Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 2: Aristotle's Opening Statement and the Natural Road in Knowledge

Transcript
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At last, knowing the very first cause or causes of things. And then in the second part of the premium, which occupies the third reading, what kind of knowledge is this wisdom? And when he recalls at the end of the premium those two things, he recalls first the thing he just did, which is the second thing. And then he recalls the first thing he did. So if you look at the bottom of page 5 there, the epilogue that Aristotle has, what is the nature of the knowledge sought then has been said? That's actually the second part of the premium, right? We just finished doing there in the third reading. And what is the goal, right? That the investigation and the whole knowledge over our road must reach, right? That's the first thing he does, and that occupies the first two readings, right? Now, in the case of the Nicomachean Ethics, the premium had three parts, right? But in the epilogue, he recalls the third thing they just finished doing, and then the second thing, and then the first, right? Just like if you and I, you know, what did you do yesterday? Well, okay, I recorded yesterday, and then what I did the day before that I recall next, right? And then finally, I did it three days ago or something. Kind of a natural way of doing it, right? Okay. But it's kind of a confirmation of Thomas' division of the premium, huh? Of course, in most cases, you don't have an epilogue in the premium, but maybe these two premiums are the premium to looking philosophy and the premium to practical philosophy, so they have a special importance, huh? I think I mentioned, too, how Aristotle learned the idea of the premium from Plato there in the work called the Timaeus, where Timaeus has a premium before the main work. And, of course, Socrates sits here like a diligent student and applauds the excellence of the premium, you know, that has prepared the way, you know? So let's look here now at the first reading here and beginning the premium. Aristotle begins with a statement that is often quoted, huh? It's usually translated, all men by nature desire to know. Well, the Greek word there for to know is the word identi, which comes from the I originally. So it might be more accurate to translate, all men by nature desire to understand, huh? But you could translate it as to know, too, but... That's the first statement. Now, I've got to stop now and savor what he said here, right? And there are three questions you might ask about this opening statement. The first question is, what does it mean? The second question is, is it true? And then, why does he begin with this statement, huh? Okay? Now, what does it mean, huh? Well, you've got to look at the parts of it to figure that out, right? Now, when he says all men, does he mean men as opposed to women? Does he mean men as opposed to boys? No, it's being used more in the generic sense, huh? Now, you somewhat know what it means to desire, right, huh? But when he says that they desire by nature, does that mean by nature? In fact, you know, maybe the very good way to translate it to English, the words by nature, would be inborn, right? The word nature, or the Greek word corresponding to that, phousis, they both seem to come from the word for birth, huh? So, Shakespeare never forgets that, right? He's always using the word nature, has some reference back to the meaning of birth, huh? A natural bond of brothers or the natural bond of sisters, right? But it's a bond that is produced by, what, common birth, right? Or birth of the same parents, huh? There's some medieval authors, maybe St. Thomas, too, in Latin, they'll say, man is, man natus est, to know. He is born to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And he wouldn't say all men by nature wear pants, huh? Okay. I wouldn't go there. Okay. There might be some things that men do by custom, right, huh? Mm-hmm. Or some things they do by, what? By choice, right? Okay. Aristotle was saying in the fourth book of wisdom, you know, the philosopher differs from the sophist by his choice of life, right? You give a man a choice, huh? You can be wise, but not appear wise to the world. Or you can appear wise to the world and not be wise. What do you choose? Well, the sophist chooses to appear wise to the world. That's a choice, right? And not be wise. Philosopher, you choose to be wise and not appear wise, if that's the other alternative, huh? See? But here he's saying it's not by choice or by custom or by fashion or whatever it might be, right? But it's by nature, right? Okay. Now, if you take to know, it's a translation of the Greek word identity there, where knowing would be taken in the broad sense, where even the senses are kind of knowing, right? Then when he takes the sign from the love of the senses, he's taking a very well-known kind of knowing to illustrate that, right? And to bring out the truth of it, right? If you take it in a more narrow sense, that all men by nature desire to understand, then it's kind of an analogy, right? Because to understand, we call it to see sometimes. And just as we love to use our eyes to see, so we can actually use our reason to understand, huh? Okay? But doesn't, in explanation of it, differ too much, right? The English word to understand has an excellence, I think, that puts it above the Greek word knowing, or even identi. That's good in other ways, identi, because it comes from the word to see, right? In English, we do say to use the word to see to mean to understand, right? My mother used to say to me when I was little, I said the blind man, but he couldn't see at all. So punting upon that meaning, huh? But the English word to understand is kind of interesting, huh? Because, etymologically, right, the