Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 57: Act and Ability: Perfection and Causality

Transcript
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I'm going to go to the third sense of before that he emphasized in the premium, right? He's going to talk about before in definition, right? Before in what? Time, in one way, another way not. And then before in substance, right? Now sometimes I have my students, you know, put in parentheses after substance, imperfection. This is their annoying way of speaking, right? But there's a reason for saying this, because you find out that substance is both matter and form, but primarily what? Form, right? It's a little bit like what you show in the second book of Natural Hearing, where Aristotle takes up what nature is, right? And nature is defined there as a beginning and cause of motion and of rest, and that which it is first as such and not by happening. And then, after he's defined nature, then he says nature is both matter and form, right? But first he says matter, because all the Greeks would see matter as being nature. And then he says form. Well, of course, he's shown in the first book of Natural Hearing that everything that comes to be, there's something like matter, something like what? Form, right? And so you have the combination of matter and form in these things. So they're both intrinsic, right? And therefore agree with this idea that nature is a cause of motion and of rest. In that which it is, right? An intrinsic cause. And maybe an active cause or a passive cause. And I always take the example of the harassed mother, you know, to show this understanding of nature, huh? You know, if the little boy says to his mother, why does the tree grow? Why doesn't the stone grow, right? Well, it's the same sunshine in both of them. The same rain coming down in both of them. The same soil with the same elements. Everything on the outside is the same. The tree grows, the stone doesn't grow. Well, the harassed mother says, well, it's the nature of the tree to grow. It's not the nature of the stone to grow. Well, you might say she's not really answering the child's question fully, what it means, right? But does she have something in mind when she says it's the nature of the tree to grow? It's not the nature of the stone to grow. Well, she's thinking of something within the tree, right? Within the stone, right? But here's the cause within in a kind of active sense because the tree is kind of building itself up in the sky, right? But then when the mother turns around and says, a little boy right there says, well, Daddy put the log in the fire and that burnt up, you know? If I put a stone in the fire, it didn't burn. Well, it's not the nature of a stone to burn, right? But here's the nature of a log to burn in the fire. But now nature's in the passive sense, right? Because it's the same flames, you know, they're licking the log in the stone, but the one burns up and the other one doesn't, right? So there's something within the log that enables it to be acted upon by the fire in this way and something else in the stone that makes it resist being acted upon in this way, right? So you have the two senses of nature, the active and the quite passive sense, right? But then Aristotle goes on and says, but form is more nature than matter. And he gives a good reason for saying that, huh? The nature is that by which something is natural, right? But by the matter, you have a natural thing only in ability. But by the form, you have a natural thing in act. So form is more, what? Nature than matter, right? Let's ensure your soul is more nature than your body. Well, something like that is substance, right? Substance, you know, material substance, at least, is composed of matter and form, right? But which is more substance, matter or form? Matter is only a substance and ability, right? And form is either substance and act or that by which a substance is an act, huh? So substance is much more, what? Form is much more substance than matter, right? So it's in terms of actuality, perfection, that he's thinking of, calling form or substance, right? So he carries that word over here, right? Okay? Okay? But it still might be easier to say it's also before in, what? Perfection, right? Now, it's interesting that he will bring this out, thinking more of two of the four kinds of causes. Form and what? End, right? Okay? Well, in the very beginning, in the first part of the book, he's talking about ability, and he's distinguished the act of ability, right? The ability to move another, and the ability to be moved by another, he's thinking more of the, what? The mover or maker, and the, what? Matter, right? Okay. But now he's going to argue more from the form, and from the, what? End, huh? That act is, what? More perfect, huh? Now, in the generation of a thing, right? Or even in the, coming to be of a house, right? Which is more perfect? What comes first, or what comes afterwards? Is the house more perfect when they first lay the foundation, or when they, later on, huh? What's later in generation is more, what? Perfect, right? What's later in generation? The matter or the form? Yeah, the matter comes at the beginning, right? The raw materials there, right? Now you've got to induce a form, right, huh? So if what comes later in generation is more perfect, and what comes later in generation is form, which is act, then act is more perfect than, what? Ability. Make sense? Okay? And then he's going to argue that, what? Ability is for the sake of act, huh? That act is the end or purpose of it, huh? Okay? And therefore it's going to be, what? More perfect, huh? More better. And because everything that comes to be goes toward a beginning, huh? An end. Now that's kind of easy, you can see that, right? But notice, huh? If you go back to the