Introduction to Philosophy & Logic (1999)
Lecture 2: Wisdom as Knowledge of Causes and First Principles

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So that wisdom follows knowledge and all, it's more a matter of knowing than of doing, right? Now the reason for this, this is because the men of art or science know the cause, while the others do not. The experienced know that it is so, but do not know why it is so. The things know why it is so, and the, what, cause it. So someone might know from experience that knowledgeable people in wine and so on, they store their wine bottles on their, what, side, right? You know, that this is done, right? But they don't know why. The reason why, as I've often explained, is that when it stands up, the cork dries out. And then eventually the air can get in and spoil the wine, right? And it lays on its side, like it's into the cork, the cork expands, and it makes a nice seal, right? I'm a tea drinker now. Now I know from experience that if you leave the water in contact with the tea drinks, say for seven minutes, or something like that, ten minutes, you're going to get a bad tasting wine. Tea. Okay. Now, your first kind of, you know, attitude to this is, well, it gets too strong. That's not what happens. It doesn't get too strong. In that case, you just dilute the wine. What actually happens is that there are different chemicals released after especially seven minutes. Chemicals that are disagreeable in their case compared to the ones. So the chemist is a man of art and science, right? To explain how different chemicals, right? The reason he knows are released in different times, right? So he knows why something that I know is so, and therefore he seems to be wiser than me. He seems to be illuminating, right? We think we're wiser than the ancients because we think we know why there's day and night. The ancients know as well as us that there's day and night, right? Everybody from experience knows there's day and night, right? Not everybody knows me that the earth is turning on its axis. Now, again, even without going through this whole text with students, sometimes I'll ask students this question. I'll say, who do you think is wiser, the man who knows the way things are, or the man who doesn't know the way things are? Of course, the obvious answer is the man who knows the way things are. And I'll say, now, among those who know the way things are, who's wiser? The man who knows the way things are, but not why they are the way they are, or the man who knows why. Of course, that was against the answer. The man knows why, right? So this is the reason why art and science seems to be, what? More knowing, man of art and science, and more like wisdom, because he knows why, he knows the cause, right? So notice the nuanced treatment of Aristotle, right? In terms of the first difference, he doesn't try to reason that wisdom, or that art and science, is superior to experience. In fact, he reasons to sin and superiority. But from the second difference, he reasons to the superiority, right? So this is introducing us to the idea now that wisdom, the wise man, knows causes, right? He knows why things are the way they are, right? Now, that's so important a point for what he's developing in the beginning of this premium. He wants to stop now, right? And manifest, in the next three paragraphs, in three different ways, that the man who knows why and the cause would be considered by all of us. Why is it right? And the man who doesn't know why, who doesn't know the cause. Now, the first kind of example he uses, in the second and fifth paragraph here on page two, he compares the chief artist with the subordinate artist, and he can take, you know, any example he wanted to do with this from the arts. Whence also we think that the chief artists about each thing are more honorable, and know more, and are wiser than the handicrafts now, because they know the causes that things make. The latter are like inanimate things. They make, but they do not know what they make, as fire burns. Inanimate things make each of these by a certain nature. Cheers. Cheers. ...a reason in knowing the causes. Let's take an example of this. Let's take the medical doctor and the pharmacist, right? And the medical doctor would be the chief artist, right? And the pharmacist is the subordinate of that, right? And we all would think that the medical doctor is wiser and more knowing than the pharmacist. And the sign of that is that he commands the pharmacist what to do, right? He gives them a prescription, which the pharmacist is supposed to follow, right? Now, the pharmacist, as pharmacist, doesn't have to know why you need that medication. He may, you know, put this up, but then he has a little bit of medical art himself, right? But as pharmacist, he has to be able to follow the prescription and make the medicine or select the medicine, right? It gives to you, right? But we all think that the doctor is a little bit higher in the profession, a little more honorable, right? Than the pharmacist, right? Because he knows why you need that, right? You see that? So this is what Aristotle is doing. He's taking something we all recognize. The doctor is being wiser and more noble, more