Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 7: Wisdom as Contemplative, Liberal, and Divine Knowledge

Transcript
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And notice he compares it to the, what, philomuthos, right? Okay. Let's examine the word philomuthos first. Philo, like these other words derived in Greek, means a lover, right? And the second part, of course, is a lover of. Now, the first meaning of muthos in Greek, probably, would be what we call philomuthos. And we don't have exactly the same myths that the Greeks had. But maybe our fairy tales would be the nearest thing to a myth, right? Now, notice, when you like the fairy tale, and you're hearing these stories about Little Red Ridinger or something, and you wonder what's going to happen to Little Red Ridinger when she gets to her grandmother's house and so on, but do you wonder because you want to make or do something with this knowledge? No. See? No. It's because your wonder's been aroused by the story. Okay. Then, later on, myth takes on the broader meaning, simply, of a lover of what? Stories, right? Okay. In Aristotle's book about the poetic art, it even takes on the precise sense of the plot, right? Okay. And you can perhaps understand this comparison in any of these senses of Muprasa. But the love we have of stories and so on is not in order to help us make or do something, right? Especially one of those dumb professors that makes us living getting lectures about stories. But, you know, people will read a novel, let's say, or they'll watch a movie beyond their bedtime, right? And not get enough sleep to do their job the next day, right? And they're not going to learn from the story of the novel something to help them in their job tomorrow, right? So, they seem to be pursuing knowledge, in a way, out of what? Wonder, right, huh? So, the Philomuthas, in a way, is like the, what? Philosopher, right? And what's interesting, huh? We're not sure of the exact dates of the greatest poet there, Homer. Homer, but some estimate it at least 150 years before the first, what? Philosopher, right? Okay. And in a way, Homer, by writing these great epics that arouse the wonder of the Philomuthas, is preparing the way for the, what? Philosopher, right? Now, it's easier to be a Philomuthas than a Philosophas. Okay. And, but, would a man become a philosopher if he's not a Philomuthas first? The Philomuthas, or the wonder, I'll say, of the Philomuthas, is kind of a stepping stone to the wonder of the, what? Philosopher. And so, if Homer had not come first, right? If Homer had not written these great epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey and so on, that arouse the wonder, right? And you see, I wonder, even in Plato and Aristotle, right? Plato talks about this, you know, among all the poets, Homer arouses this wonder, right? In the Republic, he talks about that, right? So, the story is told, you know, that Plato would find him to be one type of poet himself, right? You see? But then, by Socrates, it's led to something even higher, right? You see Aristotle's great love of Homer there in the, what? Poetic, the book about the Poetic Arc, huh? And Aristotle wrote a work just on Homer for Alexander the Great, a student. And so, when Alexander conquered the world, he kept a copy of Homer by his bedside, huh? And so, it's easy to see that the Philomuthos is moved by, what? Wonder, right? And so, the likeness of the Philomuthos, he seems to be something of a, what? Philosopher, right? It's a sign that philosophy also began in wonder. And you can't really be a philosopher without being a Philomuthos. You couldn't be a Philomuthos without being a philosopher, but not to be heard, huh? So, I've never known a great philosopher like Plato or Aristotle, or even like, you know, Charles DeConnick. who wasn't also something of a what? Philomuthos, right? And had an appreciation of Homer and Sophocles and the greatest poets, huh? That's it. That's a beautiful way our style has manifesting this, right? And Albert the Great, when he's commenting on this, he's talking about the wonder of the Philomuthos and so on. And he says, Poetry, he says, Dot modem admirandi. It gives us the way of wondering, right? It teaches us how to, what? Wonder, huh? One thing kind of interesting here, too, about the Philomuthos and the Great Books of Fiction, in the book about the poetic art, Aristotle asks, Is fiction about the universal or about the singular? And he argues that fiction, great fiction, right, is more about the universal than about the singular? Now, take a simple example of this. Let's take the famous Roma and Juliet, right? You know? This is a story of an historical pair of lovers living in Verona in the 14th century, or whatever century it was. Or, when you see Roma and Juliet, you think, this is young lovers. They're seeing something more, what? Universal and the singular, so to speak, right? So Aristotle makes the remark in the book about the poetic art that poetry, in a sense, is more philosophic than history is, huh? In that history is about the singular, right? As such, right? And, well, we call it pure historian, right? They