chapter on beginning, huh? The first meaning that Aristotle gives of beginning is the beginning of the desk here. The beginning of a magnitude, right? Okay? And the second meaning he gives is, well, sometimes you don't start from the beginning of the magnitude. So if I want my water here, I go to where the water is, somewhere along the magnitude, right? And so the beginning is where it's convenient for me to begin to bring the water to my lips, right? Okay? And then the third sense of beginning is the fundamental part of the thing, the foundation of a house. And then the fourth sense he gives of beginning is the maker, the mover, huh? The king, the general, and so on, huh? The principal. And then the fifth sense is the starting point in knowing. And then sixth and last he says, and every cause is in some way a beginning. And even the end, therefore, is a what? Beginning, yeah. And sometimes they say the end is, what, first in intention, last in execution. But in some way it's first, right? In some way it's the beginning, right? So, that's kind of strange, but it shows you how far the word beginning has moved when the end is now called a beginning. But certainly the sense in which the end is called a beginning is not the first meaning of a beginning. Right? You see, I heard it all. It's all these things perfectly, huh? And he's the, you know, my famous if-then statements, right? If a man understands the words he uses, then he is wise. No, no, he's not chiefly knowing the meanings of the words you use, right? But then the second statement, if a man doesn't understand the words he uses, huh? Then he is what? Yeah, yeah. I happened to read across a text here the other day of David Hume there, you know. He's talking about what's next. Actually, you know, that's got a lot of meanings that were or something like that, but he can't sort them out, right? And it's so striking to a man who knows the chapter in the fifth book on nature that David Hume does not understand the word he's using. You can take examples like that all the way from modern philosophy. These guys don't understand the words they're using, and so they're not wise. Don't give a rest of the benefit of the doubt because he doesn't understand the words he's using. So he might be wise, although wisdom consists in more than that, right? But these guys basically know they're not wise, you know, understand the very words they're using. A friend of mine, a comparison there between, you know, Kant's use the word nature, you know, on the natural, and so astuce and abstract, you know, and so far away from the original meaning, which is birth. You know, you just sit alongside each other and say, well, that one guy doesn't know how to understand the word he's using. They're not even wise enough to play the fool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And because everything that comes to be goes towards a beginning and end, because that for the sake of which, and that's the definition of end, that for the sake of which is a beginning, right? And the becoming is for the sake of the end. But the act is the end, right? And the build is taken for the sake of this. And then he starts to manifest this backhand induction. For animals do not see in order that they may have sight. But they have sight, that is to say, the ability to see. So they may see, right? And likewise, men have the art of building, so that they may build, and looking knowledge, so they may look. But they do not look, so that they may have looking knowledge, except, what, those learning, right? And these do not look except imperfectly, or because they look not out of any need. So when you acquire geometry, just put it on the shelf there and forget about it? No, no. Well, you think back about that wonderful theory, and if it comes actual again, right? And you can think about the theory maybe more easily now, because you kind of retain something in the demonstration. And so, kind of a cycle in a way, right? Go through the summa, and you get to the end, and you start over again, right? Go through it again. Because the ability to think about God is for the sake of what? Thinking about God. Yeah, you don't think about God for the sake of having the ability to think about God. Then you say, well, a person who's learning French, right? Aren't they speaking French to gain the ability to speak French? Well, that's what you said, right? But what about the ability to speak French? Let's take a speaking French. Okay. Hmm. Further matter is an ability, so that it may come to form. And when it is in act, then it is in form. And likewise in the others, and those whose end is motion. Hence, his teachers, showing their pupils acting, think they have achieved the ends of nature, what? Likewise. Okay. I know he's taking matter there as being for the sake of form. And there's a beautiful manifestation of this in the second book of natural hearing. What he does is to compare three arts. The art that uses the finished product, and the art that forms the product, and the art that prepares the matter. And he compares these three arts in terms of who commands who, right? And this shows a way of manifesting the order here between the use of the product, the form, and the what? Matter, right? But when you use the product, you may discover a what? Defect in the product, right? So in Detroit or something, road tested on the wheel, right? They may discover certain defects in the construction of that one. And then they'll go back to the drawing boards and redesign the car, or part of the car, right? To avoid the difficulty. And that's why you get all these notices about a recall, you know? Bring your car into the dealer to get the such and such thing replaced, right? So the one who uses the thing, right, commands the one who what? Forms it, yeah. Okay. And I was