Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 4: Wisdom, Teaching, and Knowledge of Causes

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So we think the teacher is wiser than the person who is taught, right, huh? And he's a man of art or science, but he's a man of experience. Well, you ask the man of experience, why should I do it this way? And he just says, look, kid, when you get to be my age, you'll see. And maybe you should listen to him because he does have the experience, right? But is that teaching in the fullest sense? Take my word for it. But 20 years from now, you'll see this. So the man who can give the reason why is more able to what? Teach fully. And if to teach is a sign of your knowing, then the man who knows the cause, right, being more able to teach must be more knowing than the man who's not so able to teach because he doesn't know the cause. So this is the second way he shows this, huh? For the artists, the scientists are able to teach while the others are not able. Notice, when you believe the teacher, that's only the beginning of learning, right? Until you see the reasons why yourself, you're not fully, what, taught, huh? You haven't fully learned it, huh? But the man of art of science can give you that fuller learning because he can explain why this should be that way. Remember, a student when I was first teaching at St. Mary's College in California, and he'd ask these moral questions of using the priest, you know, and they'd give him the correct answer, but they couldn't explain why this was wrong to do, right? So he'd come to me and I'd explain why. So he thought I was wise than the priest, huh? But notice, that's in terms of what? In a sense of teaching, right? You can give the reason why this is so, right? So that's the second way Aristotle shows this. Now, the third way is kind of a reduction to the, what? Indirectly approving, kind of reduction to the absurd or the impossible, right? And in a way, you could stake this third argument by saying, does wisdom consist more in a knowledge of the singular and that it is so, or does wisdom consist more in a knowledge of the universal and why it is so, okay? Which of these is more like wisdom, right? Because it's got to be one or the other, right? And then he's going to show something absurd or unreasonable that follows if you say wisdom consists chiefly in a knowledge of the singular and that it is so. And that consequence to saying this, really, would be to say that wisdom is sensing. I mean, if you take, let's say, memory and sensing, which is more trustworthy? Yeah. And sometimes I remember a building or I remember something, right? And I go back and I look at that building again or that thing again, and I correct my memory. I know myself, you know, I often memorize a little passage in Shakespeare or somebody else, right? And after a certain period of time, even if I memorize it correctly, it gets a little bit messed up in my head, huh? And I'll be recording it with a slight variation of the original passage, right? And then I go back and I look at the printed text there of Shakespeare, wherever it is, and then I realize, oh, gee whiz, how could I have what? Yeah. So as far as the knowledge of the singular is concerned, sensing is more authoritative. For a kid. than even memory, right? And as to whether it is or is not so, right? Sensing is more, right? I see you're sitting, right? Now, I don't see you anymore, but I can remember you're sitting, right? Is that as sure as my looking at you? That's it. Okay. So, as far as the knowledge of the singular, and that is so, sensing is more authoritative than even memory. And experience, as we saw, is just a collection of memories, right? So, if wisdom consists chiefly in knowing the singular, and that is so, then sensing would be what? Wisdom, right? And the newborn baby who doesn't need glasses, and therefore sees better than I do, right? Would be wiser than me. But Aristotle says nobody thinks that sensing is what? Wisdom, do they? Because the dog can sniff out something, he's wiser. Than us, huh? Do you see that? Okay. So, that's what he's doing. That's a little bit like the way Euclid reasons there, huh? Where he says, you know, the sixth theorem of the first book there. In a triangle, if these angles are equal, these sides will be equal, right? Or, they'll be unequal. But if they're unequal, then he shows what follows from that. That the part is equal to the whole, he'll show eventually. So, something unreasonable or absurd follows from saying that these sides are unequal. Well, since they must either be equal or unequal, and something absurd follows from saying they're unequal, then they must be what? Equal, right? So, wisdom is either a knowledge of the singular and that is so, or a knowledge more of the universal and why is so. But if it was that first one, then you would follow that sensing is wisdom. But nobody thinks sensing is wisdom, huh? As I said before, when I ask a class of freshmen, you know, do you think wisdom comes in the beginning of our knowledge, or in the middle, or at the end? They'll invariably say, at the end, huh? But certainly never, at the very beginning, huh? And that's why I think experience comes with time, and it comes at all, right? You see the way he's arguing there, right? Okay. I noticed something that you can see in the order of our knowledge as you go from sensing to memory to experience, and now to art or science, huh? That our knowledge is moving from the singular and that it is so towards a knowledge universal and why it is so, which means the knowledge of the cause, right? So that's the direction which our knowledge is moving, right? Now, the Aristotle's not going to try to show this in this first reading fully. You