want to know the singular, right? Just like the biographer, right? He wants to know Winston Churchill, or he wants to know Abraham Lincoln, or whoever he's writing about, right? This individual man, right? See? While the poet is more interested in the, what? Universal. And, you know, take the famous, Sophocles is probably the greatest poet of the Greeks after Homer. So the Greeks had a saying, you know, that Homer is, what? Sophocles writing epic and vice versa. But Sophocles, now, when Oedipus has this downfall, right? You know, the chorus in the Greek plays comes in, kind of almost like a commentary, you know? Well, it doesn't come in and say, oh, Oedipus, right? It comes in and says, oh, you generations of men, right? It's as if you see something universal in the downfall of this man, right? About man in the, what? Condition, right? So there's something universal about that, huh? That's why it's kind of a mistake, you know, if you read Shakespeare's Silence, huh? There's about 150 of them. There are all kinds of theories about he was involved with this woman or this man or whatever it was, you know? Yeah, right. But actually, the silence is something very, what? Universal, right? And where there was something in his life, you know? Yeah. Exemplify these things is kind of beside the point, huh? He's saying something in the sonnet that is, what? Universal, huh? The thought or feeling you might have in these circumstances, right? Right, huh? Well, maybe Shakespeare, for all we know, was interested in some woman who turned him down or something, right? There's something universal here, you know? People have been let down by it in this way. And in the sonnet, you see the universality about it, huh? Now, why do I mention this, right? Because philosophy is a wonder about the universal. Biography, or history, is a wonder about the, what, singular individual, right? Well, it's kind of hard to go from wondering about the singular to wondering about the, what, universal. But the great work of fiction, huh? It's sort of in between, huh? Because it's closer to the singular insofar as there's kind of this sense of representation of things, right? But the sonnet's described, you know, the work of fiction as universal, singularized, right? Or the singular, universalized, right? But you see something universal in Romeo and Juliet and the other great plays and epics, huh? So what does Job say? Man's life on earth is like a warfare, right? That's what you get when you read the Iliad, right? You see the... So, man's life is a struggle, huh? So, I often say to students, you know, how are you doing in the great struggle of life? You know, it's kind of used by that. That's the way I put it in the question. But it's kind of appropriate, right? The human situation, huh? So you see something universal in there, right? This is not the Trojan War. It's not a historical account of a battle that took place, you know? This is not D-Day, you know, and the Life magazine pictures of D-Day or something, right? So, since our knowledge starts with the senses, and the senses know the singular, it's probably easier to wonder about the singular, right? So you go to the supermarket, which maybe you guys don't do, but, you know, there's all these cheap things, you know, about the movie actresses and Princess Diana and the rest of them, you know? And apparently people buy this junk, you know? But you're wondering about this movie actor or this movie actress or this princess, whoever it is, right? That's very far from the wonder of the philosopher. It's kind of an idle curiosity, right, huh? You see? But when you read Shakespeare, you seem to learn something, what? Universal about life, right? And now you're starting to go from the singular towards the universal. And so the wonder of the philomuthos is more a wonder about the universal. A wonder about young lovers rather than a historical pair of, you know, unfortunate lovers in 14th century Verona, which there may or may not have been, right? But there was, right? That's not what you're seeing in the play, huh? You see that? Shakespeare, you know, it's the history plays, which are history plays, right? But you change the history a bit to make it more interesting and more dramatic and so on, right? So you judge it as a historical document, huh? You see? It changes the ages of people and so on and makes them, you know, no emulation, everything in Hotspur and Prince Hal. Well, they're a different age than two men actually in real life. But you have this, you know, two men competing for glory there. So it's something universal he wants to bring out, huh? So it was kind of a stippling stone then, right? I know myself, when I first read through all the plays of Shakespeare, you know, it's like you've seen the whole of life in some general way, right? See what it's all about, right? And you've satisfied some of your curiosity about life, right? Buy these magazines down there with the... They're never going to satisfy your curiosity. It's just on and on and on. It's not like those stupid, what do they call them, soap operas, you know? They're always in some dilemma, you