seeing a documentary there where I guess when the Americans and the Russians got into Germany at the end of the Second World War, there was a scramble to steal as many scientists as you could. Oh, yeah. And to steal the plans, right? Because these German scientists were really in some ways ahead of us, you see, in terms of rockets and even some airplanes they were developing, huh? And there was two airplanes that they stole from the Germans, huh? One really wasn't as good as they thought it was at first so they could do some remarkable things, huh? But the other one they, you know, found very useful. They got the original plans for it and they made an American plane just about like it, right? Apparently the Russians got a hold of the same exact plans. And signed, you know, one of their bigs, you know, exactly like that. And then when they met over Korea, there were the battles over Korea. And the American pilots said, you know, you thought we'd be attacked by our own airplanes. It's so similar, right, to our own airplanes. And you opened it up in the sky and you don't saw it. But when the Americans got these plans, then they described some of the plans they already had, right? So when a guy is up there using these airplanes, then he discovers the, what, defect to them, right? If your gun is jamming on the battlefield, right, it's got to be designed differently, huh? And so the one who uses the project commands the one who, what, forms it, right? But the one who forms the project is a man who gives orders to the, what, those who prepare the raw materials. So in my father's company, they made, among other things, farm weapons and things, right? They go out to a farm and they test it, right? And if there appears some defect in the use of it, right, then they go back and redesign it, right? So my father's engineer used to say, well, I've got some interesting ideas and I'll say three of you, good. But that's because the use of the product is the end or purpose of forming it in the first place. And the formed project is the end or purpose for preparing the raw material for that project. And so we would give orders to the wood people or to the steel people as to what kind of wood you wanted or what size of wood you wanted or how thick you wanted it. In the same way for the steel bar, right? Because we're going to make the wagons and we know how much steel you need so it won't snap and bend on the farmer's field, huh? Okay? But you might discover that this amount of steel snaps and breaks in the use of it, right? And therefore you need something thicker here. It will not do that. So you can go through the different arts. The proof of the pudding, we say, is in the eating, right? Okay? So, in a sense, the chef will say what raw materials he wants for his meal, right? But the ultimate judge is made by, what? The man who tastes it, maybe the cook himself tastes it, right? But he's not asking me if I cook so much as by the connoisseur, huh? So, the use is the end of the formed product and the formed product is the end of, what? The material. So, notice he begins with operations, and we're like use, and then he comes to form being the end of, what? Now, then. End of chapter. In Book 5 on perfect or complete, Aristotle gives three meanings of perfect or complete in creatures. He distinguishes the sense of which bad is perfect from creatures. But the first meaning he gives of perfect or complete is what has all its parts. So I'm a complete man if I've got my two arms and two legs and so on, all my parts. And I used to notice in Quebec there when I was a student, you'd have it in the menu there sometimes or in the advertisement for the restaurant, repas complet. What did that mean? What it mean, you know, this is the price for what? Some kind of an appetizer, the main course, and some kind of dessert, right? That was a repas complet. It had all the parts of Leo. Okay. Then the second sense he gives of perfect, what has all the ability of its kind. And in that sense we could say that what Homer is a perfect what poet, right? Because Homer taught all the other Greeks how to write a good plot, as Aristotle points out. And his characters are very perfect, as Hegel pointed out. And his words are very good, as Hegel and Aristotle point out. So he has the whole ability of the poet, huh? Dickens had trouble writing plots, as he admitted, right? Because he wasn't a complete or perfect poet, huh? But notice that resembles the first sense in some way, because when Dryden was hearing the plays of Fletcher and Shakespeare as a young man, and he has more plays of Fletcher performing than Shakespeare at that time, but then he realized that Shakespeare was much better than Fletcher. And he said Fletcher was just a limb of Shakespeare, like an arm or a leg, right? That's not a metaphor, I don't know, speaking, but it's looking back to the first sense, right? But Shakespeare has the whole ability of the playwright. Fletcher has some of that ability, but not all of that. So he's like a man who's missing an arm or a leg or something like that. So right now, okay? Then the third meaning that Aristotle gives is what has reached its what end or purpose in. Now, myself, when I talk about what is better, you know, I say we've got to talk about what's better now in this class, and we've already shown that something's not good because you want it. So we have to exclude them that it's better because you want it more. So it says we want to look at this in general, because you've got to look at things in general before you can know them in particular. And so I usually bring forward, kind of the help of that chapter on Perfect, two kind of almost obvious statements here, that the whole is better than the part. Most people admit that right away, don't they? And then that the end is better than what is