word to understand suggests that to understand something is to know what is said to stand under something. And we do speak of the clause as standing under the, what, effect, right? And we also speak of words, you know, putting a name upon something, as if the thing that it names is underneath the name, right? So to understand the name is to know what stands under the name. And, of course, the English word for cause is ground, and ground stands under other things, huh? But, don't get too much into the word understand there, but the English word is the excellence to it. So, that's kind of what the word, the statement means, right? Okay? What do you mean by men there, what do you mean by nature, desire, and to know? Now, second question, is the statement true? And Aristotle gives a sign the fact that men love to use their senses, and especially their eyes, and they use their senses, not merely to do something, or to make something, but sometimes merely to see something, or merely to hear something, right? Okay? Or, sometimes you're curious about food, you just want to see what it tastes like, right? Yeah. See somebody, you know, you're out in the restaurant with somebody, and, you know, we're going to taste it at the end, you know, just get kind of curious about it, no? So, is anybody who doesn't, at some time, uses eyes just to see something oh look at the beautiful sunset tonight or look at the beautiful rainbow or look at the mountains or look at the ocean or something right everybody sometimes uses his eyes or other senses just to see something right okay or they smell a flower just you know for the smell right it's not going to eat the flower right probably not anyway you see but they yeah they're going to make her do something with that smell notice that aristotle does he doesn't say a sign of this is that everybody philosophizes doesn't mean everybody philosophizes today or a sign of this is that men do scientific experiments everybody does that right a sign of this is that men do historical research no a sign of this is what that they use the senses sometimes merely to sense merely to know and not just to what make or do and especially the eyes right okay especially among the others that through the eyes for we choose to see before all the others not only in order we might do something but also not aiming to do anything and the causes that this one among the senses especially makes us know something and shows many differences so you'd know nothing about the sun the moon the stars without the eyes right now perhaps another example of this that's shared with all men all men to some extent take it to light in stories right and so when your mother or father's reading your little red riding hood right don't you want to know what happens when the little red riding hood gets to her grandmother's house well you're going to make or do something with this huh and so people sometimes get reading a novel or they get watching a movie on tv or something and they stay up very young in their bedtime right are they learning something to help them in the job tomorrow are they going to be more alert and accomplish more on the job tomorrow because they can't get enough sleep no it's because they're what wondrous what's going to happen right okay told the story there of my cousin donald being married to a very practical woman he had some big thick russian spy novel or some kind of thing like that and he had finished it and she happened to pick it up by chance and got so engrossed she couldn't put it down and she was neglecting her gardening and her cleaning and everything else that's what a woman does and she was angry with her husband he had left the novel around but even this very practical winwright has some inborn desire to know not for the sake of making or doing something even where it's interfering with what she's doing it i used to drive up to quebec every thanksgiving and easter even after i had my phd to go see what's in uniana and of course you drive up through usually new hampshire and so on and you get up in the country there and if it's you know the skiers are coming down the thing it's really kind of beautiful it's them coming down and you're driving you can't help but look up there you know now i'm looking up there they help me drive and arrive safely at quebec there and no see and people sometimes are distracted by the beautiful sights whatever they might be yeah um so that's a sign of the truth of what he's saying yeah but it's a second no more develop sign is that everybody to some extent wants to hear how a story turns out right okay of course who's telling a joke you want to get to the the punchline right you know the jokes about people who always forget the punchline they got frustrated yeah perhaps a third example of this is in sporting events huh and of course if the game is lopsided you know people will sometimes what turn it off or or even leave right okay so if you're going to the ninth inning and the score is ten to one or something you'll see people leaving to get in their cars to get out of the parking lot before the jam takes place right but if it's tied up going into the ninth you won't see those same people leaving will you but the practical thing would be to go out there and get your car out of the parking lot before the everybody's out there what are you doing what are you staying there for because your interest in the game has been aroused right but you're not going to do anything with the score right but you want to win you haven't necessarily got that let's put it that way so these are signs that show that all men and not just the philosophers or the scientists or the historians right had this desire to know right so now we see a little bit the meaning of what Aristotle's opening statement is and secondly that the statement seems to