huh? But there's a similarity between the two, right? That you're going to build spiritual friendship, spiritual brotherhood, on what? Natural, you know, which shows a beautiful way of seeing the harmony between nature and grace, right? That they're not really opposed, huh? Just like, you know, like in the sacrament of matrimony, right, huh? That presupposes kind of the natural friendship between the husband and the wife, right? But it's raising it to a higher level, huh? A kind of spiritual friendship that is actually a sign of the union of Christ to the church and so on, huh? And if I remember right now, when this monk was talking about the last words of Padre Pio, it's kind of interesting. But almost his last words was, I see two mothers, he says. Meaning, I think, his what? His natural mother, and now his mother of God, right? I think it's kind of beautiful. It's reminding me of the likeness between his last words there, almost, and the observation that in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, the fundamental people there, you might say, right, are taken as brothers, right? And then on top of the natural bond, you have the spiritual bond added to that. It's kind of beautiful, huh? I'm kind of struck by that, just because it's kind of headed my mind, you know, from reading that. And he mentioned that, right? Kind of striking. But we still don't know what he said to President Pope, right? Did he know he's going to be Pope or not? There's still no word on that. We couldn't find that out. Somebody asked a question about that, you know. But anyway, a lot of things will come out, I think, eventually, depending on this life. But notice the importance there of friendship, right? And, of course, for Aristotle, you know, one kind of friendship would be between blood relatives, right? Brother and brother, right? But anyway, the importance he attached to that, I guess, two whole books devoted to friendship. Book five is devoted, is the only book devoted to one virtue, if you can call it one virtue. Justice, right? There may be certain different kinds of justice, but, you know, justice gives a certain prominence there. But there's two books devoted to what? Friendship, right? And you notice how Aristotle, too, spoke of friendship being, in a sense, better than justice, right? If you have friends, you're going to be, what, just with somebody, right? But go beyond that, right? And justice is not enough, huh? You need friendship, huh? Perfection, he sees the friendship, huh? So speaking as a philosopher, I sometimes say, you know, the two best things in life are wisdom and friendship, right? So what could be better, you know, than friendship and the pursuit of wisdom? They say, well, nothing could be. I say, well, how about wisdom shared with friends, huh? But also that kind of anticipates what we have in the church and what you have most fully in heaven, right, huh? Where you have wisdom, I mean, primarily the wisdom of God, right? Wisdom shared with, what? Friends, yeah. The importance of those things, huh? So, and then the tenth book of wisdom, after he's gone through all the virtues, right, Aristotle comes back and tries to be more precise, right? Because in the definition of friendship, friendship, which he calls a drawing a line around, a paragraph in Greek, in the first book, he says it's man's own act, or the act with reason, according to human virtue throughout life, right? But after he's gone through all the virtues, does it consist more in some virtues than others, right? And that's a question he doesn't try to answer until the tenth book, and he's gone through all the virtues, huh? So, he begins and ends with the consideration of the interpurpose of man. Now, we also tried to tie together before I left you, what is practical philosophy about, right? And as you'll see when you look at the premium of Aristotle, it's chiefly about the interpurpose of man, okay? But as we see in Plato's Apology, and as we see in the seventh book, say, of the politics of Aristotle, the practical philosopher, the moral and political philosopher, will talk, at least in general, about all the goods of man, right? The distinction of all the goods of man in general, and at least as far as the goods of the soul, the goods of the body, exterior goods, and also the order among these goods, right? And that's because he's talking about the ender purpose of man. And all of these things, some more, some less, right? Some more proximately and some more remotely. But all of them in some way are necessary and contribute to the ender purpose of man. And therefore, his consideration has to extend to all of them, right? And this will help you to understand by a kind of proportion what's going to be true about wisdom, right? Wisdom is going to be not about the ender purpose of man and of human life, but it's going to be about the ender purpose of the whole universe. And because it's about that, it's going to be about all things in general, right? Just as ethics and political philosophy being about the ender purpose of man's life as a whole, in some ways it's going to be about all the goods of man, but in what? General, right? Plato's other major work besides the Republic on the city is called the Laws, right? His last work. But notice the Lawgiver, in some ways, he's concerned with all the goods of man. He's concerned with justice and things like that that pertain to the goods of the soul. He's concerned with health, which involves the good of the body, and he's concerned with economic issues, the exterior goods. So in some sense, he's