for the sake of the end, right? And so, in a way, Aristotle's coming back to that here, isn't he? Because the first thing he gave there was in terms of the form, but the form is like the whole, right? Now, if you go back to the proportion that Aristotle gives, he's talking about the four kinds of causes. And he's thinking she's matter, form, and move her in, and so on. But then, after the corollaries, he comes back and shows how they can demonstrate more gentleman. And he says that matter is to form as parts are to the whole, right? So matter is defined as that from which something comes to be, existing within, right? And the whole would seem to come to be from the parts, right? And the parts are in the whole, right? So parts are like the matter. But the form is like the whole, the order, the distinction of parts, the way it would be together, right? So they kind of go together, right? So just as the whole is better than the part, form is better than matter, right? But perhaps you could say, though, that the part is for the sake of the whole, right? Matter is for the sake of the form, because matter is the form, like parts is the whole, right? But in some sense, the most basic statement for the good is that the end is better than the, what? It was for the sake of the end. You know, at first definition of the good, the good is what all want. And you go through a dialectic, I think we've done that here a little bit before. But you go through a dialectic to show that it's not good because we want it, huh? Otherwise, the last drink of the party would have to be good for you, right? Because obviously it was bad for you, the last drink. Well, then they realized that, as I showed inductively, that you want it because it is good, right? So the good, in a way, is the cause of you wanting it. But then which of the four kinds of causes is the good? It's a matter, form, move, or end. Well, it's not too hard to see that it's the cause in the sense of the end, huh? So you see the connection there, right, between the end being more perfect, right, and being better, right, than what is for the sake of it, huh? So if ability is for the sake of act, right, then act is the end of ability, right? Therefore, it's what better is for the sake of act, right? And the second paragraph is kind of obscure there on page 10 there. I always forget the exact sense of that second paragraph. But, you know, if act was no better than ability, then the, what, the school, the teacher would not try to show the recital, the student playing the piano, right? Or the ballet school would not try to show the girls actually doing the ballet steps, right, on the stage, huh? But, obviously, this training is for the sake of the act, huh? Now, in this next long paragraph, the third paragraph there on page 10, he's touching upon that distinction between doing and making, huh? That in doing, as opposed to making, in doing, the activity itself is the end, but in making, there's a product, huh? And in making is for the sake of that, huh? Okay. But in some, he says, the use is last. For example, seeing of sight, right? So, seeing is what? Not a making of something, is it? And nothing other comes to be from the operation. But from some, something comes to be. As from the art of house building, a house besides a house building. Yet, nonetheless, here, the act is the end. While there it is more the end than the ability. For the act of building is in the thing that is being built, and at the same time it comes to be and is as the house. So, the act of building is what? Transforming the matter, right? Not the builder as such, huh? In those things where there's something other which comes to be besides the use, the act of these is in the thing that is being made. For example, the act of building is in the thing that is being built, and at the weaving in the thing that is being woven. And likewise in others. And in general, the motion is in the move. But where there is no product apart from the act, the act is in these. For example, seeing is in the one who sees, and looking is in the looker, and life is in the soul, right? And so is the happiness where there is a certain life. So, you can criticize Marx there in trying to make man's ultimate perfection consist in what? The activity of making, huh? Because making, as such, is a perfection of the what? The thing. The what? The thing. The thing. Yeah, the made, yeah, yeah. And, you see, Marx tries to argue that man perfects himself in making things. But he's making what kind of mistake there is thinking. Well, I think it's a mistake of the accidental. It's accidental to the maker that he be perfected by his making. God is in no way perfected by his making, right? You see? Now, sometimes by making you learn to make, right? But if you're learning how to make, you're not quite fully a maker yet. And so, it's accidental to the one who's making that he's learning how to make. He's not a maker insofar as he doesn't know how to make. And so, if I make McDonald's hamburgers day in, day out, day after day, right? I'm probably not learning anything about making hamburgers, right? But I'm making them very good, you know, time after time, right? You see? This is a perfecting of hamburgers, but not a perfecting of the maker by any means, huh? Okay? And I think Marx is deceived because it often happens that the maker is what? Perfected. It's being perfected at least in his ability to make, right? But you'd say, making as such, kahel toh, is a perfecting of the made, not of the maker. In the same way with teaching, right? You know, most teachers, or all teachers, would tell you that they learn when they teach, right? Or they see the matter more clearly, you know? And I used to hear these stories, you know, when I was little, you know. And when he finished the course, he said, now, if