Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 40: Accidental Being and the Limits of Wisdom

Transcript
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The tragedy of Othello, you know, has something to do, I suppose, with his colorless skin, right? You know? You see? So, the poets make a big deal about this, huh? And, you know, Romeo and Juliet, the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet has something to do with the fact that the man she loves is the son of her father's enemy, right? There's something accidental about this, isn't it? Romeo, Romeo, wherefore it, though, Romeo, can't figure this out. You see? So, accidental being, you know? To some extent it is, right? But at heart it is. But he shows the universe health of Aristotle's mind, right? He doesn't neglect any kind of being, right? But he also sees, you know, the kind of being we're going to be mainly concerned with, right? Of course, in the end, the goal is to know the one who said, I am who I am, right? But we start from accidentally. You know what ideas, huh? So, next Thursday we'll start with a second reading here. So, in the first reading, Aristotle is finished, you might say, distinguishing wisdom, or first philosophy, from all the other parts of philosophy, right? All the other forms of reasoned out knowledge, you know? And we know already, even before that, from the fourth book, beginning of the fourth book, that's about being is being, right? But in the fifth book, he divided being into many different senses, right? Or you might say groups of senses. And so, in the first paragraph of the second reading, he recalls all those senses that he talked about, right? But since being simply said is said in many ways, of which one was that by what? Happening, right? So, being prachidens in San Lacken, right? Or katos and bibikos in Greek, huh? Being by happening, or by accident, or accidental being. Now, Thomas, you know, when he lectures on, say, book four here, he always was careful to point out that accident here doesn't mean accident as distinguished from substance, huh? Because the division of being, according to the figures of predication, substance, quantity, quality, relation, and so on, is a division of being per se, being as such, okay? So, if you call quantity and quality and relation accidents, you don't mean accidental being in this sense here, okay? What this means here, to take the most accidental, kind of accidental being, is when, what? Two things happen to the same subject, right? Okay? So, it happens to me to be white and to be, what? A magician, right? But the color white and the art of logic, you know, come together and form one thing, okay? So, to be white is one thing, to be, what? A magician is another thing, right? But because to be white and to be a magician happen to the same person, namely me, then I can be said to be a white magician, right? And that's the most accidental kind of being, right? Okay? But again, if you say that I am a white man, that's also accidental being. Not as accidental, maybe, as a white magician or white geometer. But still, one thing happened to another, right? And the color white and my human nature don't come together to form one thing. But in some sense, you can say there are white men and black men and so on, okay? Or you can have a reverse and put the subject as the adjective, right? I am a human white thing, okay? Or I am a human magician or something of this sort, right? Okay? Again, it involves one thing happening to another thing, right? Or, in the most accidental kind, two things happening to a, what, third thing, right? But affirmative action, people like that, are concerned with accidental being, right? And you're asking me, you know, I'm going to hire a Catholic or something, right? So if we're the Christian Academy, we might want to hire a Christian geometer to teach geometry to our children, huh? Okay? And there are Christian geometers out there, right? In some sense, they are. But this is a kind of being that will not be the main concern of the wise man, as Aristotle explained. But he doesn't neglect or overlook that kind of being, huh? Because he's very complete, huh? Now, the other three kinds of being which you'll mention here, if you recall book five, they were all divided against accidental being, being by happening. And they're all kinds of being as such, or being per se. A kakha tole, the Greek, right? Okay? And there are three different groups, you might say. Another, or being, is understood as true, and non-being as the false. As he explained in the fourth reading, true and false are found primarily in the mind. And so this kind of being can involve things that have no being outside the mind. So is it true to say that nothing is nothing? But nothing is nothing, right? Well, you do use the word is there, right? Yeah. Okay. But even something like blindness, it seems more real, maybe, than nothing, huh? But blindness is that, outside the mind, is blindness a kind of being, really? Well, it's a non-being of something. It's a lack of something. Yeah. Yeah. It has a kind of non-being. It's such an able to have it, it should have it, but it doesn't have it. But we could say, truly, that somebody is blind, right? Okay. So, what does to be mean there? That means, it's true, he is blind, right? But it doesn't mean that to be blind is to be, in things, right? Okay? And being as true and non-being as false, you'll talk about briefly in the fourth reading here in the sixth book, huh? But again, he's going to say that's