know? There's nothing universal, right? Because on, on, on, on, you know? So no, so the likeness of the Philomuthos to the philosopher, right? It resembles him a bit, right? And, but also the wonder of the Philomuthos is a stippling stone to that of the wonder of the philosopher. So all of this is kind of a confirmation that philosophy began in what? Wonder, right, huh? Okay. Is that clear enough? Yeah. Yeah. That's the first thing he brings out, and that's the way he brings it out. But now, in the second paragraph, he gives a second sign that it's looking knowledge, right? It says, what happened witnesses this, huh? When almost all necessary things, right? Like food and clothing, right? Shelter and so on. And also those recreation, like you have a little bit of music, maybe, and some fiction and so on, right? When those things existed, then such knowledge began to be, what? Sought, right? So if a man is hungry, is he going to philosophize? No. If he's dying of thirst, is he going to philosophize? If he's shivering, you know, from the cold and so on, you know, how can he get some shelter or get some heat or something, right? Okay. So long as his bodily needs are not in some way, what, satisfied or assured, he's going to be seeking this, what, practical knowledge, right? You know, okay? And then when you get, in the day, you want a little bit of amusement, right, huh? So you want some music, you know, or some fiction or something like that to kind of, you know, cover from the day. These practical things, right? So it's only after the arts that are providing necessities of life, life right there, right? And then the, what? Some of the amusements, right? Okay. That men would begin to philosophize. They don't necessarily philosophize if they have those things, right? But before they have those things, they don't, what? Start to philosophize. So that shows it's not something practical. Now, I come from kind of an unusual family, you might say, in this respect, because I have two brothers, and all three of us are, what? Philosophers, right? Okay. So how do we become philosophers, right? Well, my father was not a philosopher. He was a, what? Self-made businessman, right? Okay. My grandfather was not a, grandfather Berkowitz was not a philosopher. Now, my grandfather Berkowitz came over from Sweden at the age of 15 and became the, what, blacksmith in Parkes Prairie, Minnesota. I did you think he philosophized? Didn't have time. No. They say he drank a little bit, right? But, you know, bigger blacksmiths is a rather hard work, huh? And you're exhausted physically at the end of the day, right? So, probably don't make that much money, right? So, he's not going to philosophize, right? He's just trying to make ends meet, huh? It's not easy to do so, right? Now, my father is a son of this man. In Parkes Prairie, when my father was a boy, there wasn't even a high school in town. Is he going to philosophize, do you think? Hmm? No. He's going to try to maybe improve his circumstances a bit in life over my grandfather, right? So, my father managed to go to the larger town of Alexandria, Minnesota, which had a high school. But now my father had to work his way through high school because his father obviously couldn't afford to send him to Alexandria, Minnesota, a little bigger town, to go to high school. So, my father got a job in some kind of a factory and got a little bit of money, but not enough money to really be able to afford a room. So, he talked to the owner and let him sleep in the factory at nighttime. One guy felt sorry for my father, so he said, okay. Okay. Do you think my father was going to be philosophizing, pursuing this knowledge for its own sake, huh? So, my father never had an opportunity to even go to college or anything like that, right? But he was an intelligent man, huh? And so, he worked his way up, right? And he became a manager, right? And finally, he accumulated a little money, got his own company, right? Okay. Now, we're never, you know, what you call wealthy, but, you know, necessities of life right now, somewhat taken care of, right? So, my father ends up with three philosophers, huh? Now, philosophers don't make too much money, so none of our children, probably, or very few of them will be, you know, philosophers, right, huh? Maybe every third generation will, right? But I see the truth of what Aristotle is saying here, right? It wasn't in my grandfather, the blacksmith, right? That you had any philosophers, even my father's generation, right? But once, some of the necessities of life, right? My father's idea was, you know, get as much education as you can. He didn't know exactly what it was all for, but, you know? And he expected us to work in the summer, you know, help, you know, pay for college and so on, right? But he wanted us to go as far as he could, you know, huh? So, you know, with three philosophers, right? See? But this is the truth of what Aristotle is saying here, right? When almost all necessary things, and those recreation and amusement existed, then such knowledge began to be sought, right? So we had the necessities of life there provided, you might say, and