I know what I, I knew at the beginning of the course what I know now, I would have taught the whole thing differently. Which means that he was, to that extent, not yet fully a teacher, right? Okay. And so, given the imperfection of the human mind, and how long it takes us to learn anything, you can say that probably the teacher is perfecting his understanding of the subject that he's teaching. He's teaching it, and not just because he's staying ahead of the people in the book. I'm not making it true, too. But, does it belong to the teacher as such to be learning what he's teaching? No, you can say, insofar as he needs to learn what he's teaching, he's not yet fully a teacher, right? That may be the human situation, the human condition, right? You see? But, it's still accidental, the teaching as such. You teach what you know. Okay. You don't teach what you're coming to know. The builder here, he said, he said, I like to scare people when I come to work on projects in their house. I ask them, do you have a video machine? Why? He says, well, I got, I just got this video on how to do this, and I want to see it before I start. Well, I don't know, our house, we had already kind of bought the house with this stuff initially, right? And, uh, downstairs there, there's a, there's a little house, you know, brick fireplace there, you know, and the guy was laying the bricks, right? My mother-in-law was a very, you know, a very judge of these things. She's there kind of watching him, you know, and giving him a rough time, you know. And so he's kind of kidding my mother-in-law, saying, this is my first job, he says. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha So in the eighth reading, Aristotle has been showing that act is more perfect than what? Ability. It's before ability and perfection or goodness, you could say, right? And you could say that there's a connection between that and different senses of perfect in the fifth book. But those three senses could be distinguished into basically two. Whole in some sense, right? And the end. And as I said before, the form is to matter like whole is to part. So just as the whole is more perfect than the part, so the form is more perfect than the matter. But the form is act and the matter is what? Ability to be formed, huh? And then the end, right? Is obviously better than what is for the sake of the end, huh? And I remember kind of the argument I gave there from the principle that we saw back in book two of wisdom. And the same belongs to two things, right? But to one of them because of the other. It belongs more to the cause. So good or desirable is said at the end, and that which is for the sake of the end. But of what is for the sake of the end because of the end. Like good is said, let's say, of health and of medicine, but of medicine because of health. Well, then the end is what? Is better, right? Okay, being the cause. So because we have the ability to see for the sake of seeing, we don't have seeing for the sake of the ability to see, and so on. Because act is the end of ability, then it's better and more perfect than the ability, huh? Now, in reading nine, he's going to show the same thing, but he says more masterly, right? But in a sense, more obviously, because he's going to take act and ability not in the same thing, like he did in the eighth reading, but in different things, huh? Okay? Now, that reminds me a little bit of what Plato or Socrates shows us in the Republic, huh? I don't know if you know the Republic at all, but Socrates is trying to argue in the Republic that the just soul, the ordered soul, right, is better off than the unjust and disordered soul. And so he develops this in the first book of the Republic, and he thinks he's got his, finished his job, and then somebody says in the beginning of the second book, Socrates, do you want really to have convinced us, or just to seem to have convinced us? Because his arguments are good in the first book, but they're not seen so well, right? And Socrates says, well, I want to really convince you, right? And then he says, well, I've got to do something that really convinced us. And so then he's going to blow the soul up big so you can see it. And the way he blows up the soul big so you can see it is to take what? Take the parts of the city, right, and see a likeness of ratios of three parts of the city to three parts of the what? Soul, yeah, okay? Now sometimes we do that more simply, right? Taking just two things, and I was giving, you know, obvious examples of this, but sometimes we say reason is to the emotions like the man is to the horse, right? Okay? We can see the distinction between the man and the horse, that the man should rule the horse, not the horse the man. You know, the man shouldn't be, you know, with his foot caught in the stirrups, and the horse running on the ground like that. But the man has to get up on the horse a number of times, until the horse obeys the man, and then he can command the horse. We can see the distinction between the man and the horse more easily than between the reason and the emotions. Because the reason the emotions are inside of us, and the more they didn't. So it's kind of blowing it up, right? Or in Aristotle, you know, raised that famous question. Should reason rule the emotions like the master rules his slave, or like a father rules his son, right? And eventually concludes that reason should rule the emotions as a father rules his son. So, but it's easier to see, huh, the difference between the relation of the father to the son, and the master to the slave, where the father rules the son for the good of the son, right? And with the son having some say about what he's going to do, as opposed to the master who rules the slave for the good of the master, and not for the good of the slave at all, and