could almost anticipate, right? That that's the direction which our knowledge is moving. Then, at the end of our knowledge, you'd have the knowledge that is most universal, right? And goes as far as you can in knowing the cause, which would be to know not only the cause of the cause, but the very, what? First cause, huh? Okay. But in the second reading, huh? As we'll see, he wants to bring out more slowly, right? That what you'd anticipate already from the way that you're going, right? That wisdom will be the most universal knowledge and the knowledge that goes the furthest of all in knowing the what? The cause of the sun, okay? So, but like we said, as you go north, towards the North Pole, things get colder, right? For the most part. And so you anticipate then the North Pole would be like, really very cold, right? Okay? But then Aristotle is going to be very careful and give you some extra reasons to think that he's very cold up there in addition to, you know, what you're saying. See what Aristotle is doing, right? He's enabling us to kind of... Anticipate what wisdom would be a knowledge of in the very premium here, right? He's kind of paving the way, right? We're kind of seeing that, say, knowledge more of the universal and the cause than a knowledge of the effector. This thing is right. If you go all the way, wouldn't this be the most universal knowledge, huh? And go as far as you can in knowing the cause. But you want to emphasize more it's knowing the cause than it's knowing the universal. And certainly in terms of the excellence that wisdom is the best knowledge there is, it's going to be in terms of the cause than of the universal. Now in the next paragraph he begins to distinguish a bit among the arts or senses. It is probable that the first one finding any art beyond the senses common to all was admired by men, right? Not only because some of the things found were useful, but also as wise and distinguished from others, right? Now we're so accustomed to the, what, telephone and things of that sort, right? But, you know, I talk to people up in Canada, I talk to people, you know, I talk to some in Europe, right? And the first man to invent a telephone would be what? Yeah, not because it was so useful, although it is very useful, but because it's what? Yeah, yeah, okay. But now he says, many arts having been found, some being for necessities, and some for passing the time, what? Pleasantly, right? Always the finers of the latter were considered wiser, because their sciences were not for practical use. Now, Aristotle is making a distinction here between the arts or sciences that serve the necessities of life, like the art of farming, right? Or the art of digging wells or something, right? The arts of cooking, right? Bearing food. The art of the tailor, right? Making clothing. Art of the shoemaker and so on, right? But now when you have the necessities of life, and you've got your clothes on, and you've got your shoes on, and you've had a good meal and so on, now what do you do for the rest of the evening? Well, in the Odyssey, you see that Demodocus, you know, is brought in, huh? He takes his harp off the wall, and he plucks the strings, and now he sings of what? The fall of Troy, right? And so on. Who's considered wiser, right? Demodocus or the cook? Even in Plato, you find the common saying of the Greeks, you know, Homer, he's a teacher of all the Greeks. Would they say that about a cook? Or about a shoemaker? He's a teacher of all the Greeks? No. And sometimes you hear Shakespeare said to be a teacher of all the English-speaking people, right? If not, other nations, too, that have had him translated, right? So we think of the great poets, huh? Like Homer or Shakespeare, right? As being wiser than the great cook or the great shoemaker, okay? But the shoemaker or the cook are more concerned with the necessities of life, right? Why, Homer is trying to please us. You know, Shakespeare says at the end of his plays, and will strive to please you every day, okay? But again, the fact that we think of Shakespeare as being wiser, it seems to be more something that you just want to, what? Hear, right? See the plays of Shakespeare, huh? You're not going to go out and make dinner with Hamlet, huh? Or make a shoe with Macbeth or something, right? And then he seems to speak of a third kind of art or science, huh? Which is not for necessity or for pleasure, but simply for what? Knowing. When's... All of these sciences having been built up, those sciences were found that are neither for pleasure nor for necessities. And first in those places where men had, what? Leisure, right? Hence the mathematical sciences first began around Egypt, for there the priestly class was allowed leisure, right? When he speaks of mathematics, you've got to be careful, because in modern times we think of mathematics in terms of algebra, calculus, and we're thinking of math as a kind of what? Tool, right? But if you go back to the Greek word mathematician, which is a Greek word originally, what does that mean? If you look up in the Greek dictionary, matematos, the Greek word, on the end of the year, matematos, usually the first thing they'll give is one who is fond of learning. It's almost like a synonym of the other Greek word philomathes, which means philo, lover, matematos, learning, right? So the philomathes is a little bit like a philosopher, isn't it? And Plato says in the dialogues, a philosopher must be a philomathes. But notice, a lover of learning is not as focused as a lover of wisdom, right? Because wisdom is the end of all learning, huh? And you're zeroing in on that, right? But you can see that a philomathes, a philosophos, would have to be a philomathes, right? Okay? I mention that because in that sense, the