Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
Lecture 1: The Natural Desire to Know and the Road to Wisdom

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In Sophia, meaning the wisdom. Now, in the legendary origin of the word, they say that Pythagoras was the first man to call himself a philosopher. He was not the first philosopher, but the first man to call himself a philosopher. And the occasion for it, as we counted, is that he discovered some wonderful things, like Pythagorean theorem and the other things. And so his contemporaries started to call him wise. And Pythagoras is supposed to reply, Don't call me wise. God alone is wise. But what shall we call you then? If you have to call me something, call me a lover of the same. So in the origin, though not in the etymology, there's also an element of humility. The wisdom of man is nothing compared to the wisdom of God. And you find that same thought running through the other great philosophers. And obviously the Christian philosophers say they're even more strong. So you get to, say, Pericletus, who's in some ways a central thinking of human thought. And he has these two wonderful proportions. As an ape is to a man, so is man to God. As an ape, you know, is appearing to man in beauty and wisdom and everything else. So man is like that to God. Or, this other proportion was, As a child is to a man, so is man to God. And so, to the child, the man appears to be wise, right? But in comparison to God, man is not wise. Biologists call us homo sapiens, which means the wise ape. Compared to the ape, you look wise, right? But compared to God, we're like an ape. They find that same thought in Socrates, right? In the apology, the next word. The oracle of Delphi said that no one is wiser than Socrates, right? And Socrates said, what does that mean? Because he knew he was ignorant of many things. First thing to realize that he's not wise in the way God would be wise, right? Maybe wise in some human sense, so you're not wise in the full sense, right? In Plato's last work, which is usually considered to be the law, right? He quotes Protagoras, huh? Who said, man is the measure of all things. And he says, no. God is the measure of all things, huh? Same idea, right? We'll see in this premium that Aristotle says, either we should say God alone is wise, right? Or only God in the full complete sense. Now that humility, of course, is found even more profoundly in people like Augustine or Thomas or the Christian philosophers in general, but it was lost among the famous modern philosophers. You know, Hume, say, or Marx and so on. The human reason is the supreme mind that reads in the universe, right? So to understand what a lover of wisdom is, we have to know something about what wisdom is, and then how the philosopher must love wisdom. So this premium of Aristotle's wisdom is the best short premium to what wisdom hangs at and what kind of knowledge it is. Okay? Now the word premium is a Greek word originally, meaning paving the way, or is the way, right? And the premium is something shorter than an introduction, right? Introduction means, what, leading you into it. So in college, say, a whole course might be called introduction to some subject, right? But premium is something very short, like the prologue of the Goliath, the 14 lines. It in some way prepares the way what comes afterwards. If you look at the Gay Gerberman in Vatican II, I first had an English copy of it. In the very beginning, it says, introduction. Not introduction. Beginning of it. Not introduction. Then I got the official Latin text, and it says premium. It's magnificent premium. And just about all of Aristotle's works have a premium to that. So we're going to look at this premium to get an idea of what wisdom aims at and the kind of knowledge it is. Let's look at the first sentence in this premium. Aristotle says, All men by nature desire to know. Now the word there in Greek in the sentence is adenai, right? Which could be translated to know, and it usually is translated to know, but it could also be taken in a more particular sense, meaning to understand. And either way you take it, it makes sense. But when he gives in the second sentence a sign from the senses, right? If you take the first sentence as referring to knowing in general, well, sensing is a kind of knowing. Sense knowing. But if you take adenai there to mean to understand, which it usually does in Aristotle, right? There's a kind of a likeness. Or if I would carry the word to see over to understand it sometimes, right? Or even Greg with the Grace, it's a reason as the eye of the soul. Anger disturbs the eye of the soul. Now I usually ask me questions about this first statement. One is, what does it mean? Okay? Two, is it true? And three, why does he begin with that statement? Now when he says, all men, does he mean men as opposed to women, let's say? Huh? Or men as opposed to boys, huh? No. Okay? It's the common one, right? Now, when he says, by nature, what does he mean? The word nature in Latin, or the Greek word fuses, it first means birth. And so, we kind of lose that a little bit in English, right? It's like if he said that this desire is inborn, right? It's not something that grows by custom or fashion, but the source of this desire is within, right? Nature is always something within. Just like the baby comes from within. Now, I think we all know what the word desire means, huh? And as I mentioned, we can understand that last word, either to know in the broad