going to make laws about all the goods of man. But he's not going to enter into, you know, the details of medical science there, right? Or the details of how to make a chair or a table. He's going to call upon the carpenter or somebody to fill him in on that, right? But among these three kinds of goods, you could say the moral and the political philosopher talks in particular... about the goods of the soul, about the, what, virtues, right? Because they are the most closely connected with the inner purpose of man. So we define that in, even in the first book, as man's own act, according to human virtue throughout life, right? And so Shakespeare says, as I mentioned before in The Taming of the Shrew, that part of philosophy that speaks of, what, happiness, especially by virtue to be achieved, right? So we can say, then, that part of philosophy is chiefly about the inner purpose of man, about all the goods of man in general, their distinction and order, and about the goods of the soul, the human virtues in particular. That sums it up, right? But before those three things we talked about, we talked about good and, what, better, right? Okay? So you should have some grasp of those five things, huh? Good, better, the end of man, the division and order of all the goods of man in general, and I'm going to say something more particular about the goods of the soul, meaning the human virtues, huh? Okay? Starting with what Aristotle does in the end of the first book of Nicomachean Ethics. He's going to divide human virtue into two kinds, huh? Now, as we've said here many times, to figure out what the virtue of a thing is requires you to know what its own act is, right? And man's own act is the act with reason. But as we saw, there's a distinction there, right? Act with reason includes not only the acts of reason, which we want to do well, right? But also acts that partake of reason without being acts of reason, huh? Now, what's closest to reason, but is not the same thing as reason, is the will and the, what, emotions, huh? And the will and the emotions can partake of reason, huh? They can be measured by reason, huh? How angry should I be with you, right? You see? How much do I laugh? There's some things I shouldn't laugh at, you see? But laughter doesn't know I shouldn't laugh at, okay? The acts of the will and the emotions, they can be directed by reason, huh? Okay? And you see this very clearly in choice, huh? And of course, our exterior acts are influenced by reason because they are proceeding from our will and our emotions, right? Okay? So Aristotle divides human virtue into two kinds, huh? The virtues of reason itself and the virtues of what partake of reason, huh? Okay? Now, some of you like to call these intellectual virtues, I don't like that word. I'm not an intellectual myself. That's a Georgia word, yeah. Let's call them the virtues of reason, huh? Let's give ourselves more room here. Let's run out of room. I have a little foresight, right? You see these things, you know, look ahead, you know, and then, you know, big letters and little pens at the end. Kind of a side that makes the point, you know. The old days of virtues of reason and the virtues of what partakes of reason. Aristotle will go deeper into this saying that reason is one part of our soul, right? Or one power of our soul. But there are other parts of our soul that will listen to reason, that can be, what, tamed to some extent by reason, huh? And they partake, therefore, of reason, right? And therefore, they're the human virtue, huh? Now, sometimes, as I say, you'll find these called the moral virtues, and down here they're called these the intellectual virtues. Second, as I said, through the fifth books, Aristotle takes up the moral virtues. In book six, he takes up the virtues of reason. Now, it's interesting what Aristotle does, the way he divides these virtues of reason in the fifth book, or sixth book. He divides them into five, eventually, huh? Five different virtues. But as you know, the human mind cannot understand the division into five, huh? Okay? So he divides them into two groups, one of three and one of two, huh? Okay? Now, the most illustrious student of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, in the Prima Secundae there, the Summa Theologiae, you know, the whole second part, there is really what you might call moral theology, and so on. He divides the virtues of reason into five, right? And again, he follows the rule of two or three, right? So he divides them into three and two, right? But not the same three and two, as Aristotle does, huh? Okay? And is one man correct, another man incorrect? Or is there something brought out by both divisions, huh? I was looking this morning again, I think you've got the Gospel of St. Matthew there. In the sixth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, he had the most complete statement of the Our Father. I think the Our Father is found only in the, what, Matthew and Luke. But Luke, I think, you have only, what, five petitions? But in Matthew, you have seven petitions, which is the form that we use, right? So that's kind of the text, you might say, for the Our Father. And when Augustine or Thomas and others divide those seven petitions, huh, they usually divide them into, what, two groups, right? And one way of dividing the seven is into four petitions about the good, the first four, and then three about the, what, bad, huh? Okay? And that's probably the easiest way to understand it, right? But sometimes Augustine would divide the first three against the last four. Because the