mathematician, the Greek sense of the word, right? The actual meaning of the word. And philosopher are very similar, aren't they? And some people are surprised when they hear that Pythagoras, right? Seems to be the man who coined the word philosopher. Pythagoras made some wonderful discoveries, especially in geometry, right? Some wonderful discoveries about numbers. And so men wanted to call him what? Wise, huh? And he said, don't call me wise. Why not? Well, God alone is wise, you know? Only God is wise really fully, in the full sense. Well, what am I going to call you that? Don't call you wise. Well, call me a lover of wisdom, right? Now notice, in that origin, the term lover of wisdom, there's not only the love of wisdom, which the word etymologically has in it, right? But also, in the origin of the word, there is the humility of the true philosopher, right? That the true philosopher is humble. That is to say, he doesn't think he's wise, or can be wise, in the way God is, right? And as you go through the greatest of the Greek philosophers, all the way down to and including Plato and Aristotle, they all say that same thing, right? The great Heraclitus said that as an ape is to a man, so is man to God, right? And as the ape is ugly in comparison to a man, in ignorant comparison to a man, right? So man is like an ape in comparison to God. Or he has another proportion, as a child is to a man, so is man to God, right? And when you read about Socrates there, in his autobiographical sketch in the Apology, right? What did the oracle of Delphi mean, saying that no one is wiser than Socrates, huh? I'm so ignorant, I call me wise, huh? And maybe in some human sense, I'm wise, but certainly not in any full sense of the word, right? And so you find, and Aristotle will say here at the end, you know, either God owed you, he said, to be wise, right? Or only God in the full sense, huh? So you find that humility, huh? In the origin of the word philosopher. But going back again, you see, if Pythagoras is a Mathematikos in the Greek sense of the word, a lover of learning, a Philomathes, it's very much like what we mean by an English philosopher. They're both being named, not familiar with the word, Their love of money, or their love of shoes, or their love of dinner, or their love of doing something, right? But simply from their wanting to what? Know, right? The guy wants to know how to make money, we wouldn't call him a lover of learning, would we? No, we'd call him a lover of money, right? But if we call him a lover of learning, he seems to want to know for its own sake. So you've got to realize that Greek meaning there, huh? Because what we call mathematics in modern times, or things that were invented more in later times, like algebra, calculus, and other more things, certainly the way they're taught in our schools, they're taught as a, what, practical tool, right? But certainly not as something that's wonderful in itself. I know myself as a freshman in high school, I think what we had was algebra, right? And then we had some geometry, but it was very poorly taught in a sense. But it's not until I got Euclid and started reading him, you know, I said, gee, well, these are really interesting just to be what? Known, huh? And I like the old word you find in sometimes, you know, books, where you call these things a theorem, right? Well, theorem and theoretical, they come for the Greek word to look at, right? So kind of the meaning of the theorem is something to look at. You're not going to do anything about it, it's just something very interesting to look at. When, in Democracy in America, when Alexis de Tocqueville talks about the ancient mathematicians, like Archimedes and so on, they didn't want to do anything practical with this, you know? They wanted to just take, consider things that are really beautiful, the simplicity and so on, wonderful to be what? Known, okay? So you've got to kind of bear that in mind here, because if you think of mathematics and the way algebra was or something like that, the way these things were taught us perhaps in school, you wouldn't see this, right? Now, of course, in our modern science, experimental science, it's kind of a mixed thing, because it's a union of natural science and technical science, union of science and technology, they call it sometimes. Thomas would call it probably a union of natural philosophy and mechanical arts, right? And the oldest part of modern science is a witness to that, because it's called, what, mechanics, the first part of physics, the oldest part. Well, physics comes to the big word for nature, mechanics from the mechanical servile arts. But yet, who do we think is wiser, even in the modern sciences? Well, they make Einstein the, what, man of the century, right? I don't say he is, but he got that thing on Time Magazine, wasn't it, 2000, right? Okay, so Einstein is admired, right? When you see books on him, you know. Is he admired for doing or for knowing? No. Yeah, yeah. And even the popular books, you know, Lincoln, Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein, right? Here's a man who currently understands the universe, or more than other people understand it anyway, right? You see? But he can't do anything about the universe as a whole, right? So, it's in terms of knowing that we admire Einstein, right? Some of the physicists say, well, we end up making it out of Bob, not exactly the only way he's going to lead to, but we kind of lost our reputation of being wise in some of the things we made, maybe. So, it's not in terms of doing that they were considered to be wise, huh? So, Aristotle there has developed a little bit of the idea that was touched upon there when he talked about the chief artist being, what? Thought wiser, not because