we had a phonograph there where I could play Mozart on, so my recreation and amusement was now satisfied, and I had a complete edition of Shakespeare, so now what? Now what do you do? And now you start to pursue knowledge for its own sake, or else we become a playboy. One of the two, right? So it doesn't mean you necessarily become, you might become a playboy rather than a philosopher, but the point is you won't become a philosopher until the necessities of life, and even some of the relaxation or recreation or amusement has been provided, huh? So I used to joke about how you didn't do something to philosophy, right? And you'd come in, there'd be a nice room here, and a nice table set out, and we'd have dinner together. And you'd have nice food and some wine, and learn to appreciate the wine and so on. And then, uh, there's a door to come into this room, but another door locked at the other end, huh? And after seeing if some people, you know, maybe ate and drank somewhat moderately, but appreciate a good wine, so that door at the far end would be open one night, huh? You'd go in there, and there it is, the music of Mozart, huh? And then you'd spend some time after dinner, you know, in the room listening to Mozart, right? But beyond that, there was another door locked there. And after people appreciated Mozart one night, that door would be open. Go in there, and there's beautiful bound editions of Shakespeare and Homer and Sophocles, right? You see, some people would stop at the first place, right, to get to dinner. Some with the music. Some would go on now to Shakespeare and Homer and Sophocles, right? And then the room beyond that, then you start to get into, what, philosophy, right? So you're gradually being introduced to these things, right? But you're getting further away from the stages of life, got to eat, got to drink, got to, right? Do you see that? Okay? So that clear enough? So the first two paragraphs, which are on the bottom of page 4, are concerned with showing now this first point, that this is looking now. Now, when we apply the word liberal in Latin, which comes from liber, meaning free, it's by an analogy, as Aristotle points out here, that we speak of some knowledge as being liberal and some knowledge as being, what, survived or slavish, you might say. Okay? You've got to realize that in the ancient world, and even our world up until very recently, you always had free men and what? Slaves, right? Okay? I wonder if we should have free men and slaves is another question, that's for a political philosophy. Okay? But everybody is familiar with the difference between a free man and a slave, right? And the fundamental difference is that the slave exists for the sake of the free man, to serve him, right? Why the free man exists, what? For his own sake. Well, then, by analogy, they carried over the word servile, liberal, from human beings, to our knowledge, right? And a knowledge that is for its own sake, they called what? Liberal or free. And a knowledge that was not for its own sake, but for the sake of something else, like a servant of that other thing, right? They called servile or slavish. Now, this is basically an analogy, right? It might be, of course, that the men who were slaves in society may engage in servile knowledge, right? And the men who were free might be more involved in liberal knowledge, right? But that's not the main point, right? The main point is the analogy, right? Why do you call some knowledge liberal and some knowledge servile, right? Well, it's because we stood in likeness, huh? It stood in proportional likeness to the difference between a free man and a slave, right? That the slave is not for his own sake, but for the sake of his master, right? The master, the free man, is for his own sake, right? So, by analogy to that difference among human beings and all the ancient societies, they saw a difference between a knowledge that's for its own sake and a knowledge that's for the sake of making or doing something. And so, they called the former knowledge liberal and the latter, what? Servile, right? So, what liberal education meant to the Greeks or to the Latins, medievals, is a knowledge that's for its own sake, right? A knowledge that's just for the good of the mind itself. By servile knowledge is not a knowledge that's for the good of the mind, but for the good of your body or your possessions, your house, your car, or whatever else it might be, huh? But not for the good of your, what, mind, right? Not something for the sake of knowing. So, you see how that's going to follow from the fact that wisdom is looking knowledge, right? And not practical. It's, what, liberal knowledge and not, what, servile knowledge, huh? And Aristotle goes so far as to say, in some sense, wisdom is the only knowledge that is fully liberal. Because the lesser things, even in looking at philosophy, we study for the sake of knowing the higher things, huh? So I mentioned how Thomas says, you know, I study the body so I can study the soul. And I study the soul so I can study the angels. And I study the angels so I can study God. But I don't study God for the sake of knowing