honorable in his profession. But you can see that he's the guy who knows more of why than the pharmacist, right? Take the military art, right? So Napoleon is the chief artist, right? In the military art there. And let's say you're the head of the Calvary, right? And you're under strict orders to not charge until you hear the company. It's a sign for me, Napoleon, right? Now, as head of the Calvary, you have to know how to lead the charge. But you have to know why you shouldn't charge until the company. But the great Napoleon, he's got a battle plan to win the battle. And there's a time in which if the Calvary charges before that, or too late, it'd be too late or too early, right? So he knows why this is the best time for them to do, right? A percentage of the job doesn't know what he's doing. I mean, if he's really, you know, the man to do that, right? One of the famous poems he used to memorize when I was a kid, you know, the battle between the war, right? The charge of the life we gave, there is not to question why, there is what to do and die. I don't think I'd know what to do in that case, right? I used to work in the factory with my brother Mark, see, and being my older brother, he was kind of a charge, right? And so he'd tell me to do something, and I'd say to him, you know, why? I mean, why do this stuff like that? He'd say, hey, you're not paid to think, he says, you're just paid to do it. But you're sticking to this deck, right? You know, you're funny with me, you know? That's true, right? I'm not paid to think, right? You know, just to do this, right? Sometimes in grade school, you have someone teaching the children how to print and how to write. And sometimes, if you have a large class, they'll get, you know, somebody who has no education, really, and these things, there's kind of an assistant, right? And the chief teacher, you might say, right? Tells everyone what to watch out for the children, right? So I remember this one example. When you're printing, like, say, the letter C, right? Well, some children will start to see at the bottom and go like that. Other children will do it like this. And the chief teacher tells the assistant, make sure they form their C on the top. This is printing, right? Now, it doesn't really make any difference as far as printing the letter C. We do this or this. But why was the teacher insisting that they do this on the top, down, and around, and front, and the bottom up? Yeah, yeah. Now, when I start to write the letter cap, I mean, the word cap, right? If I start at the top, I do like this. There's a break there, right? So in other words, she knows the reason why, right? The other person doesn't. That's Aristotle's first main example there. The second one is from the ability to teach, right? So we think of the teacher as being right, right? And those he teaches, at least he knows what matters about what he teaches them. Now, can one teach fully if you don't know why? The students say, why? And you say, well, you get to be my age. They'll see it. Well, then I'm kind of asking for you to, you know, believe me, right? But that's not teaching in the full sense. I was teaching in California there at St. Mary's there. And this one student was teaching a somewhat immoral life, right? And he was driving the priest crazy because, what's wrong with, you know, fornication? It's all right. And so they weren't so good at giving the reasons why, but they knew these things were bad, right? So he'd come to me because I'd give him the reason why these things are bad, right? So he'd guard me as wiser, right, than the man who knows that it's bad, but can't explain why it's bad. So sometimes, you know, the system of living, your parents know things, right? You can listen to them because of their experience, right? But they don't seem as wise as the teacher could explain why it's good, and why that's bad, or why it's just better than why it works, right? Now, the last way he reasons in the fourth paragraph on page two, he's making kind of a contrast here, right? Put it in the form of either argument. His wisdom consists in a knowledge of the singular, and that is so, or an analogy of the universal, and why it's so. Can't be one of the other, right? Now, if you say it's about the singular, and that is so, what absurdity about it is? Nobody speaks to himself a different argument, right? If you said that wisdom consists more in knowing the singular, and that is so, than the universal of the quiet self, then sensation would be wisdom. Because what's most authoritative as far as singular? If I remember your eyes, and color your eyes, some days you'll go wrong, right? Now, you look at your eyes, right? Trust the senses, don't you? Go back and look at something, and it's a little different than the way you remember it, right? Okay? So experience is based on memory, and memory is not as authoritative as the senses. Are you sitting? Okay? So you're looking more authoritative than the senses. You can have all kinds of theories why you're sitting. But that you are sitting, nothing is more certain than the senses. So if wisdom consisted in knowing the singular, and that is so, sensation would be wisdom, that nobody thinks that is wisdom. Now Aristotle goes in