sense, or to understand, to reason in particular, right? Now, the second question, is that statement true? And that's the sign that Aristotle gives. He says, a sign of this is that men do scientific experiments. A sign of this is that men do historical research. A sign of this is that men philosophize. No, right? He takes a sign from something that is common to all of us, and that's the love to senses, huh? And is there everybody, or is there anybody else? Put it this way. Is there anybody who doesn't sometimes use his eyes not to make or do something, but just to see something? Look at that beautiful sunset, right? today, but look at those beautiful mountains, right, or, you know, people hang up on their living room walls sometimes, a painting or a reproduction of a famous painting, maybe a beautiful scene, right, you don't hang up the table weights and measures, do they, but that'd be more practical, right, so everybody uses their eyes sometimes just to see something, right, so they have a desire to know about anything, what, to make or do because of that, okay, and especially things about the eyes, because the eyes are the senses that have a certain clarity in what they know, and they can know things at a distance, right, the sun and the moon and the stars would be lost to us, right, if we had no eyes, okay, then notice the second sign, which he doesn't give here, but he touches upon in the book about the poetic art, he said everybody enjoys stories, right, and as a child, when your mother was reading you, let's say, Little Red Riding Hood, you wanted to know what happens to Little Red Riding Hood when she gets to her grandmother's house, right, you're going to make her do something with that knowledge, no, but your wonder has been aroused, okay, and so even practical people who have to get up in the morning and do something, right, sometimes start to read a mystery story or watch a movie that's intriguing on TV or something, and they stay up beyond their, what, bedtime, right, and they'll be tired, you know, they're not going to pick up something if they're watching a movie that will help them on the job tomorrow, and they'll be tired, right, but they have something about their love vision around, you want to see how it turns out, my cousin Donald is a very practical woman, right, sometimes a philosophy like that, but anyway, he was reading some Russian spy novel, right, and he said she was laying around the house, and she accidentally picked it up and said, look at it, and she got engrossed it, and she was mad at downing to get this book around because she couldn't put it down if she wasn't doing her gardening, you know, or other practical things, you see, so even that very practical woman has something in this way, desire, right, you see it in a baseball game, right, you see people sometimes in the ninth inning leaving the ballpark if the game is lopsided, right, but if it's in doubt who's going to win, right, you won't have that same number of people leaving the stands, although that's a practical thing to do, right, to get out of the parking lot before they jammed in there for an hour or two, right, okay, so the statement here is true, right, this is the second thing you asked about, now the third and last reason, why does Aristotle, you think, begin with this statement, it's just got to do with finding out about wonder and pursuing, excuse me, pursuing wisdom, finding out about wisdom, yeah, now notice the fact that something is desired is a sign that is good, okay, now it's not a necessary sign, right, because sometimes people desire things that are only apparently good, right, but when you have a natural desire for something, like you have a natural desire for food, water and so on, right, natural desire to sleep and so on, well that's a very good sign that water, food and sleep are really and truly, what, good for us, right, so the fact we have this natural desire to know, right, wisdom is what we're finding out, the end of all of our knowledge, right, our knowledge, this way is preparing the way to see that, right, there's another kind of subtle thing that Thomas Aquinas mentions in his commentary, and that is that nature doesn't do superfluous things, the common rule for all natural philosophers from the Greeks right through Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton, is that nature does nothing superfluous, so if nature gives man or the other animals a natural desire, it's for something that they need and they can in some way get, you may starve to death, right, but it's not in principle possible to get food, right, you may die of thirst out there, death in hell or something, right, but why would nature give us thirst if there's nothing to drink? So the fact that nature has given us this natural desire to know, right, is a sign that it should be possible in some way, and this is against people who might think that it's foolish to pursue wisdom, right, you know, like man can't know or something, right, okay, that's like saying it's foolish to look for food, right, but there's a natural desire to something naturally good and something that is in some way possible for the one who didn't give it by nature to decide for it. They used to overemphasize knowledge, but now they deny that we can know it, too. Yeah, I used to step right off us in the way here, you know, there's some, I would be advertising for books, you know, trying to sell me, you know, there's somebody talking about truth, you know, and why do we give up