he does, but because he knows, right? But here he's developed a little bit more. Now, he's been using the word art and science or technique and epistabia and so on kind of interchangeably for a knowledge of the universal and a knowledge of... of why things are so. But he's spoken more precisely about these things in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, right? And so, lest you think that he doesn't see any difference between them, he says, what the difference is between art and science and other things of the same kind has been said in the ethics, in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics. Now he goes to kind of the grand conclusion of this first reading, which is the end of the first half of the first half or first part of the premium. But that for the sake of which we have now made a discourse is this, that all hold what is called wisdom to be about the first causes and beginnings. Now here I was kind of anticipating, right? Actually what he's shown so far is that the man who knows the cause is wiser than the man who really knows that it is so, right? But kind of follow from that, that the man who knows the cause of the cause would be what? What? Wiser. Yeah. And therefore the man who knows the first cause would be the wisest of all, right? So he's kind of anticipating what he's going to show, right? Okay. That all hold what is called wisdom to be about the first causes and beginnings. So as has been said before, the experienced man, the man of experience, seems to be wiser than any of those having what? Sensing, right? And he's kind of contracting there, right? You could say the man, or the animal for that matter, that has memory, right? Is wiser than the animal that merely has sensing but no memory. But the man of experience is wiser than the man of what memory or sensation, right? The artist, the man who knows the universe so and why it is so, then the man of experience, right? The chief artist, then the handicrafts man. And incidentally, he's going to bring out later on that the wise man orders or directs others, right? And you see that already anticipated that the chief artist is directing others, right? So if the chief artist is wiser, right? That man will be wisest of all who directs others and is directed by nobody else. You see, that's why God is being wise. Okay? And the looking sciences, right? More than the, what? Making, huh? It's interesting how that Shakespeare's works are called, what? His major works are called? No. What do you call them in English? Don't call them dramas, but we call them what? Oh. Plays, yeah. If you look at Thomas there, I think it's his premium to the Dehebdomaribus there of Boethius. And he quotes one of the sapiential books, huh? Run into your house and play with your thoughts. And Thomas compares the philosophical life to play, right? It's a kind of serious play, but it's like play. And why does scripture make that comparison? Well, because play is pleasant and philosophy is pleasant. And because play seems to be kind of for its own sake, huh? And philosophy is for its own sake, right? So it's kind of anticipation there of the philosophical life in the plays of, what? Shakespeare. But notice, in the very last sentence, he kind of, what? Draws back, right? At least we can say it is clear that wisdom is about beginnings and causes. as if we could clarify more that it's about the cause of the cause and most of all about the first cause. Okay? You see that? Okay? You see what Airstyle's doing here? He's trying to develop an agreement about what wisdom is from what we all know. We all know that the animal that has memory is wiser than the animal that has only sensing. And we all know that the man of experience is wiser than the man of one memory. It's a little more difficult to see that the man of art or science is wiser, but we saw even evidence for that in our common thinking that the medical doctor is wiser than the pharmacist and in general than the man who really obeys him, right? And so... He's trying to bring out a common understanding of what wisdom is. He's clarifying some of the thoughts that you have scattered in your head about who's wiser, right? Or who's more knowing. He's not, in other words, trying to bring out what... It's a private thought of Aristotle about what wisdom is, right? Like everybody's got his own thought about what wisdom is. Now, he's trying to bring out from things that we all kind of know, right? And can all reflect upon, knowing that this must be what wisdom makes us, huh? It must be a knowledge about causes. Notice he ends up in that note, right? Rather than it's about the universal, right? Okay? Although that's been brought out, too, huh? And we brought out again. Do you see? You're going to be idiots, huh? Living in a private... There are many exceptions out there. Do what? In this thing that you're telling us, the experience is second. The one who knows is first. So, for example, a grandparent has a sense about children. Yeah. And then there's a person who may be an expert on how children should be raised. So they give all this information. They write these things down and say, and the one who has raised a generation and maybe saw a second generation who raised it, I don't think this is going to work. Or even like, say, for example, I know this story. The engineers were putting in Route 80 across the states. I know some of them lived in Wyoming, and the farmer was watching these people. And the experts, and the experts, maybe I'm not putting this in the right context here, but the farmers went over to the experts and said, what are you doing? They said, well, we're going to put in a highway. The guy said, what? I mean, he challenged it. So I don't know if this is the right, if it's right