Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 31: Being as Being and Reasoned Knowledge

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Mozart's music is the best music, and they say, you just say that because you like it the most. And I say, no, you've got it backward. I like it the most because it is the best. There's a difference there, right? So, is Aristotle's philosophy true because it's in harmony with the Eucharist? Or is it in harmony with the Eucharist because it is true? Or in general, you know, the philosophy of Aristotle has proven very useful in theology. As Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great and others have shown. But is it true because it's useful in theology? Is that the reason why? No. That might be a sign that it's true, yeah. That's not why it's useful. It's useful because it is true itself, right? It's because he saw some truth about these things, huh? That's why it's useful in theology. It could be useful if everyone was false. But you get a philosophy like Hegel or Spinoza or Descartes, and it's not really useful, but it would be harmful in theology. It's not false because it's harmful in theology, no? That would be a sign that's false about it, but it's horrible. Yeah, it's a good sign for a Catholic when he has a faith, right? But it's harmful because it is false, right? And if you do philosophy right, you will maybe come to see its falsity apart from the harm it does in theology, huh? So it's very important to find out which comes first, the chicken or the egg, huh? And maybe there's some distinction necessary there, so we'll see that Aristotle will see, huh? You see these comments, you know, on the New Papacy and on the rigid thinking of how that has become Pope, you know? You realize they can't make any distinctions, huh? I mean, they're always lumping, you know, the married priesthood with abortion and contraception. And they can't see any distinction, you know, that the Church could never allow or approve of abortion, huh? Because that's really murder. But they could allow a married priesthood, but that, you know, is another consideration whether that's suitable or not, you know? But they can't make any distinctions among these things, huh? In the same way there, you know, they talk about capital punishment and abortion, you know, they, you know, people won't make any distinction there, but it's important to see distinctions, huh? Aristotle says somewhere, most men aren't good making distinctions. If that's true or see distinctions, you could say, but, okay. So, anyway, the next to the last question here, it's not only the Platonists in Pythagoras in ancient times, but also the, what? People like Descartes, right, who seem to identify the mathematical with the very substance of these things, huh? And, of course, partly this comes up in modern times, too, because of the mathematical study of the natural world, huh? I think I mentioned before, Schrodinger, right, who perfected the mathematics of wave mechanics, which is used in studying the atom, right? And who showed the mathematical equivalence of Heisenberg's mathematics and that of wave mechanics. So a man who's really into the mathematics of the atom, but he says in one of his essays, the modern atom consists of no stuff at all, and he compares it to Plato's theory of the four elements in the Timaeus, where he makes them all geometrical figures, huh? There's no stuff there, there's no matter there, right? I think I mentioned how, you know, at the time the communists were still in power and trying to enforce orthodoxy from Moscow. Well, there's some concern about this fact that matter seems to disappear, and it's because you have a mathematical science of nature, and there's no what? There's no matter in mathematics, huh? So speaking of matter, without matter, right? And it's a strange way of knowing, but that's what you have. So that might need somebody to say, well, it is no matter, it's just these mathematical things, that's all it is. Basically, it's just equations, right? And equations out there. That's a problem for these guys, you know, how can there be equations out there? But anyway. But essentially, you can see how the mathematical way of thinking might lead to this kind of a conclusion, and that's when you influence the Pythagoreans and, through the Pythagoreans, Plato. You know, Plato left Athens sometime after the death of Socrates, discussing with the Athenian polity, and he went over to the Greek cities in Italy and studied with the Pythagoreans, and got tanked up in Pythagoreanism. So, you know, Plato comes from a broad background. His name means a broad plateau, huh? But he's influenced by the great Socrates, and by the great Heraclitus, who is a teacher, Cratchelus, and he has a dialogue named the Cratchelus. He's influenced by Parmenides, Melisus, he has a dialogue called the Parmenides. He's influenced by the Pythagoreans, you see that in the Temaeus, and a little bit in the Phaedo, and so on. So, you see all these different thoughts. You really got to play, you're not reading just Plato, right? You're getting, you know, streams coming in from all these great thinkers before him. You know, it's like, you know, I always, you know, quote the Pope's, the 