be what true right okay um but why would he begin with the statement if we if we see it'll show it'll end us bringing us to a knowledge of what wisdom is because if we desire to know finally okay our reason etc so we'll see what so we'll see why he opens with this okay okay and notice is it showing that knowing is something good yeah now you may recall from our study of the good the good is what all want right but you got to be kind of careful with that right because sometimes people want something that is really good right and sometimes they want something that appears to be good but is not good right so if someone says to you is the fact that something is wanted a sign that it is good well i'd say yes but is it a necessary sign that it's good no no um but if something is naturally desired like we naturally desire food and water and sleep and things of this sort right if something is naturally desired then that's a very strong sign that it's something really good huh that's something naturally good and not just an appearance so the fact that all men by nature desire to know right is a much stronger sign that to know is good if you just said that men desire to know okay um but perhaps there's another thing too about that and that is that nature doesn't go to excess them so if nature has given us a natural desire to know it must also be not only good but in some way possible for us if nature has given us a natural desire to eat not only must it be good to eat for man and for that matter for the other animals right but it must be possible right to find food right that doesn't mean you always will find food right but it's not in fact impossible to get food huh people die of thirst sometimes you know no water in the desert there or something like that right but if man is a natural desire to drink it must be possible right must only be good for man but it must also be possible to find something right so aristotle's opening statement here is in a general way orientating us to the goodness of knowing and knowing now not for the sake of making your doing which is good too right but he's going to this is a premium to knowing where the knowing itself is the end of the goal right and not the making you're doing something okay like in the gospel there you know where christ says you know mary hath chosen the better part and it shall not be taken away from her because martha is pursuing the practical knowledge right and uh that's good in this life but it's not going to last and there won't be that a need for that kind of knowledge in the next world but mary is pursuing the better knowledge the knowledge that is itself an end or a goal and will not be taken away from her it will continue in fact will be perfected in the next, what, world, huh? So you see how he's kind of laying the ground, right? For our pursuit of the knowledge that for its own sake is most desirable, namely wisdom, right? And that it's a knowledge that is not for the sake of any making or doing, right? And it's possible in some way, right? Okay. And, of course, he is talking about something I'll say more explicitly later on in the third reading, that that natural desire, in a way, is the beginning of philosophy. Sometimes they call it wonder, right? And beginning is what's first, right? First philosophy. Okay? It's about the beginning, huh? In more than one sense, huh? Okay? Now, what does he start to do in the second paragraph, huh? Well, man always begins with a kind of confused, indistinct knowledge of things, huh? And so if I came into an introduction to philosophy class and asked a bunch of college freshmen or sophomores, what is wisdom? I wouldn't get a very clear answer to this. Okay? But is there some kind of hazy notion about wisdom that even the freshman or sophomore might have somehow in his mind, huh? Well, sometimes to bring out a little bit that hazy understanding that they have of wisdom, I say to them, or ask this question, do you think wisdom comes in the beginning of our knowledge? Or do you think it comes in the middle of our knowledge? Or do you think it comes at the end of our knowledge? Yeah, how about if you've got to choose between one of those three, huh? Yeah. I mean, do you think of a newborn baby as wise? No. You think of wisdom coming sort of towards the end of our knowledge, right? Okay? Down the road, right? If it comes. Yeah. When I first was in Worcester there, I used to go to a barbershop there on Pleasant Street, an old barber there, and he had a plaque on the wall, you know, you get too soon old and too late, but... Yeah, wise is smart, isn't it? My dad just quoted him in the middle letter. He called it an old German proverb. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. I think he was German, this guy, yeah. Too soon I'm old, too late, I'm wise. Yeah, yeah. And the fool there, huh, who's got more wisdom in some sense than King Lear, right? The fool says, you know, to King Lear, you're old before your time. And King Lear says, what do you mean? You're old before you're wise, huh? So we tend to think of wisdom as coming with what? Age. Age, yeah. So again, the wisdom comes not in the beginning or even in the middle of our knowledge, but towards the end of time. That's kind of a hazy notion that students will say if you ask them that question, that they'll have to choose between those three, right? They'll see it as being more towards the end, huh? Shakespeare has a nice metonym, huh? One of the plays there where he says, In love, which graybeards call divine. What does he mean by that? Who are the graybeards? The wise, yeah. But, you know, being a poet, he wants to say it in a poetic way, right? And so, instead of saying, Love, which the wise say is divine. Love, which graybeards call divine. But again, you're thinking of, you know, graybeard, age, right? As the time, if