anything else. That's it. That's the end, right? So it's, these, knowledge of the lower things for the sake of the higher things. So, wisdom, which is a knowledge of the highest thing, is going to be the only knowledge that is fully, for its own sake, right? And therefore, fully, what, liberal. Do you see that? So that's the second thing he says about this kind of knowledge, huh? So he talks about the proportion there. But as we call a man free, that is for himself and not for another. For a slave is for the sake of another, right? For his master. So this alone is free among the sciences. For this alone is for the sake of itself, huh? You might want to say fully, right? For its own sake. You see how that follows from the first thing? Now, the third thing is, some of you might say, well, it's just a minute now. It's not very practical what you're saying, Mr. Brunner. You see? And Aristotle is fully aware of the fact that this doesn't seem to be the kind of knowledge that fits the human condition, right? And notice, huh? If you go back in history, people sometimes could spend their whole day trying to get the necessities of life. And maybe not get them always, huh? Maybe every day I go hunting. Or berry gathering or something, right? And some days I'm lucky in the hunt, and some days I'm unlucky, right? So some days I have a feast, and other days I, what? Go to bed hungry, right? You see? So, in primitive conditions, in the economy and so on, I tell you, a man might spend his whole life just trying to get the necessities of life, right? And not even worry about the comforts of life, right? So he says, hence it might justly be thought that it's not a human position, right? A man has all these needs of his body, and maybe the needs of his family, right? Needs of his house, his car, right? Someone said, you know, there's always something that needs to be done in a house. That's something true about the car, right? You know? You get to be my age, you go see the doctor, you know? What's going to need to be fixed now, you know? What is breaking down, or what is, you know? Well, now he says it, because it's kind of an obvious thing, but, for in many ways, he says, the nature of man is what? Enslaved, right, huh? Okay. Now notice, huh? We could say that, to some extent, we're enslaved to our body, right? I've got to feed this body, right? I've got to clothe this body, right? I've got to have a chair for this body to recline on, right? Or a bed, a lion. Or something like a bed. Right? So, in a way, my soul or my reason are enslaved to the needs of my, what, body. And, as I said, it might take me all day to provide for the needs of my body, in some cases, right? I've got to give my body some rest, some sleep at night, huh? That I'm enslaved to maybe, what? Paying my children's college education, right? Okay. But, I need money for all these things, so I'm enslaved to some job, you know, to get the money, right? You see? Okay. So, I'm enslaved to my car, right? Got a flat. Where it just stops, you know? Won't go. Okay. Got me taken to the garage, right? Right? Okay. Got me taken to the garage, right? Okay. Okay. Got me taken to the garage, right? Got me taken to the garage, right? Now, this is apart from, you know, the fact that some men are slaves in society, right? But apart from that, you know, these kinds of slaves, you know. And then, in addition, men are often enslaved to their passions, right? Like St. Paul says, you know, when you sin, you become a slave of something, right? But some men are a slave of anger, right? Some men are a slave of their desire for drink or tired desire for drugs or whatever it might be, right? Other men are a slave of their envy, right? So, there's all kinds of maybe slavery you're kind of responsible for, right? So our style leads you to multiply. I gave a talk right on one time in this one sentence. In many ways, the nature of man is enslaved, right? I mean, but you can go on and on and on and on the way we're enslaved, huh? Shakespeare calls custom a tyrant, right? Yeah. People are enslaved to custom. They're enslaved to fashion, right? You're enslaved to error, right? So you see how much slavery man is. You're going to be pursuing this knowledge that is entirely free. It doesn't fit the human, what, condition, right? He says, even the famous poet here, Simonides, says, this belongs to God, not to man. God alone can have this honor, right? And he's starting to anticipate, right, this is going to be more divine knowledge than human possession, right? But he quotes Simonides, huh? Man, however, is not worthy to seek knowledge for itself. Now, in the world historian there, McNeil's book there, The Rise of the West, I remember inside there, there's a picture of a religious vase from Sumeria, which I guess is where civilization first began, right? And the religious vase has got three levels on it, huh? And up here are the gods represented, here are men, and here is the beasts, right? And they think the meaning of the vase is that the beasts were made to relieve man of some of his, what, labors, right? So the ox helps you to plow the field, right? And the dog helps