not the main concern of the, what, wise madam. But for a different reason than he'll give, why being by accident or being by happening is not the main concern. Now, besides this, there's being, according to the figures of predication, as the what, the how, the how much, the where, the when, and something other signifies in this way. Now, as you know, the wise man there, he uses logic as a stepping stone to wisdom in talking about that kind of being. If you know the teaching there of the ten categories, substance, quantity, quality, and so on, the way they're distinguished is by the way that something can be said of individual substances like you and me, or the dog walking around out there, like a sheep there, and I came in today, like a sheep there. Yeah, look at me, who's this guy? I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, other things are said of you and I as regards what we are, like we're a man, or we're generally an animal, right? We're generally a living body, we're generally a body, most generally we're a substance, right? Other things are said of us by reason of how we are, they're healthy, or you're wise, or you're good, or you're bad, or something, right? Some by how much you are, and then where, and when, and so on, but it doesn't distinguish all of them like he does in the categories, right? So this is a group of meanings, you might say, of being, but distinguishing being according to the figures of predication, the way that something can be said of individual substances. And that's why he first distinguishes them in the categories, he doesn't use the abstract words, quantity and quality, or relation, say, but he'll use how much, how, towards what, right? He's the concrete one, right? Okay? Because quality is not a set of substance, but qualified, when he said it, right? How it is, huh? And then the other division was that of being in ability and in what? In act, right? Now, in books seven and eight, we talk about being according to figures of predication, but mainly about what, or about substance on, in books seven and eight. And we'll probably look at one of those books, like book eight. In book nine, we talk about being as act and ability, right? So books seven, eight, and nine are the main consideration of being as being, but he will, in this book, right, talk about accidental being and being as true briefly, right? See some things about them, like, they're very important, but he will make them the chief consideration, right? Okay? Now, the next second paragraph is going on... to being by happening or being by accident, accidental being. And he's going to, in a way, give a reason why it doesn't seem to be a main concern of wisdom. But the first reason he'll give is that, in general, no reason out now is about the accidental. Reason out now is only about what belongs to things as such. And this is something you learn in the Posterioritics in your study of the Nature of Science. So the geometer will talk about what belongs to the triangle through itself or as such. And what does that mean? What belongs to the triangle through being a triangle? Like it belongs to the triangle through being a triangle to have three sides. Or it belongs to the triangle through being a triangle to be a plane figure, right? Or to be a rectilineal plane figure. So anything that pertains to the definition of triangle belongs to it through what it is, through itself, as triangle, as such, is that phrase too. But also the geometer talked about the properties that belong to the triangle through being a triangle. So the famous one in Proverbs 3.2 of Book 1, that the interior angles of a triangle are always equal to what? Two right angles, then. And if you know the parallel theorems, right? And one of the parallel theorems that you studied before you get to that, is that when a straight line falls upon a parallel line, it makes the what? Well, the derivative of the original is equal. Yeah, the ultimate angle is equal to the right angle. So, once you know that, you could always draw a line to one vertex parallel to the other base. And in the parallel theorems, you know that these two are equal, and likewise, these two are equal. So these two equal those two, and the third one makes up two right angles, huh? So that, in a different sense of as such, and to itself, it's not part of the definition of a triangle, but it's a property which you know from porphyry, it's the name of something outside the nature, but that follows upon the nature, right? So it belongs to a triangle as such, you know? And this is actually reasonality, you know, this is. But now, if something happens to the triangle, like it happens to the triangle to be green, let's say, right? Yeah, huh? Okay? But does it belong to a triangle through being a triangle to be green? See? It's not part of the nature of it, like to have three lines or to be a plain figure. It's not part of what we define a triangle, right? Nor is it something that's followed upon the nature of a triangle, what it is, huh? So it's something that happens to the triangle, and does the geometry talk at all about that? No. They don't talk about the accident at all. So, that's kind of the general reason Aristotle's given, right? Why in wisdom, right, which is one kind of reason to acknowledge, huh? We're not going to talk about accident at all being, right? Because no science does that, right? Kind of a generic reason, huh? And you can see that, although I can reason out that the triangle has its interior angles equal to right angles, using