ever, you'd be wise, huh? I don't know if you've seen this in Greek, not Greek, in English, fiction, and so on. It's an old saying, you know. To play the young man. Oh. And it's the way of saying to play the, what? The fool. You see? That's a contrast, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. So, notice what my question says. Beginning, the middle, the end, right? Okay. You're kind of saying, it's not in the beginning of our knowledge, in the middle, but towards the end. You've got to talk about kind of the road our knowledge takes, right? And in what direction is our knowledge going? And seeing if you can kind of anticipate a little bit what wisdom might be. If wisdom comes at the end of our knowledge, in what direction is our knowledge going, right? Same towards. Yeah. Yeah. And so what Aristotle's going to talk about here is another thing that is first, right? He's talked about the first desire here, at least as far as the philosophy is concerned. You can come back to that in the fifth, in the third reading. But, he's going to talk now about what we could say, and elsewhere he does call it, in fact, what you could call it the first road in our knowledge, huh? Mm-hmm. In Greek, the word for road is what? Hodas. So, hodas. You may have a child there, you know, on a bike, you may have a thing called a, what, an odometer? Oh, yeah. You see, what does an odometer do? Number of miles. How far are you? Yeah. It measures the road, right? It's a number of miles. It measures hodas, the road, okay? And, as a Christian, the word hodas there is very important in the Gospel, say, of St. John, right? Usually we translate it in English, we say, Christ says, I am the way, the truth, and the life, right? Now, the Greek word there, that's translated by way in English sometimes, is hodas. It's a much more concrete word than way, right? Christ is saying, I am the road. I am the road, I am the truth, I am the life, huh? Now, when Thomas explains that, the words of Christ, he says, as God, he's truth itself, and life itself, huh? As man, he's the road, right? So, as man, he's the road to himself as God, right? Now, it's interesting, the order which our Lord speaks there, right? Because he ascends from what pertains to himself as man, to what pertains to himself as, what, God, right? And this is the same thing that you find in the profession of faith that the church is built on, right? Because in Peter, in the 16th chapter of Matthew, makes his perfection of faith, he says, thou art the Christ, right? The Son of the living God. And of course, as man, he's Christ, or anointed, huh? Okay? So he goes from the human, to the, what? Divine, huh? And if you look at the beginning of the third part of the Summa Theologiae, where Thomas is going to talk now about the incarnation, and Christ as man, right? And he says, this part now is about Christ, who as man is the, what? He's the Latin word for hodas, there, via, via, you know? But he's the way of tending towards God, right? Okay? So as a Christian, we respect this word, hodas, right? Okay? But if you go back and read Plato and Aristotle, and even the philosophers before them, they will talk about a hodas in our, what? Knowledge, right? A road in our knowledge, huh? And Empedocles, for example, speaks of the broadest road that feeds into our mind, right? From the eyes and the hands and so on, right? He talks about the difficulty of knowing God, you know, along this road. So, the word road, of course, first of all means, which is out here, that I drove in on today, right? Okay. And that word, road, has been carried over, you know, applied to something up here inside of us, huh? I remember asking my son Paul, he has a little tiny top, Paul, what do you think of the basic road in our knowledge? I said to him one day. He says, there are trucks and cars on it, he said. So, he's stuck on the first menial road, right, huh? Now, why do we carry the word road over from that asphalt or cement or bricks, whatever it's made out of out there, you know? It's because of the asphalt or the cement or the bricks that we speak of a road in our knowledge or a road even in our mind. Is it by chance we carry the word road over, or is there some likeness of something up here inside of us in our knowledge to that road that I drove down or walked down in getting here? It's because of the likeness that there's a progression in each. Yeah, yeah. There's an order. Yeah, there's an order. So, basically you mean there's an order made before and after in our knowledge, huh? And that's where the likeness, where the likeness consists of, right? Okay? When you speak of an order in our knowledge, you mean that one thing is known before another, right? Or one thing is considered before another. And so on, huh? Okay? Now, what is the first road in our knowledge, huh? Senses and intuition. Yeah, yeah. And sometimes I use a syllogism here to bring that out. You've seen that syllogism before, I think, maybe, here, but let's give it again here. The first road in our knowledge is the natural road, huh? Nature, as you know, is the cause of many orders, right? The natural road in our knowledge is the road from the senses into reason, huh? The natural road in our knowledge is the road from the senses into reason, huh? And you can syllogize, right, that the first road in our knowledge is the road from the senses into reason, huh? Okay? That's a basic syllogism that I give. You syllogize that the first road in our knowledge is the road from the senses into reason, huh? In order to understand this syllogism, you've got to see the connection of the middle term, which is the natural road in our knowledge, with the minor and the major term, right? Okay? Now, why say that the first road in our knowledge is going to be the natural road in our knowledge? It's going to be the road which is made