where the slave has nothing to say about what he's going to do, huh? And it's easier to see those things than it is to see how reason the emotions are in people sometimes, huh? Well, so Aristotle is going to take different things here, right? Where one is to the other, somewhat as ability is to act, huh? Huh? Okay. Sometimes I'll take, well, when I'm talking about the different goods of man, I'll say that the goods of the soul are better than the goods of the body, let's say, right? Okay. But the goods of the soul and the goods of the body are kind of mixed up together inside of us, huh? It's kind of hard to distinguish them. And I might say, well, the goods of the soul are the goods of the body, so I'm like, man is to the beast. And so if it's easier to see that man is better than a beast, then it's easier to see, what? That the goods of the soul are better than the goods of the body, right? Or Thomas, you know, he's talking about the certain vices, you know, he calls them childish, right? Child. And what does he mean by saying this? Well, he explains, huh? If you let the child have his own way all the time and never discipline him, right, eventually he becomes unruly. And you can't control him anymore, right? Okay, so people don't discipline their children, right? Correct them from time to time and so on. If you always let the child have his own way, eventually that child grew up to be unruly, you can't rule at all. Well, that's the way your emotions are right now. If you're always giving in to your emotions, never saying no to them or you've had enough or whatever it is, right? Well, then eventually your emotions get what? Like that moody child, huh? But it's easier to see that, right, huh? Okay? Okay? Or vice versa, you know. In a good family situation, the children are happier with the discipline they get, right? They want to see discipline. They need it because they can't discipline themselves, really. They need a certain discipline imposed upon them by the parents. It doesn't crush them anything like that, but they're emotionally more happy, right? Okay? And these other unhappy family situations where the children are not disciplined by the parents and so on, and they run wild and so on, they're even emotionally speaking, the children are what? Are ragged and they're unhappy, huh? You see? So you can see better sometimes when it's, what, blown up, right, huh? Okay? I was thinking it's kind of a whole name, but I think it's kind of good, you know. When you go into a fast order place, like down, something like that, right? And sometimes, you know, at noontime, there's a million and one guys at the counter there demanding their hamburger, their this, their that, you know, and driving the poor person behind the counter there. You feel kind of sorry for them sometimes, right? They're really getting harassed, huh? But it's a little bit the way you are when your concubisable appetite is out of order, right? It's making demands, demands, demands, demands, and your reason is running around trying to see how you can satisfy them, drugs or alcohol or candy or woman or whatever it is, right? And you can't ever satisfy it because there's something infinite about the thing. And, but that's my comparison, right? You see, the man and the cow is like reason there. And all the people, you know, they're eating their french fries, you know, and now, you know, right? It's like your emotions, and you're trying to keep these crazy guys satisfied. And they're eating your ass in here, you see? You see what I mean? So, Aristotle's going to do something like that here in the 9th meeting, huh? He's going to say that eternal things are to corruptible things. What's the bit of a wrap here? That act is to ability, passibility, something like the eternal or incorruptible things are. I'm going to do something like that. I'm going to do something like that. I'm going to do something like that. I'm going to do something like that. I'm going to do something like that. I'm going to do something like that. I'm going to do something like that. I'm going to do something like that. to the corruptible things. Because the eternal and corruptible things don't have this ability to not be, right? But in the corruptible things, there's the ability to be something other than you are. Therefore, the ability for you to not be, right? So in a way, eternal or corruptible things, which are clearly better than the corruptible things, right? You can say act as in a way to ability, like the eternal or corruptible is the corruptible. So it's easier to see these being different things, the corruptible and the incorruptible. But the incorruptible is better than the corruptible, right? Well, the proportion is, as we indicate here, with an act, it must be better than what? Ability, right? But also more masterly, he means, like Socrates was saying, right? Now you want to really convince us. Aristotle. Okay? For eternal things are before corruptible things and substance meaning imperfection, right? Okay? But no eternal thing is in, what? Ability to not be, right? And he's coming back here upon the idea of, what? This ability, which is the ability of matter. And that's an ability of, what? Contradiction at the same time, huh? So the clay is able to be a, what? Sphere and a cube, huh? Like, it doesn't mean it can be both of them at the same time, right? But the ability to be both at the same time, okay? Right? The ability to be sitting or to be standing now, right? Either one could be actualized, huh? For what is not able to belong will never belong to anything. But everything which is able may not act. Therefore, what is able to be may both be and not be. But this is the real ability of matter. The same, therefore, is able to be and not be. But what is able not to be may not be. And what may not be is