things I know belong to the triangle by its definition, right? I could never reason out, knowing what a triangle is, that it would be green. It might happen to be green, but, you know, that would be a matter of sensation, but sensation is not reasoned out knowledge, right? Okay? So the senses might notice something accidental, that this triangle is green and this one is blue. But that could not be the object of any reason out knowledge, huh? Okay? So, it begins the second paragraph, then. Since then, being is said in many ways, but not to speak first about that by happening, that there is no consideration about it, in reason out knowledge. A sign, huh? No science pays attention to this, neither the doing, nor the making, nor the, what? Looking, huh? For the one making a house, that's the distinction we saw of the groups of sciences in the first reading, right? For the one making a house does not make whatever happens to the house made, right? For they are endless, right? So you might have Katrina there, right? The thing, you know, flooding your house, huh? But doesn't take that into account of that. Okay? For they are endless, right? For nothing prevents the thing made from being pleasant for some, harmful to others, right? The fact that you're happy or sad being in that house, that's no concern to him at all, right? The fact that they don't go to the house he's made, right? Or the robbers break in there and take your things or hurt you or something, right? Well, then take that into account. But the art of the house is productive, none of these. In the same way, neither does the geometer consider what happens thus to figures. Not a triangle and triangle having two right angles or other, that's a little different thing there. A little bit of what? It's a little bit of being there, right? He doesn't ask that kind of question. And this takes place reasonably. But now he's going to kind of make a transition here to a second reason. And that is that accidental being hardly is. So if you're interested in being as being, he doesn't have much of that at all. For the accidental is, as it were, only some name. And he gives a little sign from Plato. Now, Plato sometimes, and this is right with Plato's idea, you find Plato sometimes speaking of being, becoming, and none to be. And corresponding to being, he'll have knowledge, right? And corresponding to becoming, opinion. And for it's finally limiting, sophistry and error, deception, right? Okay? Now, Aristotle's not going to try to be like that, huh? Because you could have an opinion about being, and you could know something about becoming, but Plato kind of thinks that the way we know has got to be the way things are, right? So there's some, you know, there's some who do about this. And so it's now referring to that and saying, well, Plato, in a way, what's wrong? In saying that sophistry is about non-being, because the sophist is especially about the accident, and that's in a way nothing. So he's talking about nothing. Hence, in a way, Plato did not badly put sophistry about non-being. For the arguments, the sophists are about the accidental most of all, as to whether the musical and the grammatical are the same, rather, and musical griscus and griscus, and so on. Aristotle talks about the fallacy of the accident, which is the first kind of fallacy he talks about outside of those that come from words. He says it deceives even the, what? Wise, huh? Can the healthy become sick? Can the sick become healthy? About just a minute now, see? If the sick become healthy, what are you saying? The sick is healthy. Yeah, because becomes means comes to be, right? So if the sick would become healthy, then the sick would come to be healthy, right? And the sick would be healthy, which is a contradiction, right? So the sick cannot become healthy, right? So Hercules says day and night are the same thing, because day becomes night. Night becomes day, right? And sometimes we say love turns into hate. Hate turns into love. Now if love turned into hate, then love would be hate, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, strictly speaking, is it the healthy as such that becomes sick? Or the sick as such that become healthy? The subject. That's the body that becomes healthy, right? But because to be sick is something that happens to the body, right, before it becomes healthy, that's why we speak as if the sick become what? Oh, healthy, huh? Do the sick want to be healthy? Oh, yeah, yeah. Do the ugly want to be beautiful? Yeah, yeah! Do we want to be strong? Yeah, yeah. But as such, because when the sick becomes healthy, then the sickness is eliminated, right? So if you want to get some elimination, okay? So the ugly, as such, want to be beautiful. It's the body that wants to be beautiful, right? But the body is not the same as its own ugliness, or its own sickness or weakness. Now, he gets kind of a sign in this paragraph of how this is hardly something real. It is clear also from these reasons. There is generation and corruption of what is another way, but there is not of the what? Accidental, right? Okay? So I'll take an example the other day, you recall, a Christian geometry, right? Now, I was not born a Christian geometry, so is there a way of becoming a Christian geometry? Really? No. See? You've got to become two things. Yeah, there's a way of becoming a geometry, and there's a way of becoming a Christian, but there's no way of becoming a Christian geometry. Unless you could learn a Christian geometry, right? There ain't no such a