pursuing truth, you know, in the modern world? And so part of it is, part of it is we don't follow nature. We'll come back to that, I mean, get to the fourth thing in the introduction here. Heraclitus says, wisdom is to speak the truth and to act according to nature. You can hear that, too. So we're already listening to nature here when we talk about this natural desire. Now, starting in the second paragraph, Herstal is going to begin to talk about the first road in our knowledge. Now, the first road in our knowledge is the natural road in our knowledge, and the natural road in our knowledge is the road from the senses into reason. So just, the first road is the natural road, right? And the natural road is the road from the senses into reason. Let me manifest the minor premise first there. If you know what nature means, huh? There's many senses. Take this common meaning of nature as what a thing is, right? Anything more fundamental than what a thing is. The thing must be what it is before it can be anything else, right? So nature is always what is first in our knowledge. So that's why the first road in our knowledge is the natural road in our knowledge. Now, the other premise, the major premise, why is the natural road in our knowledge, the human knowledge, right, the road from the senses into reason? Well, what is man by nature? He's an animal with what? Reason, right? So man is by nature. Animal is defined by having what? Senses, right? Man is not just an animal, but he's an animal with what? Reason, right? And as you know, what is general develops before what is, what? Particular. So when the, let's say, the fertilized egg or something like that, right? What you first see is something like the plant, the cell division, right? The road, right? And then the use of the senses. And last of all, there's some reason, right? So the road is naturally, for an animal with reason, the road is naturally from the senses into what reason, right? And Aristotle's going to talk a little bit about that road, right? We could at some time, you know, talk more at length about the road, right? What Aristotle's going to talk about here is what comes first along that road, right? What comes second? What comes third? And it comes later on and so on. Now, before we start to talk about that, why do you think he wants to talk about the natural road in our knowledge and where it's going, right? Right? in order to get some glimpse of what wisdom might be about, what wisdom might be aiming at. When I have a class of freshman assumption, we talk a little bit about wisdom, I'm standing in question, I ask them just to get them to start to think about it, see what they have in mind about wisdom, you know, they're amorphous, I need it. I said, do you think wisdom comes in the beginning of our knowledge, or in the middle of our knowledge, or at the end? You know, a class of freshman who's never thought about this, you know, it kind of all spontaneous, you know, at the end, right? So unless you see where the natural road is going, right, it's hard to get an idea of what the end or goal is going to be, right? Wisdom comes at the end of that. So he starts off, what's at the very beginning. He's going to talk about, you know, at least three or four, four actually, and later on makes more distinctions, but four basic things of knowing along this road, right? And you'll see as you go from one to the next, you're moving in the direction of wisdom. And everybody recognizes that. And he says, now animals are born having sensation by nature, right? Now if you compare an animal that can sense, and be aware to some extent of its surroundings, right, with a stone or even a tree, it doesn't seem to be aware of its surroundings. The animal seems to be much more wide, right, and the tree, right? I have a limb of a tree, he doesn't even know you're doing it, right? Okay. Now he says, from this, memory does not arise in some of them, but it does arise in others. Aristotle's talking about a low form of animal life. And I think he's probably thinking of an example from marine biology. Aristotle, you know, after he left, after Plato's death, right, he left, you know, at the age of mine, he engaged in marine biology. Now there's some forms of animal life where the animal doesn't move from one place to another. It's affixed, I guess, to the bottom of the ocean, right? And if you poke it or something, if something comes in contact, it may surround it, right? But it doesn't seem to have any memory of them. All that it needs comes to it to know the occurrence of the water and so on, right? But all the higher animals, the man himself, of course, have an addition to sensing, but memory of what has been sent, right? Now, who seems wiser? The animal that has sensing but no memory, or the animal that has memory. You know the old saying, in one ear and out the other? Well, if I had no memory, everything would be like that. Would I ever go forward in my knowing? Well, it's like a sea. Put the water in, or it's out. You'd keep nothing of what she says, right? My mother used to have an expression that I hear her use with the salesman when she's trying to sell her something. She says, I wasn't born yesterday. But if you had no memory, you'd be no wiser than somebody born yesterday. You'd be no wiser than the newborn baby downtown, right? In the hospital. So memory represents a great event. When I was a little boy, we had a male cat, and the cat was in the kitchen, and he smelled something cooking on the stove that