you to keep the flock in order, and the horse helps you to get from one town to another, and so on, right? So the beasts, in a way, are enslaved to men, right? To relieve man of some of his. But the men are the slaves of the gods, right? So you bring your food to the temple for the gods, and so on, so on. The gods are the ones then that live this free life, right? So Samani speaks as if God would be envious if you tried to pursue this knowledge that is belonging to him, right? And he says, if the poets are saying something and the divine is able to envy, right? And it's likely especially to happen about this. And unfortunate are all those who excel in knowledge, but the divine is not able to be envious, right? Because envy is a form of, what, sadness, right? Nothing bad can happen to God, right, in his divine nature. Besides that, the man who's envious thinks that somebody else's good is what diminishing is, right? God couldn't make that mistake of thinking that the good that we partake of from him is diminishing his good, right? So that's ridiculous. The divine is not able to be envious. Of course, we know that envy came into the world through the devil, huh? And according to the proverb, poets say many false things. Okay? But notice how, nevertheless, this criticism enables him to say that it's not really a human possession, right? That man is enslaved to all these needs, right? And, you know, they might decide, you know, the Greeks are always at war, you know, I'm going to be a soldier tomorrow, right? Well, I can't philosophize them out fighting my country's battles, right? You see? So it's not the sort of thing that man can use or pursue whenever he wants to, right? He's got to have unusual circumstances where he's able to, what? Pursue this kind of knowledge. And most men will be taken up with necessities of life or the abuse of life, right? Maybe they don't even get enough to satisfy them with those, right? Let alone pursuing these higher things. So, but this guy Hence that there's something more divine about this, right? Than human about it, right? So then he goes on to the fourth and last thing. Nor must any other knowledge be thought to be more honorable. For the most divine is most, what? Honorable, right? Now, he wants to show a little bit that wisdom is the most, what? Divine knowledge. And he's going to point out that there's two ways in which you could say knowledge is divine. Just as there's two ways you could speak of knowledge as being human. And one is that it's, what? About human beings, right? In another way, that it's had by human beings, right? So history is human knowledge in both senses human, right? It's had by humans about human beings, right? But say chemistry might be human knowledge in the sense that human beings have this knowledge, but it's not about human things, right? So Aristotle's going to say wisdom is the most divine knowledge in both senses. It's the knowledge which God most of all would have, and it's the knowledge about God, okay? But the most divine is only said in two ways. For that which God most of all would have is the most divine of sciences, and if it were of divine things, right? But this alone has both of these. For God seems to all to be among the causes in the beginning, and such knowledge God alone or most of all would have, right? And that's what he's saying, huh? You could say, let's get ourselves a little room here on the board. You could say wisdom is about first... That's something we showed in the first part of the premium, right? And then he takes... I'm not going to try to prove it at this point, but he takes just the common opinion of men, right? That God is the first cause, right? But the first cause is God. Then you can syllogize that wisdom is about God, right? So that's one way in which you might say wisdom is divine knowledge. It's a knowledge of God, right? The other way you could say wisdom is divine is God alone or most of all is wise. Now, Aristotle doesn't try to syllogize this, but he takes this simply as the common opinion of all the great philosophers before him, as well as his own opinion, right? Now, let's just recall that a bit here, huh? Legend has it that Pythagoras was the first man to call himself a, what? Philosopher, right? And the occasion was when his contemporaries were calling him wise. You're a wise Pythagoras, right? There's great discoveries of Pythagoras like the Pythagorean theorem and so on, right? And Pythagoras says, don't call me wise. God alone is wise, he said, huh? What shall we call you then? And Pythagoras said, well, if you've got to call me something, call me a lover of wisdom, right? So as I mentioned before, there is a humility in the origin of the name philosopher, right? Etymologically, it means a lover of wisdom, right? But in giving himself that title, or saying you can call me that, and don't call me wise, God alone is wise, he's admitting that man either doesn't have wisdom at all, or in a very inferior way, compared to the way God has it, right? So there's a humility there that man's wisdom is, if he has any at all, it's something vastly inferior to God. A second example.