name, right? And there's something by which you are a Christian, and there's something by which you are a geometry. But is there something by which you are a Christian geometry? Well, there's no such thing as Christian geometry, so... There's nothing by which you could be a Christian geometry, right? So you are not a Christian geometry, Mr. Burgess. See? There's nothing by which you could be a Christian geometry, and we could become one. So... So it hardly seems to be, right? It hardly seems to be. And yet, if the Christian Academy wants to hire a Christian geometry, here I am. Right? In some sense, there are Christian genres out there. If the affirmative action committee wants you to hire a black magician, I suppose, there is someone like that in the world, right? So in some sense, they exist, right? Now, if it's not appropriate for the man of reasoned-out knowledge to talk about accidental being, is there a reasoned-out knowledge that talks about Christian geometries? There is a knowledge that's about what a Christian is, right? What makes one to be a Christian? I suppose there would be a knowledge like the Postural Olympics about what a reasoned-out knowledge is, like geometry, right? Okay? But there's no real reasoned-out knowledge about Christian geometries, huh? We don't have anything to really say about them, right? But who's interested in accidental being, huh? Kind of. Much more so than the philosopher. Maybe he does talk about it a bit, right? Who's interested in that? Historians? Yeah, historians and biographers, right? Because you might get the job because you're a black magician or a Christian geometer, right? And a guy who's not a Christian geometer will get the job, right? You see? So your life can be influenced by accidental being, huh? Mm-hmm. I'll give you my favorite example there from the life of Senator Stiles Bridges there. He's a senator. When I knew the man, he was a senator from New Hampshire. He's dead now, but I met him one time. Very impressive senator. He became a majority leader for Republicans. But he's a very impressive man. I heard him speak one time. I had an autographed my menu when I was just a kid, but I was impressed with the guy. I heard the story that he was being considered as a vice presidential candidate back in 1936, huh? But the Republican nominee for president was Elf Landon in Kansas, I think it was. But he said, we can't nominate Bridges because the Democrats have put together the name of our presidential candidate, Landon, and Bridges, and everybody knows the sign, Landon, Bridges, falling down, falling down, falling down, They'll make a mockery of us, right? So if they denied him the vice presidential nomination, on those grounds, you can say, this influences your life a lot. Accidental being, huh? That's the way it works, huh? Okay. And then again, I suppose the poet, right? The poet likes to show the terrible consequences of something that happens, right, huh? Okay. And you know, take the example of Roman Juliet there, where Fr. Lawrence has given Juliet this medicine that will make her appear to be dead, right, huh? Says you can avoid being forced into this marriage with the county Paris. And then he sends one of his fellow brothers, right, Franciscans, out to tell Romeo what he's done, right? And he happens to go to a town where there's a plague, and he stops and attends to somebody, one of the plagued houses, and he gets boarded up because of orthodoxes. And so he doesn't get to deliver the message to Romeo or not in time, right? And so Romeo thinks that Juliet has really died, and then all the tragedy comes from that, right? Because he goes to the apothecary and gets his poison, right, and takes the poison, right, and then she wakes up and finds him there, and then she, you know, stabs herself and so on. But, you see, all this is, what, horrible thing, right? Okay. But the poet likes to hint also that in these things that just seem to happen, right, maybe there's some deeper purpose to that, huh? So in the last scene there in Romeo and Juliet where the two fathers are now reconciled, right, and they're going to put up a, you know, to your daughter and to your son, you know, statues and so on, but the leader of the city there, the Duke, I guess he is, the prince is saying, you know, heaven is found means to punish you, right? Or hate you, right? And it seems something, you know, appropriate that these two families have been feuding and blood-feuding for years and years and years, right, and hate each other, right, that they should be punished by the love of their own only daughter and only, what, son, right? It seems to be some... And so the Duke said, heaven is found means to punish you, you know, you see? And of course, divine providence, in the study of divine providence, as he wrote, actually, in the Summa, divine providence extends all the way down to what happens, huh? Okay? And our scholar, you know, in the book about the poetic arts, says that the poet likes to make it appear, right, that there's some deeper meaning in these chance events, huh? And the example he gives there is for a man who's killed somebody, right, murdered him, and has not been discovered to be the murderer, right? But the man is such a great man, they put up a statue to his memory, right, in the center of the marketplace, huh? And one day on the... there's a festival in the marketplace and so on, and there are huge crowds and so on, and the crowds are packed tight, and they go against the statue, and the statue falls off its thing, and falls on a man and kills him. That's who the man is. They're murdered, right? Yeah? They have no chance, right? Yeah, but there seems to be some, you know, some what? Purpose to this, right? Why not justice? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, but he said when you do study Divine Providence, we come to realize that Divine Providence extends down to those things, huh? Why did St. Alphonse the Bear, right? Um, and it's an important case, overlook the document, right? And kind of read falsely, and, uh, he said, yeah, oh gosh, it's just the opposite of what I've been arguing. And he's not even embarrassed by his loss of pace, but the fact that, uh, you might think that he was trying to, uh, falsify what the things really were, right? And his, you know, reputation of integrity and so on, and he feels affected, right? Someone said he went and didn't eat food for a few days, they say, you know, just crushed, you know. But, you know, that was significant, huh? You know, dear. Well, they tell the story of, was it, um, was it St. Ignatius so loyal that he was in love with a beautiful woman, and, uh, she died? And he didn't preserve the bodies to him in those days. And so he sees the body, body, you know, after a few days being carried off, you know, with all the, you know, rock and so on, you realize how superficial this is, right, and so on, and enough to, that's what the guard says, men who become saints, the woman, the woman they didn't get. That's not, that's a good one, right? And so you say, well, you know, if this hadn't happened, maybe he would have, you know, gone on, or Alfonso would have gone on, if this hadn't happened, right? Is it something that happens that suddenly shakes you up, huh? An accident, huh? So empires can be changed by some leader suddenly dying or something, right? Something happening like that. Or this assassination, this is that guy, and it's that guy, and so on, this happens, all kinds of things like that. And nations are influenced as well as individual lives. So the historian will talk about these things, the biographer will talk about these things, but they're concerned with the singular. Even the poet is more concerned with the erosal than the historian, but he finds this an interesting thing to do, right? You think of the great tragedies here, Sophocles, like Oedipus, you know, and Oedipus, what? Lee's home, fleeing his father and mother because the oracle or something has said that he's going to kill his own father and marry his mother. Oh, what a horrible thing, right? And he's pleased there, not knowing that that's not really his father and mother. And then he meets on the road there as his real father and kills him in a fracas there, and then there's his mother, right? So he didn't tend this, right? It's a horrible thing, yeah? You seem used to John Paul, the first incident he made with that. You've seen some of the illustriously here, he invites the famous men, and it's about something that would be appropriate to talk to them about. Well, he has one letter which is written to Goethe, the German poet, and it's about the moral responsibility of the artist, and it's appropriate to Goethe who wrote this story of the Sourge of Gunwerther, which is not a tragic love story. And apparently it became very popular over Europe with young lovers who were in difficult situations, started, you know, hitting their bodies and so on. So I realized he had some responsibility for this, right? And so, it's a beautiful little letter, but John Paul, the first says, you know, that you can't just tack on the moral being, it's got to be an intrinsic to the thing, right? And, as my old teacher at the Cirque used to say, you know, you can tell a man's understanding by the examples he chooses, right? And they're being cleared. And his example, he takes it from Oedipus, right? He says, after reading Oedipus the King, right, he says, one is anything but enthusiastic, he says, about incest. And so, if you read these great tragedies, you do have certain events happening, right? And a man suffers more than he seems to deserve, right? But it's because of the unfortunate coincidence of things, huh? Remember the story that you said about one time years ago? Husband's going to take a little choke on his wife, right? So, if you're pretending to leave town, you know, they just think back and scale what's out of her, you know, in the house. Apparently, she had excess to a gun, she found somebody breaking in, she shot her, shot the husband, right? So, that's how a student think you'd be doing, you know, in the risk place. But it doesn't quite deserve death, you know, for being able to bawling out or something, you know, for such a stupid, practical joke, but these things can happen, right? It says, nevertheless, he says at the bottom of page three, nevertheless, one should speak further about the accidental, what happens, as far as it is possible, right? Because we can say something about it in general, but it doesn't belong to the philosopher to talk about it in particular. It's going to belong maybe to the story of the bibliographer, of the poet, to some extent. What is the nature of it, and through what cause it is? At the same time, it will probably become clear also why there is no science, or in my translation, science, there are reasoned out knowledge of it, right? But on the way, he perceives on page four here, is to start with a division, right? And between the things, let it go, right? Let's go, right, let's go, right, let's go, right, let's go, right.