first three are fulfilled completely only in the next life. And so at the end of the third petition, you say, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Like all these things, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. Thy will be done will be fully achieved only in the, what, in heaven, right? So that ending of the third one kind of pertains to all of the first three. And then the other four are particularly addressing needs we have in this life, right? And, you know, some days they take the sixth, the fourth, excuse me, the fourth commandment is applying even to the Eucharist, right? Give us this day or daily bread. But there won't be the Eucharist in heaven, huh? And there won't be, obviously, these sins and temptations in heaven and so on. So, but notice those two divisions, right? Okay, the fourth petition is found in the first part, and you divide it according to the good and the bad. It's found in the second group, and you divide them according to the heavenly and the earthly petitions. But in either case, that shows in the fourth one exactly where it should belong. Right? Right in the middle. Because sometimes it's put with the first three, in one way of looking at it, sometimes with the last three. But you see something about that fourth one, right? Like the first three, it's about the good. But like the last four, it's more addressed to the needs of this life, right? Now, you'll find sometimes in the great minds, they would divide the same thing in more than one way. And sometimes even the same option would divide them in more than one way. So when Thomas is commonly in the sixth book, he'll explain Aristotle's division, right? But then he uses another division in the primus secundae. Now, I think the one in the primus secundae, in some ways, is maybe easier to understand it first, huh? Because what's the reason's own act, right? What is reason supposed to do, right? So everybody can see that we have reason both to know things, right? And then to direct us in what we do and make, right? So Thomas will divide in the primus secundae, you divide the virtues of perfect reason simply in regard to knowing. The virtues, you might say, of what? Yeah. Unexpected to look in fact. Or to speak English looking reason, right? Okay? And then the virtues of what? Practical reason, okay? Now, the virtues of practical reason. Eric Thomas goes back to the distinction that Aristotle emphasizes between making and doing, right? And in making, there's a product, right? Okay? So, you have right reason about doing, and in Latin that's called, what? Prudencia, prudence. In Greek it's for naisisa. The English word is foresight. So since we're speaking in English, all these things are right. So, the virtue about is called foresight. Okay? Some people call it practical wisdom, right? But foresight is the word that the Western Church of other people who know how to write English would use. So, beautiful word, foresight. That's about doing. And then about making, you have art. Okay? Now, you will find out as you go on that foresight and art are two kinds of virtues of practical reason. But there's more than one kind of, what, art in particular. And there's actually one kind of foresight. And Thomas, later on, he talks about foresight and he said, kundi, sekunde, and so on. He'll distinguish the foresight of the individual man, right? Whereby you're directing your life. Foresight whereby Socrates is directed in the life of Socrates, right? And then the foresight of the father, right? Of a family. And then the foresight of a king. And the foresight of a general. He distinguishes those main kinds of foresight, huh? And the art can distinguish the art of cooking and the art of carpentry and so on, right? Okay? But you have two kinds of virtue here for practical reason. Foresight and art, huh? And you know, if you get the plumber out to the house and he knows his job, you'll get it done much better than you will. And the cook, you know? Do it much better, he knows exactly what to do, right? Okay. So, these are two virtues of practical reason. The virtues of looking reason, there, Thomas will distinguish three, right? And one you could call natural understanding. The things we understand or come to understand without having to reason them out, right? Now, in Greek, that's something called understanding. I'm loose in the Greek text. In Latin, they'll call it something intellectus, right? We could in English call it simply understanding, but I like to call it natural understanding because of my way of naming the second virtue. The second virtue is called scientia in Latin, right? Or episteme in Greek. But in English, I call it a reasoned-out understanding or a reasoned-out knowledge, huh? Natural understanding, reasoned-out understanding. I'm not writing very clearly, but I think you know the words. Okay. It's an N-E there. Kind of funny, professors, because, you know, as soon as I don't realize I'm writing, it's kind of sopping the board. It's writing really nice, you know, clear. And then finally, so I go, what's that right there? And it's like, you know, as a professor, you see the words, and you don't even do it, huh? But the funniest thing that I find is, you know, they would describe Niels Bohr, you know, he was quite an intense man, a great scientist, and sometimes he'd make the connection to his mind and forget about the audience and then go on, right? He realized he hadn't explained what he was thinking or had not said it to the audience. So it's kind of funny. People would know him more, you know, because he