13th, I think, quotes the Cachetans, saying, you know, that Thomas so venerated the Church Fathers that he seems to have inherited the mind of all of them. So, it's not like you're reading just one man, you read a guy like Thomas, or a man like Plato, or Aristotle, you know? For that, when you read Euclid, you know, huh? They know how Euclid, you know. Even the way he constructs the elements, you know, is acknowledging, you know, the contribution of the great mathematicians before him, huh? So, like Mozart said, there wasn't a master, he had not studied, you know, thoroughly his works, huh? So, you're not just getting one man, you know, with these guys. Now, the Platonists and the Pythagoreans shared this idea that the substances of these natural things are something mathematical, and so on. But apparently, the Pythagoreans thought that that's where the mathematical things are. They're out there in these sensible things. And although the Platonists might have made that, they also had this other world of what? The pure mathematical things, huh? And so, there's a disagreement between them. And if substances, whether they're separated from sensible things, as the Platonists say, whether you have the mathematical substances, you might say, the pure ones, or only existing in them, as the great Pythagoreans would say, huh? And maybe as what Descartes would say, right? So, notice, as you go through these questions, you see how, although they're arranged around the two famous opinions of Plato, right? That there are universals separated from things, and there are these mathematical substances and so on. Everybody else's opinion, right? Even Descartes is what else, but the Hegerists, right? And the Materialists, right? And Hegel, and so on. They all come in here, huh? Now, you know Aristotle wouldn't know about those guys after him, explicitly, but you see that they tend to come down on one or another side of these famous, what? Questions, huh? These are the basic questions of wisdom, right? And they're all very profound, huh? Notice Aristotle's last statement, though. It is not only difficult to find the truth about all these, but it's not even easy to doubt well about them by reason, huh? And Thomas, you know, that phrase, to doubt well, means to attain well to the reasons for doubting about these things, huh? To attain well to the reasons for saying that this is a real question, right? There's really something difficult here to decide, huh? It reminds me of his statement there at the end of the second book, right? Where he says, you can't at the same time acquire episteme, reasoned out knowledge, knowledge, and the tropas, the way of reasoned out knowledge. And it's not easy to get either one, he says, huh? You know? And now he's saying, you know, it's not easy to, what? Either, not just to get the answer to these questions, but to even, what? Discuss them well, right? Of course, in the rest of book three, which you're not going to be looking at, but he goes into discussing each one of these questions, and I give you a little taste of that, you know, to see something of the difficulty. ...these questions, but he kind of develops them, you know, with reasons a person might have for thinking this way or thinking that way about it. So he ties you into a lot of knots, just like the poet does. I think I mentioned that play there, the Symboline, you know, one of the late plays of Shakespeare. And the learning dispute as to how many knots Shakespeare is on time in one scene, you know, and some have 25 knots. It's just illegal, you know, but that's the, there's certain likeness there, the muthos, right, in Flossie, where you have these knots and then you have to, what, untie them, right? So now we've got to look a little bit at the fourth book with this to me. And I know you're in breathless anticipation of the great turnaround, huh? You know, in the college area you have to give these little syllabi, you know, which you're going to be talking about, more or less, and then you're going to talk about things and so on. And so you should have in capital, the great turnaround, and put them a guess as to what that will be, you know, when it comes up. I've got some things you have to look for, yeah. And the readings that I'm giving you here from book four are the ones that come before the great turnaround, huh? So you have to see these readings in the early parts of book four here, and then we'll see the great turnaround, huh? Pop these here. Down this way. Okay, now, how many more copies do you want? Two extra. Two, three. Okay. Do you have to get a few copies, then? No. That's fine. I've got a few more here if you need one. Is Brother Patrick still coming? I don't know. I saw him walking around. I thought he may have had something to do. Oh, okay. Okay, maybe it's true. Okay, did he look after the real stuff? Oh, no. That's the extra. Oh, another one? Oh, there's a record. There's a record. Do you have to get some multiplication of the... The loaves. The loaves, yeah. The loaves. The loaves, yeah. The loaves. The loaves. The loaves. The loaves. The loaves. The loaves, yeah. The loaves. The loaves. Now, you're confusing theology and philosophy. The loaves to the loaves. The loaves. The loaves, yeah. The loaves. The loaves, yeah. The loaves, yeah. The loaves, yeah. The loaves, yeah. The loaves, yeah. Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. Now, what's the division of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? It's into the prologue and the, what? Play, right? Okay. So, Aristotle has, at the beginning of Almost Always Works, if not all of them, something that is called in Greek, you see in the Greek commentators, proemium, right? And I think I mentioned how in the Vatican II there, the Dei Verbo, right, has a proemium. If you look at the official Latin text, it will say proemium. The translations mistranslate. It's an introduction. It's not an introduction. It's a proemium, you know? And it's a proemium. Very fond of that one in particular. But I'm also fond of the fact that they use the word proemium. But, proemium, etymologically in Greek, it has the idea of paving the way, right? Okay. And the most important part of the proemium is what they call the skopas. And skopas is a very concrete word in Greek. It's what you're aiming at, right? So the target is called skopas. And Aristotle uses that word skopas in the first book of Nicomachean Ethics. And he's talking about knowing the inner purpose of life. It won't be like a man with a bow and arrow, right? He knows the target. He can aim at it, right? Okay? And you know yourself, it may be hard to hit the target, even if you're aiming at it. But if you're not aiming at it, you might as well forget about hitting the target. And I was in England there. We were in Sherwood Forest there, and they had the great bows there. And you could, you know, with a little bit of money, you can take your turn. And I could see people trying to shoot balloons and so on at a good distance, you know. And it was nice to watch that. But the point is, it's not easy to hit the balloon at a distance. But if you're not aiming, you might as well forget about hitting it, huh? So one thing that pays the way in reading a book of Aristotle is to know what he's aiming at, right? And sometimes, depending on how difficult it is, he'll say something about how he intends to get there, right? And so on. So that's a little bit proportional to what Shakespeare has, the, what, prologue, right, huh? To Romeo and Juliet, which kind of prepares the way for the play and for the tragedy of what it's going to be about, right? And now the play called Romeo and Juliet, like every good play, has a plot, huh? Which is, as Aristotle says in the book on the poetic art, is the very soul of the play, huh? But a good plot, as he explains in the book on the poetic art, consists of tying the knot and untying the knot, huh? And Shakespeare, as I've mentioned before, was quite aware of this. But, you know, one place where he explicitly uses the word knot there is in Twelfth Night, huh? Where one of the characters says, you know, O time, there must untangle this, not I. It is too hard or not for me to untie. Okay? She's disguised, you know, as a man, huh? Falling in love with the man she's serving. He's using her to go to, what, Olivia, right? He won't give him the time of day, but she falls in love with this presumed man coming to see her, and so on. So we, he got a real knot, he develops me. O time, though must untangle this, not I. It is too hard or not for me to untie. Shakespeare entices, you know, as you'll find if you read the wonderful play. Well, books 3 through 14 are like that, huh? Book 3 is, what, tying all those knots, huh? And Aristotle compares it to tying knots in the first reading, remember? And then, starting in Book 4 through 14, he will be, what, untying those knots, huh? Answering those questions, huh? So in that sense, it's like the play, right? And therefore, you have another reason for saying that the Thulemuthos, the lover of plots, is, in some way, a philosopher, is a certain likeness to the, what, philosopher. You know, they say these detective stories are popular people of high IQ. I don't know if that's so, but that's what they say, you know. But in a sense, they kind of like to see a knot or a problem, a whodunit, right, and try to solve it, huh? So, but now when you get to the great turnaround, we'll get another insight into a lot of the order of the wisdom, too. But you can see now the distinction between, what, Book 3 and Books, what, 4 through 14, huh? Okay. Now, in both of these things that we'll be taking up here in the beginning of Book 4, there's perhaps really a division you could make, huh? I take the first sentence here of the first reading. There is a reasoned-out knowledge, which is my translation of the Greek word epistemia. There is a reasoned-out knowledge, or you could say a reasoned-out understanding, huh? Which looks at or considers being as being, right? And what belongs to this to itself. Now, The first thing you've got to try to understand a bit is the truth of the statement. There is a reasoned out knowledge which looks at being as being and what belongs to this through itself. And this, of course, as we study being as being, especially in Book 9, which emphasizes an act and ability, you'll see that this is correct, right? But then there's a second thing you have to see, that this reasoned out knowledge of being as being, but