an extra part here, to talking about different arts or sciences, with three-fold distinctions, with kind of going into different arts and sciences, you know, from the senses, right? Which seems wise, carpenter or Shakespeare, to develop that. He's using the word art and science here, roughly, for any analogy, universal, right? And why it is so, right? With more precise distinctions, he says, he made it in the sixth book of the Machina. The fact of the sake of which we have now made a discourse is this, that all hold what is called wisdom to be about the first causes and beginnings. And it's going a little bit further than he wants to go here. It says first causes, right? So this has been said before, the experienced man, the experienced man, the experienced man, the experienced man, the experienced man, the experienced man, the experienced man, the experienced man, ...seems to be wiser than any of those having sensations. The artists are scientists and the experienced. The chief artists and the handicrafts, right? The looking science is more than the making, right? Now notice, in our own age, which is a very practical age, you might say, well, that's so hard to see, right? But notice how they made Einstein man of the century. And let's see what it's justified in our time magazine, right? Man of the century? Einstein, right? If you're thinking of Einstein in terms of his knowing, not in terms of his, what, doing or making, yeah. Even the popular books, like Chicken Barnett, The Universe of Dr. Einstein, right? They admire Einstein because he seems to have understood the whole universe, right? Einstein says, I'm not concerned in detail, I want to see the whole universe, right? Okay. So even there you see a little bit of the theoretical, right? The looking knowledge is having more the character of wisdom, right? But notice he kind of draws back to the idea of first beginnings and causes, and says, thus it is clear that wisdom is about beginnings and causes. Now in the second reading, he's going to push this further, right? And say that wisdom is aiming not just at any causes, as every art or science aims at some causes, wisdom is going to aim at the very first causes. He's also going to point out that wisdom is about not just universal, but what's most universal. So wisdom is going to be about what is said of all, that's one thing, but most of all about what is a cause of all, right? And again, it's nobility and excellence from speaking about the first causes, not from speaking about what is said of all, right? But that's anticipated in the first reading, right? And the superiority of art or science or of experience is not in terms of knowing the universal, but knowing the cause, okay? So any questions then about that first reading, huh? Well, you have the natural desire spoken of briefly at the beginning, right? This paragraph. And almost all the rest of it is in terms of an actual what? Role, right? But the chief conclusion is that wisdom is about causes, right? The man who knows why, who is the chief artist, right? Or the teacher or whatever, he's a man who knows why he's wiser. Obviously, wisdom less than some of the analogies of causes. Okay? So now he wants to say in the second reading, more precisely, what causes is it about, right? So he begins by saying, since we seek such knowledge, the knowledge of causes, that is to say, right? This ought to be considered. About what sort of causes and about what sort of beginnings is wisdom and knowledge, huh? Perhaps it would be clearer if one took the thoughts we have about the wise man. That's not the editorial we, you know, submitting we, human beings in general, have about the wise man or about wisdom, right? Now, Aristotle's going to work out a six-part description of wisdom for the wise man. And he's going to reason from the first three of those parts, to wisdom being about what is said of all. And for the last three, it's being about the first cause. Okay? You notice you have enough material in the first reading to say, hey, who's why the man knows the cause, the man who really knows that in itself. So the man knows the cause. Well, who's wiser? What if the cause has a cause? You know, you hit me. Why? Because you're angry at me. So anger is the cause of your hitting me, right? But anger is the kind of cause that has a cause, right? So why are you angry at me, right? So the man who knows the cause of the cause would obviously be wiser, right? And so on until you come to the first cause, assuming that there are first causes, right? It's just something that Aristotle shows in this book, right? Okay? He's going to develop this more slowly, right? Now, the first thing we think about the wise man. We think first that the wise man knows all things so far as possible. Not having a knowledge of these in particular, because no one, not even a game, can know all things in particular, right? But we think in some way he knows all things in some general way, right? You hear people saying even daily life. He's got it all together, right? What does that mean? He sees everything, right? At least in some general way, right? Even the pejorative sense of wise. Are you a wise man? Are you a know-it-all? Right? You think of the wise man