was a very influential man, but he was sometimes a little distracted like that. So intense. Or sometimes, you know, he'd tend to speak too fast or something and run the words together, huh? And then, like Aristotle, he'll distinguish wisdom, which in a way combines something of both of these. Because you will find, for example, that the things we naturally understand, like a whole is more than a part. You'll have men called sophists who go around denying these things and giving reasons for them that the average Joe can't see his way out. And I mentioned, you know, sometimes I'll give them a cystic argument to show that the whole is not more than a part always. And the students are convinced by it. And I have to stop and explain, right? So it's a duty, we'll find out when we get to wisdom, of the wise man to, what, refute those arguments against the axioms, huh? And another thing you find out about the axioms is that all the words, the key words in the axioms are all equivocal by reason. And so, to fully understand the axioms, like the whole is more than a part, you have to see the different meanings of whole and part. And so the wise man does those things, huh? Okay? We'll see the reason for that in the fourth book of wisdom. Now, wisdom could be considered a form of reason to understand it, but it's a very special one, right? Because reasoned out understanding is perfected by knowing the cause. But wisdom doesn't know just any cause, it knows the very first cause that it's got, right? So it has something that separates it from all other forms of reasoned out understanding. And therefore it gets a new name. Wisdom. You see that? So Aristotle will sometimes call wisdom reasoned out understanding, because in a way it is a form of reasoned out understanding. But because it's so unique a form, right? It gets its own name. And because it embraces both of these, huh? So it's... The end of all understanding, Aristotle says. It perfects both natural understanding and reasoned out understanding. Because it knows the cause of the cause. And it knows the axioms better than natural understanding knows it. So wisdom is really something. So you can say natural understanding is the beginning of our understanding. We have no relation to making or doing, right? And wisdom is the culmination of it all, right? And reasoned out understanding, of course, there are many forms. Now, geometry, arithmetic, natural philosophy, and so on, is the middle, right? You have a beginning, middle, and end, huh? Now notice what Thomas is doing here, right? He's dividing the five into two, right? And subdividing one of them into two. And the other into three, right? So he's following the rule of two or three, right? And that's the way to understand these five, right? Now, how does Aristotle divide them? Is it time to make it a little break? Sure. You'll see Aristotle does that, right? Now, I think this division of Thomas makes a lot of sense. It's easy to understand insofar as you could say that it belongs to reason not only to understand, but also to direct us in what we do. And so it seems kind of natural, right? To say that the virtues of reason either perfect us simply in looking or in understanding, right? And that's why these names, the way I name them, you can see, diction understanding, or directing us in what we do. And then you can divide doing into doing and making. Making gets a new name because there's a product there, right? You can subdivide those. Now, what other way could you possibly divide it? That would make some sense, right? That would not be opposed to this, right? But that would bring out something that this division or way of dividing doesn't bring out, right? I think this way of dividing brings out more the connection between virtue and the things on act, right? And it's divided with those two different things, huh? A lot of times I go back and I say to people, you know, why do you have eyes and why do you have ears, right? You see? And you don't fully understand why you have eyes or ears if you don't listen to Mozart or look at the beautiful sunset, right? At the end of this trip there, you ever been up to Sisi? Sisi, you know? And you're up in the, you know, Sisi's up in the hills there. You look out over the whole valley, right? And it was, fortunately we had good sunny days there at the end. And you're looking out over the whole valley, you say how beautiful. Everybody's remarkable how beautiful it was. So, we have eyes to see beautiful things. And that's like, what, this here, right? Just to see it. You're not going to make something or do something with that beautiful view from the top of the Sisi, huh? But you also have the eyes to direct us on walking and making dinner and doing everything else, right? The same way hearing, right? We want to hear Handel's Messiah or something. The music, the beautiful music, just for the sake of hearing it. And I also want to hear somebody saying, watch out! It might save your life. And, you know, you go into the gasoline station and how do you get there, you know? And you listen carefully to what the guy says. You turn right, you know, go two blocks. Not because he's got a beautiful void because there's Paterati there in the gasoline station, but because he's going to direct you to where you want to go, right? You see? So I think it's not too hard to see that the purpose of the eye is both just to see, right? And especially beautiful things, therefore, and to direct us to what we do, right? And likewise, the purpose of the year, right? And so you have the same two purposes, the same