corruptible. Either simply, or at least in the way in which it is said that it cannot be, right? According to place, or according to how, or how. That's touching upon the famous distinction of the three kinds of change, huh? According to place. Change of place, how much growth. Or how, alteration, right? But simply according to substance, huh? And that's how natural science was originally divided by Aristotle. Physics, chemistry, and biology. Because physics originally was studying, what? Change of place. And then chemistry was change of, what? Quality that could lead to change of substance. And then came the study of, what? Living things, which all grow, right? So change of quantity and sense of growth. So we still have that division, physics, chemistry, and biology, right? But we don't understand the reason for that division, right? And that's why it became kind of sloppy after a while. But I mean, does atomic physics belong with mechanics or with chemistry? We call it physics, right? Atomic physics. But has it got more to do with Galileo and Kepler and Newton there talking about change of place? Or does it have more to do with the chemistry? Chemistry, right? Chemistry, yeah. So if you look at Heisenberg's Gifford Lectures, right? Look at Heisenberg's Gifford Lectures. When he divides the physical sciences, right? He'll put atomic physics as chemistry. Not with the rest of physics, I've called, right? So it's because you've lost sight of what the original meaning for the word was, right? I mean, you start to use the words in ways that are not appropriate, huh? But that was the first way of doing it, huh? That was the first basis. Physics is about change of place, huh? And Galileo was talking about the fall bodies to the ground, the planets moving around the sun and so on. And Newton was unifying these two, right? So originally physics was studying change of place, right? And chemistry was something different. There you did the qualitative change and so on. But atomic physics was really explaining the periodic table of elements and so on. Nothing incorruptible simply, then, he says, is an ability simply. But nothing prevents it from being so in some ways, how or where, or therefore an act. He's thinking of the heavenly bodies, which he thought did not change substantially, but they changed their place, right? Maybe changed from light to dark, too. Nor are any of the necessary beings, huh? And these are the first things, for if these were not, nothing would be, huh? And on this, what is Thomas' third argument, he says, of God? That's the third argument. He says, some things are able to be and not be, right? They can be the one. So why are they one rather than the other, right? Well, then, because of something that necessarily is. And then something's necessary, it's necessary through itself or through another, and you can't go on forever. Therefore, there's something necessary through itself. That's the first cause. That's the third argument of the Summa Theologiae, right? But Aristotle's already touching upon it here, right? The first things are necessary things, huh? Sometimes, even in logic, we talk about these things, and we say, we'll say the necessary is not able not to be. And then over here, you've got the impossible, which is what? Not able to be, yeah. And then what do you have in the middle? The possible, right? Possible in the sense of what is able to be and not be. Okay? So which things are furthest apart? Which things are furthest apart? Necessarily impossible. What? Necessarily impossible. Yeah, yeah. But notice, in the middle, it said, it's able to be and it's able, Mark's this here, it's able to not be, right? It's got two abilities, right? It's able to be and it's able to not be. Okay? The necessary is denying one of those abilities, right? It's not able not to be. And the impossible is not able to be, right? Okay. Now, let me just come back a little bit to the idea of ability and act. Now, Aristotle has this beautiful statement there in the Praying of the Wisdom. He says the philomuthos is a philosophos, post. Okay? And that post is the Greek word of saying, or Thomas is saying Latin. So he couldn't quit. Not simply speaking, but he couldn't quit, right? It doesn't sound in the perfect way. So he's saying the philomuthos is a philosopher, right? But not fully, or simply a philosopher, right? Okay? And he says, he makes use of that there because the philomuthos is wonders in the way. And wonders is the beginning of philosophy, right? And Aristotle in the Ukrainian wants to show that wonders is the beginning of philosophy. And a sign of this is that the philomuthos, who wonders, is something of philosophy, right? See? Now, that means you've got to have great stuff like Shakespeare, right? Okay? Okay? Or Homer, right? Okay. Okay. and kind of the wonder of the philomuthos, the wonder of the man who reads Homer or reads Shakespeare, is a stepping stone to the wonder of the philosopher. So I think myself, and I look back upon myself as a freshman in college, I was in a special English course, and he said, I'm going to read some plays of Shakespeare, probably didn't read in high school, right? And so I read those plays, but that was an occasion for me to get a complete addition to Shakespeare and read all the plays of Shakespeare in the freshman year. And I think that disposed me to be a philosopher, right? Okay? Because the wonder of the philomuthos is a stepping stone to the wonder of the philosopher. But this word philomuthos, muthos in Greek means what? Myth. And then it takes on that little broader meaning, which is story, right? And then in the book of Aquatic Art, Aristotle used the word muthos for the plot, what we call it plot in English. And you can say the lover of plots is a philosopher, in a way, right? Okay? Now, when Aristotle