to put this. Well, no, you're thinking the point that Aristotle makes, that the man of experience, as far as making or doing is concerned, right, may be superior to the man of art or science. In other words, Aristotle is more nuanced, right? You see? He's not saying that the man of art or science is in every way superior to the man of experience. In fact, in terms of the first difference between them, that the one knows the singular, right, or singular, and the other knows universal, from that difference, he reasons that at least as far as doing is concerned, the man of experience may be better, and often is better, you see? Okay? But as far as knowing, right, in being wise, he's saying that the man of art or science is more so, not so much because he knows the universal, although it may have something to do with it, but primarily he's reasoning from the fact that he knows the cause. He knows why. Okay? And so, in terms of doing and in terms of life, the man of experience may succeed, what? Much better, right, than the man of art or science. And so Aristotle would say, especially when he gets into practical philosophy, right, he would talk about the importance of listening to the man of what? Experience, yeah. So the husband may know that this is going to upset the woman, or she'll be upset if this happens. Why should she be upset? He doesn't know. But as far as avoiding upsetting her or so on, he can see better, right? Okay? And he can kind of, from knowing, or even from knowing this woman, because not every woman is upset equally by the same things, right? He knows that he'd better take care of that or she will be upset, right? And a man who might know all kinds of universal things about women, right, would not know as well as a husband what this woman that he's married to is going to get upset about, huh? You see? Yeah. The same way, you know, even like in my experience in the academic world, right, huh? I kind of know the way things are going to go. I don't know why they should go that way, because they're crazy. A lot of the things. I know they're going to go that way. right, you see? And I know people's failings and what they're going to be like, you know, and what to expect. You see? Okay. So Aristotle was fairly brief as showing that the animal who has memory is superior to the animal that merely has sense, or that the man of experience is superior to the matter of one memory, right? Because there isn't really much, what, reason to contest, right? When you get to experience an art of science, well then, I don't know. There was a famous remark of Buckley about Lord Bertrand Russell, right? And I guess he set up a school in England, and the principal of the school was Liberty. Of course, the kids wrecked the school, right? Physically, right? And so, he said that, someone said afterwards, he said, Bertrand Russell's living proof that all the symbolic logic in the world is no substitute for common sense. Which you might say is no substitute for experience either, right? You know? As far as doing is concerned, right? All the theory in the world is no substitute for experience, huh? Can you drop that? You made the distinction that it was an important point that he, Aristotle concludes with, saying wisdom is about beginnings and causes as opposed to universals. I didn't quite catch the importance of that. He's not denying it. It's about the universal, too. Right. But why would he make the special point beginnings and causes instead of... Well, you'll see this more clearly, maybe, when you get to the third reading, you know, where he's going to talk about the excellence of this knowledge. Okay. He's going to see the excellence of manian being about God, right? And God is not a universal set of all things. He's not, there'll be a pantheistic notion of God, but God is the first, what? Cause. So the, for one reason is the excellence of wisdom consists in its knowing the cause more than its knowing universal. And we saw it even anticipated in that the excellence of art or science over experience, right, is not in terms so much of its knowing universal. In fact, from that difference, he reasoned to its inferiority in some respect, right? But he reasoned to its superiority as far as knowing and being wise in terms of the cause, huh? Okay. Now, um, later on, when you get to what I call the great turnaround in the physics, huh? You'll see more clearly that Aristotle was right to emphasize that, huh? Okay. But just, just a little bit from with him. If someone said to you that at the end of all our knowledge, the last reasoned out understanding there is, after you have geometry and arithmetic and natural philosophy and ethics and political philosophy, then there comes this most universal knowledge, right? This most general, right? Some might say, that doesn't seem to me to be wisdom, you know? You know, if someone says, you know, um, let's be very general. This is something, right? Couldn't be more general than that, could you? Because something is sort of everything, right? This is something. Does that make me wiser than the guy who said this is paper? And maybe knows what paper is? At first sight, to say that you're knowing the most universal, you know, well, this is something. This is something. That's the end and goal of our knowledge. Haven't I advanced more when I know that this is water and this is paper, right? Isn't our knowledge perfected as you know these things in particular what they are? There's something, see? But if I know you're an animal, I'm much closer to you than if I say there's something, right? I know you're better, right? If I know you're a man, and with reason, that's even closer, right? So at first sight, it would seem that the man who knows the most universal is the weakest.