belongs to this through itself, that this is wisdom, right? Okay? Now, later on, in the fifth reading, which I've selected here, in the fifth reading, he's going to be showing that wisdom is in some way also about the axioms, the statements known to themselves by all men. But in a way, you could say there's really two questions here. One is, is it necessary to have a reasonable consideration of the axioms? Or is it, could you just use them? Because everybody knows them. See? And if the answer is, a reasonable consideration of them is necessary, for some of the reasons we've given before, that there are people who deny them and give sophisticated reasons for denying them, which will cancel, and so on. And the actions are expressed in words that are equivocal by reason, and so on. Maybe it is necessary to stop and consider the axioms, huh? That should be one question then, right? And then the other question is, but is that reasonable investigation or consideration of the axioms, does that belong to the wise men? Why him more than what? Everybody else, because everybody else uses these things too and needs them. You see? So you see, I'm saying that both in the first reading here and the fifth reading, the two ones I select as basic here in the beginning of book four, there's really kind of a double question, right? You see that? One is, is there in fact a reasoned out of knowledge of being as being? And what belongs to being as such? And then if there is, is wisdom that reasoned out of knowledge? And then is it really necessary to stop and consider, you know, in some detail the axioms? And if so, is the wise man should make that up? The man who's above everybody else, right? Can he get down in the basement there? Down on the ground and look at what all reasoned out of knowledge is based on, ultimately. These axioms, huh? You see that? Okay? And after we've answered all those questions, then we'll be able to approach the great turnaround. And once you understand the great turnaround, you understand almost the whole order of wisdom, the order within wisdom. And you'll see the reason why it has that order and that it cannot be otherwise. Another way to do it. And Aristotle discovered this, right? You know? Okay? It explains the order of the premium in books, what? 4 through 14, right? It doesn't explain everything, right? But it makes you see almost the order of everything in a general way, right? It's very appropriate when you first approach this book, huh? Aristotle is going exactly in the right order, you know? He's proceeding orderly, easily, and without error. You know? Now, we're almost out of time here, but let me just say something, first of all, about this first thing. When we study reason-out knowledge, reason-out understanding in logic, in the post-analytics, in fact, one thing we learn about reason-out knowledge is that it's about what belongs to things as such. That's what we're stating it. Or what belongs to things through themselves, per se, kaka-to in Greek. You've got to stop on that because you're not too familiar with that, huh? What does that mean, and is that true, right? Okay? Before you try to answer this particular thing here, right? Now, let's take a simple example that you may be a bit familiar with. Geometry, right? Reason-out knowledge. When the geometer talks about the triangle, right, does he talk about the triangle being green or blue or red? Well, couldn't a triangle be green or red or blue? Why doesn't he talk about this, right? Well, he doesn't, does he? No. And the reason why he doesn't talk about the triangle as green or red or blue is that it doesn't belong to the triangle, we'd say in Greek, kaka-to, in Latin, per se, in English, through itself. Or you could also say, as such. Now, what does it mean to say it doesn't belong to the triangle, per se, or through itself, to be green, huh? Well, as you know, a pronoun refers to something, pro-something, huh? So you're saying that a triangle, through being a triangle, is not green, right? That's something that could happen to a triangle, right? To be green. But it doesn't happen to the triangle through being green. And no matter how much or how well you understand what a triangle is, you would never see through what it is that it is green, if it happens to be, right? If it happens to be green, it would be something you discover by a sense or something, but not by reasoned-out knowledge. But now, if you study the first book of Euclid, we can reason out from what a triangle is that it has interior angles equal to two right angles. That famous theorem there, 32 in book 1. Okay? To have interior angles equal to two right angles belongs to a triangle through being a triangle. It belongs to a triangle as such, right? Now, before that, we'd also, what? Define what a triangle is, right? And we say the triangle is a rectilineal plane figure, right? Contained by three lines and so on. And that also belongs to a triangle through being a triangle. It belongs to a triangle as such, right? And we might also divide triangle into an equilateral isosceles and scalene, right? Because that's a division of triangle as such, right? The way those three lines can be. Now, these are, and in post-analytics we would distinguish these, and