divides a plot, he gives in the book of Aquatic Art two ways to divide a plot, one into two and one into three. You know, we always divide by two or three. And he divides a plot into two, saying it consists of tying the knot, or knots, and untying the knot, or knots, right? We saw that books, what, three through fourteen can be divided that way. Because in book three, he ties all the chief knots of wisdom, and then in books four through fourteen, he untyes those knots, right? So the lover of plots is the lover of something which is a tying the knot and untying the knots, right? Of course, Thomas would be in the sumo all the time, right? He would tie it into a little knot, and there'd be a question to tie it into a knot, right? And then he'd untie it, right? But, the other division he gives is a plot. And he says that Homer taught the other Greeks that a plot should have a beginning, middle, and end. It's not just about one man, everything might happen to this man, right? But it's about a course of action, there's a beginning, middle, and end. And how do you define a beginning, middle, and end? Well, by before and after, right? Of course, the philosopher's a lover of before and after, as you know. His reason looks before and after, and wisdom is the highest perfection of reason, and so on. But notice, in a way, you have to define the beginning and the end negatively, don't you? Correctly. Because you'd say that the middle is before something, right? And it's after something. The beginning is what? Also before something, but not after. And the end is what? After, not before. Yeah, okay. So in a way, middle is before, in the beginning and the end, in knowledge, insofar as the affirmative is before the what? Negative in knowledge, right? Okay. Before is before, not before. And after is before what? Not after, right? Right? Just like sight is before blindness, right? Okay? Okay? That's kind of interesting, right? That the middle, in a way, is before the beginning and the end. Okay? Now, you have to do an example over here, right? Because in a way, able to be is before not able to be in knowledge. This is the affirmative is before the negative, right? Okay? And able not to be is before not able not to be in knowledge, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? So, it's like we're in the middle of things, right? Okay? Just like with time, right? We're in kind of what is beginning, what is before and after, right? Okay? But is there a beginning of time, you ask sometimes, right? And the populace talks about the end of time, right? Okay? So, the beginning of time is before the rest of time, but it's not after anything. And the end of time is after everything, but not before anything, right? But you described the beginning and the end negatively, wouldn't you? Okay? Now, Aristotle, in the theory book about the soul, he teaches us what our reason and the reason's own object is, right? And you may recall that reason's own object is the what it is of something sensed or imagined, huh? Okay? Our reason's own object is the what it is of something sensed or imagined, huh? And that's why he takes the example from a natural thing, right? And from a mathematical thing. A natural thing and a mathematical thing. Now, as you've seen in Aristotle, I'll touch it upon other places. A natural thing is composed of what? Matter and form. And although you don't have matter in a strict sense in mathematics, you have this kind of imaginable matter extension. And then you have form, right? So you have, you know, surfaces that you can cut up circles and spheres and triangles and so on, right? And so you have something like matter and form, okay? And that's why in both natural and mathematical things, you can have many individuals of the same kind because you have matter and form. Now, in book eight, we talked about the matter and form and the genus of substance, you know? But in book nine, you extend to ability and act, which are more general than matter and form, right? But in a way, ability and act are kind of proportional to matter and form, right? Now, there's going to be something called pure act. Because act is before what? Ability simply. So, the first thing is going to be, what? Act simply, yeah. Okay? But if somebody says, what do you mean by saying the first clause is pure act? What does pure, although it's grammatically affirmative, in meaning, what is it? It means not, no ability. Yeah, so it's act without any, you take a little bit of a sense of passability, right? Okay? So, there's negation there, right? Okay? Now, when you talk about the first matter, the first matter is pure what? Yeah. And pure, again, grammatically is affirmative, but in meaning it means without any act, right? Try to consider the first matter by itself, this is the first matter. That, this is actually God in here, perhaps. So, pure ability means without any act. So, what's in the middle? Everything else. Everything else has some ability and some act, right? And more so in material things, you've got matter and form, but even the angels, you've got the substance and existence, right? And the substance is the existence, his ability is to act. So, these things in the middle are, you might say, composed of ability and act, right? So, now you've got the beginning, the middle, and the end, a little bit like in a plot, right? Okay? But just as you define the beginning, middle, and the end in the plot, you define the middle by two affirmatives. It's before something and after something. But you have to define the beginning and the end by one affirmative and one, what, negative. Because the beginning is before something, but not after anything. The end is after something, but not before something. So, you do the same thing here, don't you? Okay? So, we kind of know the beginning to the end, but...