smelled pretty good. So he tried to jump up on the stove, and his paw, at the, you know, hot burner, let him go. Yeah! He fell to the ground. He never tried to do that again. He never, in my experience, ever tried to jump up on the stove again. He was a wiser cat from the not, right? But he'd be no wiser if he didn't have, what? Memory, right? So you see how you're moving in the direction of wisdom, even as you go from sensing to, what? Having memory, right? Okay? Now, you mentioned this here, but kind of an aside, so don't go on it too much. But he's kind of contrasting the sense of hearing with the sense of sight, right? And the classic comparison is that the sense of sight is more the sense of discovery by yourself, right? The sense of hearing is the sense of learning from the future. That's why Thomas is always quoting St. Paul, you know, in the Latin, he there is exality, right? Faith is from hearing. And that's saying, don't send somebody to preach, right? How can you hear? How can you hear? Now, in the third paragraph, he speaks of the third stage here that comes after memory, but mainly in that. And this is what we could call, what, experience, right? Now, sometimes we use experience in a different sense than Aristotle's using it here. Sometimes, if a man goes through some sensation and makes a big impression of him, you broke your legs and all that horrible thing, that was quite an experience, right? But that's really still a sensation in the memory of that sensation, right? He's taking experience here as a collection, a gathering together of many memories of the same sort of thing. So they say to the students, huh? If a man has had one date with one woman in his life, he might remember it. Or if a woman has had one date with one man in her life, he might remember it. But she would not seem, or he would not seem to be as wise as someone who's had, but many, right? If I run one political campaign, that's it, right? It doesn't seem as wise to the man who's been through 20 political campaigns, right? Okay? So the man's experience to all of us seems to be what? Wise is in the man of the wine of life. Memory, right? You get the wine expert, right, John? He hasn't just drunk one wine, he's drunk hundreds of ones, right? He has all these memories of the wines he's drunk gathered together in his head, right? He has the experience of wine, right? So he seems much more knowing, much more knowledgeable of the wine than the man of one memory. You see that? Okay? So again, you're going in the direction of wisdom. So the animal that has memory seems wiser than the animal that has only sensation, right? And the man who has experience seems wiser than the man of one memory, right? Okay? Here's a confirmation that it's the way to go, right? So in that third paragraph, he says, the other animals live by images and memories, but they share little of the experience. The experience has something of the influence of reason already, because in experience, you're comparing things, right? Bringing them together. That's what reason does. The race of men, however, lives by art and reason. I don't know how do you have that. So he says, experience comes to be from memory in men, just as memory came to be from sensation, right? For many memories of the same sort of thing perfect the power of one experience. And now he's going to start to compare experience with the next step he wants to talk about, science or art, right? We'll see what the differences are. And experience seems to be very much like science and art. For science and art come to men to experience. What's the difference that he sees in this fourth paragraph between experience and art or science? What's the first difference he sees here in this fourth paragraph? Later on, he's going to see another difference too. What difference does he see in this fourth paragraph? What's the transition from experience to the beginning of art or science? Yeah. Experience is still a knowledge of many singular, right? Many individual, just as sensing and memory are a knowledge of the singular. But when I see many things of the same sort and I see something common to them, I begin to separate out what they have in the stomach. Okay? So if you took an aspirin and your headache went away, right? And I remember that. You took an aspirin and your headache went away, right? And I started to compare... an aspirin went away, you took an aspirin went away, These many memories I have of people taking aspirin and headaches along the way, I might see something kind of general there, right? But aspirin is good for headaches, right? For experience makes art, as Paulus says, he's a character in one of Plato's dialogues, speaking rightly but inexperienced by chance. Beginner's life, right? A man of experience sometimes, by luck or by chance, he does something better than a man of, you know, for his experience. So art comes to be whenever one universal understanding, unless universal is something one, common to me, right? Sediment, right? Comes about whenever one universe understanding about like things. Comes to be from the many things kept in the mind by experience. And he gives an example from the old what? Medical art, right? Serestalo's father was the court physician at the court of Macedonia, right? And Serestalo became known at the court of Macedonia. He became an instructor of the future Alexander Graves. His father was the medical physician for King Philip, right? In Macedonia. 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