two operations, you might say, of reason, right? Simply to understand things that are wonderful, right? And then we direct this. So you can see the basis for this, right? So reasons, oh, and act, you could say, is twofold. To understand and to direct this in our, what, actions, yeah. That's kind of anticipated what we saw in the eye and the ear. Now, is there some other way of dividing these five, and I'll give you a hand, it's in the three and two, but illuminates these five in some other way. A way, I think, which is more difficult to see at first. Well, what Aristotle does is to divide these three against these two. And the basis of the division he gives is that these two, natural understanding of wisdom, are about beginnings. And these three, reason out of understanding, foresight, and art, are about what is from the beginnings. Now, that's illuminating in itself, but it also seems to correspond to what is more known and less known to us. And you'll find out that people have the vaguest notion of what wisdom is. But there is even such a thing, right? As the great Heraclitus said, you know, they think that wisdom is a heap of knowledge. And if my heap of knowledge is bigger than your heap, then I'm wise than you are. And that's what wisdom is. Wisdom is one thing. It's the mind that steers all things through all things, he says. It's an old God. So they hardly know at all what wisdom is. Even the so-called philosophers, most of them don't know what it is. They've got a slight idea of what it really is. And natural understanding, I mean, there's some things we naturally understand, but moderns would simply, what? Deny that, right? Everything is up for grabs. Everything's an hypothesis. It can be tested by its consequences. So, natural understanding and wisdom are much less known to us than these other three. If there's an art of carpentry, an art of cooking, you go, yeah, everybody knows those things exist, right? I was waiting in the airport there to get my flight back from Rome to London, and see, all these cookbooks here in Italian. For me, I had some basic food in Italy there, you know, but it's not going to do any good until the other ones in English. Everybody knows the art of cooking exists, right? You go to your store, there's all kinds. You go into borders, you know, they've got all these cookbooks out there, Thai cooking, you know, Chinese cooking, French cooking, you know, and then they have these variations. Beautiful Italian, you know, beautiful scenes in Italy, beautiful scenes in China, beautiful scenes, you know, interspersed with recipes. So everybody knows there exists the art of carpentry. You can go into any place and find books of carpentry, right? Out of mechanics, all this type of stuff, right? So everybody knows about art, that virtue, right? And you know the guy, you know, who possesses the art of plumbing or the art of carpentry, he can do these things much better than you and I can do them. You see? He had my brother-in-law when he had a little bit of carpentry in high school, you know, because I look at my work in the basement there, why'd you do it this way? That's the way you do it. Hobbies and sex, you know, in high school. You recognize how far away this is supposed to be and all this stuff. And everybody knows that there exists at least a geometry, right? There's no understanding like that, huh? Okay? And then they recognize people, you know, like Churchill, you know, or Washington or someone like that who had foresight, right? And who led his country, Pericles and so on, right? These men are admired, right? For their foresight, huh? Or the foresight of generals, right? Napoleon and so on, right? So, So, So, These three that I've checked there, reasoned out understanding, which is called shentia in Latin, or episteme in Greek, foresight, prudencia, Latin, prudence, or phrenesis in Greek, or art, technae in Greek, R's in Latin, right? Everybody knows, is kind of aware of those. Wisdom, doesn't know what that is, right? And natural understanding. Now the distinction between natural understanding and wisdom that Aristotle gives in the Nicomarcan Ethics is that natural understanding is about the beginnings of our knowledge. Like the whole is more than a part, nothing is before or after itself, right? Something can't both be and not be, and so on. Nothing is divided from itself, and so on. Our wisdom is about the beginnings of all things, about the first causes. What they have in common is that they're about beginnings, huh? And it's kind of interesting, huh? When we speak, you know, of the statements known by natural understanding, for example, and those known by episteme or reasoned out understanding, we speak of statements known through other statements, nor of these other statements that are known by natural understanding. Well, there are statements that are known not through other statements. And that's what I'm doing there. I'm defying the statements we know first by the negation of the condition under which the other ones are known. Now sometimes I'll say natural understanding is about statements known through themselves, right? But that's probably a misleading way, a little bit, to some people, of saying affirmatively what is negative in meaning, right? Okay? Just like when you speak of the good as being desired for its own sake. What does that mean? It's desired, but not for the sake of anything else. It's really an affirmative way of saying something that is perhaps negative in meaning, huh? See? In other words, we understand the idea that something can be desired for the