by nature, as distinguished from, say, the roads made by reason itself, huh? Why? We reason would presuppose nature. Okay? We're taking nature here perhaps in the sense of what a thing is, right? Okay? Now, what's first in a thing? It is, right? A thing must be what it is before it can be anything else. Kind of obvious, right? Okay? So, if you know that by nature we mean here what a thing is, and that a thing must be what it is before we mean anything else, then you can see that nature is what is first in a thing, huh? And therefore, it makes sense to see that the first road in our knowledge would be the natural road in our knowledge, huh? Because nature is what is first in a thing. Do you see that? Okay? Why would the natural road in our knowledge be the road from the senses into reason? Well, what's the nature of man? It's to be an animal, right? With reason, huh? That's the nature of man. As even Shakespeare talks, huh? An animal that has reason. I told you in my conversation with my mother, huh? I said man is an animal. My mother didn't like that. So, I came back and I said, well, I don't mean he's just an animal. He's an animal that has reason. Okay, that's better, she said. My mother never went to college, but she had some common sense, right? Okay? So, that's the nature of man, to be an animal with reason. Now, animal is defined by having, what? Senses. This is a distinction between an animal and a plant, right? And so, because man is an animal, he obviously has senses. But man is not just an animal. He's an animal that has, what? Reason, right? But now, in the development of something, what comes first, and what appears first, is the general, rather than the, what? Particular, right? And you can see that, for example, in the generation of a man, because I'm actually having to say a fertilized egg, right? What appears next? What we have that distinguishes us from the animals? No, not even what distinguishes us from the plants. What seems to come first is cell division, right? Grow, right? Something we have in common with the, what? The plants, right? And then, you begin to see, eventually, the senses, right? Okay? Now, it's a little easier to say, seven is the age of reason. I don't know what they meant by that exactly, but... Okay? What's more specific in man, right? In general, the development of anything comes, what? Later, right? Okay? So, since man is an animal with reason, what is animal-like in man, right? Develops before, what's specific to man, right? So, you go from the senses, then, into what? Reason, right? And so, we naturally think, at first, about what we sense. Not anything else, really, in the beginning, right? Do you see that? Okay? So, because the nature of man is to be an animal with reason, then the natural road in our knowledge is a road from the senses into reason. And because nature is what is first in the thing, a thing must be what it is, before it can be anything else, then the first road in our knowledge must be the natural road. And therefore, the first road in our knowledge is a road from the senses into reason. Kiwi-dias. You couldn't say. Do you see that? Okay? So, Aristotle is going to begin here to talk about this first road in our knowledge, or about this natural road in our knowledge. And as he starts to talk about it, you'll see that this first road is, in fact, going in the direction of wisdom. That as you go further along this road, you seem to be moving in the direction of wisdom, getting something more like wisdom. Or that what comes later along the road road seems wiser than what was limited to what came before, okay? So this road from the senses into reason is also, in a way, a road to wisdom. Wisdom being the highest or the greatest perfection of what? Reason, right? Okay? You know how the scientists tend to use the word reason, you know, in kind of a loose way, so even the apes have reason, right? But nevertheless, they call men the homo what? Sapiens, the wise, it means, huh? You see? Because you will think of wisdom as not the perfection of seeing or hearing or smelling or tasting, right? You know, the dog can smell things I can't smell. He's wiser than me. Nobody thinks that, you know, the cuteness of sensing is wisdom or because, you know, the little child doesn't need glasses or something, right? You know, and it sees better, you know, you know how grammar somebody comes with the things a child to read, you know, because you can't read the small print or something. You've seen that in your own grandmother or grandfather or somebody, you know? Or so you're an older person, you know, so I can't, you know, you know, glass you with a person to make that out. So everybody thinks of what? Wisdom as the highest perfection of reason. So as you go from the senses into reason, you're going towards perfection of reason, right? You're going towards the direction of wisdom, but as you go along this road, you'll see that in fact, the further we go, the more we seem to have something like wisdom. And so we're going to eventually get some idea of what this goal might be, huh? But notice Aristotle, like a good wise man, he often kills many birds with one stone, right? So he's not taking up the natural road here to give us a complete knowledge of the natural road or to unfold that. He's taking up the natural road here for the sake of getting some idea of what wisdom is aiming at, right? What the goal of our knowledge in a sense is. But at the same time, he does teach us some very valuable things to know about the natural road, huh? And you'll find that as you go through most of Aristotle's work some, that the reason why he takes up something here at this place, right, is not the only benefit you get from knowing what he takes up here at this place, right? See? It's kind of marvelous to see what he does, huh? Okay. Thank you very much.