these might involve different senses of to itself, right? Because one is more like a definition, one is more like a property and so on, right? One is a division, right? But in general, you could say that what you're considering in geometry about the triangle is what belongs to it, to itself or as such, not what happens to it, right? Do you see that? Okay? If you had a reason out of knowledge of a philosopher, you say, what belongs to a philosopher as such? Well, I'd say to love wisdom, right? Does it belong to a philosopher as such to be white or black or to be Zedish or Irish or something? Does it? No. You might run into a philosopher that's white. You might run into a philosopher that's gray. You might run into a philosopher that's Swedish or half-Swedish, right? You know? But does that belong to a philosopher as such to be Swedish or half-Swedish? You know, what is it? Heidegger says, philosophy speaks Greek. Well, that's a compliment to the Greeks, right? But does that belong to a philosopher as such to speak Greek? Does a philosopher as such Greek? Even if historically speaking, right? The Greeks are the first philosophers and maybe the greatest of the philosophers we've had, right? And no one, you know? You know, the modern physicists, you know, say that, Schrodinger, the same physicist I was quoting, you know, he says, no one has ever had science who hasn't come in contact with the Greeks. And he says, science is the Greek way of looking at things. But it's a beautiful couple. ...to the Greeks, right? Just like Heidegger's is a compliment to the Greeks. But does that belong to science as such? That science is essentially a Greek way of looking at things? No, no, see? See, you get the idea here that reasoned out knowledge, right? Thought out knowledge, where you define and reason out things about something, syllogize things about something. It's about what belongs to something as such, right? So if there is a reasoned out knowledge of being as being, it's going to have to have that same condition, right? It's going to have to talk about what belongs to being as such. That's why He says being as being, right? And what belongs to this through itself, right? We were touching there in the intermission, I guess, when He said that to be good, we'll find out eventually in Book 9, belongs to being as such. When you find out that that is what? A kind of non-being, right? And although act would be better than ability, because ability is for the sake of act, ability is good because it's order to act. And so, to be good belongs to being as such. So there are some things that belong to being as such, or to be one belongs to being as such. Every being is either simple or composed. And the composed would not be if its parts were not put together, right? You know, I've got a car out there, I hope, still. You know, but if someone else ever taken a part when I was in here, I don't have a car anymore. If we take you apart, you won't be there, are you? You see? So, it belongs to being as such to be one. And that's easier to see, perhaps, and it belongs to being as such to be good, right? So, there is something that belongs to being as such, right? Obviously, it belongs to being to be, in some way, right? Okay. So, we're going to be studying. We haven't been doing that yet. But you begin to see that there is something that belongs to being as such, and therefore, maybe there can be a reasoned out of knowledge of being as being, what belongs to it as such, as to itself, right? And, of course, it's being more clear as we start to study being as being as about here. But then, he's got to show that this is not any of the other sciences that we've talked about, like geometry or natural philosophy or ethosologic, but it's going to belong to this wisdom that we talked about in the premium, right? Okay? But see if you can see how Aristotle brings that out, right, and how he reasons out that the wisdom we were talking about in the premium, and we found such a desirable analogy to pursue, that that is the reasoned out of knowledge of being as being, right? How is he reasoned to that? So, we'll start there next Thursday, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? So, shall we turn to this pagan philosopher? No, not excruciating. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. God, our enlightenment. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, cordon and elume our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Pray for us. And help us to understand all that you've written. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Let me come back here a little bit to this idea of kap-a-to as they say in Greek, pharisae as they say in Latin, and through itself in English. Although sometimes you see this actually translated by yourself. Because if you're all by yourself in a room, first I'll say you're kap-a-to, because that's my meaning of kap-a-to. And if you're all by yourself in a room, I don't think we'd say in English that you're through yourself, right? No, no. But you are by yourself, right? But the philosophical meanings that are used in philosophy, you can probably translate parisae by through itself, right? And almost the same meaning is the phrase as such, right? Okay. Now, in the posterior analytics, which is about epistame or xian xia, or reasoned-out knowledge, or reasoned-out understanding, as I call it sometimes, you find out that the subject of epistame or reasoned-out knowledge is something that has parts and properties that belong to it as such, right? Or through itself. And sometimes we distinguish what is per se in a sense as pertaining to a thing's definition, and what is per se as pertaining to a property that follows upon it, right? So, taking an example from geometry, right? You could say that it belongs to the triangle through itself to be a plain figure. Or it belongs to the triangle through itself to be three-sided. Now, that phrase through itself gets you down a bit. You know, itself is a kind of pronoun, right? So what you're saying is that the triangle through being a triangle is a, what? Plain figure, right? Contained by three straight lines, huh? So whatever belongs to the triangle as part of its definition, as a genus say, or a difference, right? That belongs to the triangle through being a triangle. And therefore, through itself, right? Okay? Or you could say, in some way of speaking, it belongs to the triangle as such, huh? Now, that phrase, though, it just means that the triangle as triangle is a plain figure, right? Now, is the triangle through itself, green? See? Is a triangle green to be a triangle? No. Is a triangle as triangle green? No. So, they would say that green is something accidental. Okay? It's not kakao-toe, per se, to itself as such. Do you see that? Okay. And so, what belongs to the thing as such, or to itself, in this sense, there's part of the definition of the thing, that's going to be considered in the science or reasoned out of knowledge like geometry, right? Okay? Now, perhaps you could attach to that a little different thing if you have some essential parts of the thing. Like, for example, you and I are composed of a body and a soul, right? So, if I said it belongs to a man to being a man, right? To have a body and a soul, that would be through itself, right? Through being a man, right? It belongs to a man as such to have these two parts, right? Okay? There's a thought in the Perry Hermione that it talks about the statement, right? Well, what belongs to the statement as such in these first two ways? What belongs to a statement as such to be speech, right? Meaning by speech, vocal sound that signifies by human agreement having parts that signify by themselves. So, it belongs to a statement as such to be a speech, right? And, of course, it's a speech that signifies the true or the what? False, right? So, it belongs to a statement as such to signify the true or the what? False, huh? Okay? So, speech and signifying the true or the false or the two of them put together, right? Speech signifying the true or the false belongs to the statement as such, right? As statement. Okay? Aristotle also points out that a statement is composed of a noun and a verb, right? So, you could say that it belongs to a statement as such to have a noun and a what? Verb, huh? Okay? So, these are things that belong to a statement as such. Now, the geometer not only will define let's say the triangle but he goes on to show as you know in the first book Proposition 32 I guess it is that every triangle as interior angles equal to what? To right angles. To right angles, right? Okay? That's proven through the what? Parallel theorem, right? Okay? Now, this is a different sense of as such and to itself, right? It's not a defining part of triangle. You don't define triangle by this, right? It's not as a word before triangle, right? In a sense you're part of it. But it's something that follows upon triangle like an effect or a property in it. When what's his name? Porphy distinguishes property and accident there in the sense of the asagoge they both signify something outside the nature of the thing what it is but the property follows upon the nature and the accident has no connection with the nature. So green would be purely accidental, right? It's either defining it or a central part of it or it's a property of it. Now if you were dealing say with number you see or maybe say number is as Euclid says a multitude composed of units where Aristotle says a multitude measured by the unit so multitude belongs to number as such right? Number as number is a multitude right? Number to be a number is a multitude of units right? but now if I say it belongs to let's say two as such to be half of what? Four or a third of six well then that would be ka-ta-to in this sense right? It's improperly right? Now sometimes too they'll say that there are certain divisions of the subject that are ka-ta-to right? Now comparing these two divisions here of triangles if I divided triangles into red white and blue that's in picturism right? And I divided triangles into scales and isosceles and equilateral well you might say the division of triangles into red white and blue is an accidental division right? It's not a division of triangle as such but equilateral isosceles and scalene which determine what's intrinsic to the very nature of triangle they have three sides and they continue with three straight lines they call that a what? Division of triangle as such right? Yeah So you will