sake of something else, right? But if something is desired, but not for the sake of something else, that's a little strange to us, isn't it? But that's what's first desired. What's desired, but not for the sake of something else, is what's first desired? Oh, yeah, I guess it is. It seems kind of, what? Something we don't know to some. Or take another way of manifesting this a bit. If you had a class in geometry in high school or something like that, or if you picked up Euclid, you're aware at the time when you began to study geometry and learn geometry, right? But when did you learn that a whole was more than a part? It seems like I always knew that. I don't remember even my mother saying to me, Now, Dwayne, get this down. It's got a hell of a game in your life. Is it? In fact, I always knew that, right? And so some people have actually, you know, thought that we're born knowing these things, right? Okay? But if we're not born knowing them, we come to know them so naturally, we're not aware of how we came to know them. You see? Why, we're making an effort to learn geometry. We're aware of that effort. You see that? I can remember first maybe studying Latin in high school, huh? You know, when my kids were studying Latin in high school, they'd come home and they'd say, Dad, what was the greatest accomplishment of the Romans? You know, the answer these kids give. You know, I'm sitting there trying to, you know, think what was the greatest accomplishment of the Romans, you know, the Roman Empire, so Roman law and all that sort of stuff. And the answer is, they spoke Latin. How can anybody speak this kind of a funny language? And I remember a kid in, you know, taking French for the first time in high school, you know, just to hear French. This kid was so frustrated trying to learn French and finally one day he heard on class, Don't do the French kids ever learn this! It was probably some French kids saying the same thing about English, huh? Apparently it's harder for them to learn English than for us to learn French, they say, so. But notice, the way you learn English was what? You cry unaware of it, right? You see? And that comes up in the dialogue sometimes where you can't point to your teacher of your native language because it was part of your mother, part of your father, part of your older brother's assistants. We had them or uncles or aunts. Everybody was around the house, right? And you picked up English without being... But osmosis, it seems, right? But not in the way you maybe began your study of French and you can say, this is who my French teacher was, this is who my, you know? But you can't say, this is my teacher of English or whatever your native language happens to be, you see? So some of those first things we pick up without even, what, being aware of them. So there's a way in which natural understanding even and a fortiorite wisdom are less known to us, right? So Aristotle takes him a blast, right? He talks about the more obvious ones first. That's not opposed to Thomas, right? But it's a little different thing, right? And the distinction is really between the more known to us and the less known to us. The more known to us, the ones that are from the beginnings, and the ones that are less known, the ones that are about the beginnings. The two different kinds of beginnings. Kind of funny, you know, with the eyes sometimes, huh? With this eye here, I could read better with my right eye, but you're blurred down at the end of the table. Now, with my left eye, you're not so blurred, you're much more clear. But I can't read with this left eye. I mean, you know, without glasses, huh? So I'm laying in bed at night, just saying, take the glasses off, and I can read with the right eye and still read my little book or something. But it seems kind of funny to say, you know, that I can see better something further away. I can see you better than the printed page in front of me. You see? It's kind of strange, isn't it? There's something like that with the mind, right? The things that are up close to our mind, right? The things that natural understanding knows, we're not hardly aware of the fact that we, what? Do know them, right? It makes them explicit. And things I've noticed, even over the years, in reading Aristotle or Thomas or Plato or, you know, you hardly ever have more than just, you know, a handful of the axioms ever identified. Here's an axiom, right? This is important, right? The whole is more than a part of the common example that you always give as an axiom, right? And then Aristotle devotes a great deal of time to the axioms about being and unbeing, right? But apart from that, and a very short list that Euclid gives, right? But there are all kinds of axioms, huh? That's an abridium. Nothing is the beginning of itself. That's an axiom. Nothing is before or after itself. Nothing is divided from itself. But they're not recognized to be axioms, right? And as I say, it's reflected in the definitions, huh? A conclusion is a statement known through other statements, right? Now what's the beginning? Yeah. But if you define it that way, a statement known not through other statements, right? You seem to be negating part of the definition of what a conclusion is, right? But since you knew the conclusion through the beginnings, the beginnings must have been more known to you, right? When you define them, you define them, right, by this negation. Strange, right? You see, medicine is desired for the sake of health, and health is desired for the sake of happiness, right? Happiness is desired for the sake of... Yeah.