in some way, knowing all about something, right? They can't know all about something in particular, in general. Then we think wise, the one who is able to know things difficult and not easy for man to know. His sense is common to all. Hence it is easy enough to think what? Wise. So we think that wisdom is being in knowledge of things that are what? Difficult to know, right? That's why we attach a certain honor to the wise man, right? He knows things that most men don't know. Things that are difficult to know, right? Further, on this next paragraph he's got two things, the third and fourth one. Further, we think wise in every science the man who is more certain or more sure. Now, take that by itself. You're not so sure about something, right? Once you consult someone you think might be wiser in this matter than you. Even after I had my PhD in philosophy, I used to go up and see him on CVI. Every Thanksgiving and every Easter vacation, right? And sometimes I send my questions like that, right? But these are difficult questions and I'd work out my own answer to the questions. And I ask what he thought of them, you know? And almost all the time he'd agree with my own answer, but once in a while he'd say something, right? And then if I thought about it again, I'd see if he was right and I was wrong, right? Okay? But I go to him because he seems, what? Wise, right? And there's a little paradox there, right? You're saying that wisdom is about things that are difficult for man to know, right? We think that about the wise man, right? We admire the wise man for knowing things that are difficult to know, right? We also think of the wise man as being more sure in what he says. And therefore we go to the wise man and there's a doubt, right? And there's a little paradox there, right? Because how can the wise man be characterized by being more certain in what he knows, right? He's knowing things that are more difficult than that. The things that are easy to know that you wouldn't be more sure about it. And yet we have both of these opinions about the wise man, don't we? It reminds me when Aristotle talks about the soul in the Deion, right? And he talks about the excellence of the knowledge of the soul, right? Because it's such a noble thing. But it's also excellent because of the great certitude we have about the soul. But then later on he says that to know what the soul is is one of the most difficult things in the world. So how can the knowledge of the soul be most what? Certain, yet the knowledge of the soul be one of the most difficult knowledge in the world to acquire. Yeah. I mean, how can... That was just difficult to know, right? Very difficult to know. How can that knowledge be characterized by... But even if you've done everything you could do, right, it's still such a difficult thing to know how can you be sure, but not what it is, right? You know, Descartes saying his cojito air to assume, right? As the objective is pointing out, this was really originally used by Augustine against the skeptical academics at this time, right? People are denying everything, right? How can they deny that they're doubting everything, never thinking, right? So in some way, there's a great certitude in that, right? Even the skeptic has to admit that, right? I doubt, therefore I am. Couldn't doubt I exist, right? Tell me the story of these classes at some foster class years ago, and somebody asked me, do I exist? The teacher is supposed to have said, who's asking? It's obvious, right? And so it may not be that wisdom is most certain in the same way that it's about the most difficult things, right? It takes a long time to talk more about wisdom. Oh, no. I'm just here to see that. Now, the fourth thing is, he's the one more able to teach. You might want to put in brackets the causes, because he's going to kind of develop that more. So we think the wise man is more able to teach others, right? So you can still read Heisenberg's lectures, right, from the United States to teach the American physicists quantum theory, right? You still make the lectures there in the U.S. to Chicago. All the reporters are out of the room, right, to explain the possibility of Avon now, right? But the man who teaches students to be, what? Wise, right? And the men who are learning from them, right? Now, the fifth thing he says about wisdom, that the one for itself and for the sake of knowing is more wisdom than that for the sake of its results. As I say, that's more difficult for us to see in the modern world, because this world is entirely given over to the practical, right? As I say, you can see it to some extent, that people would regard Shakespeare as wiser than any carpenter or plumber, right? And they would, you know, when they make Einstein the man of the century, it's because he's supposed to have, what, known something, right? But not in terms of Einstein particularly making something, right? Now, the last one, of course, comes right out of what we saw. The chief artist is wiser than the man he commands. And the one ruling, the science that rules others, is more wisdom than the one obeying. For the wise man ought not to receive orders, but to give orders. He ought to direct others, right? He ought not to be persuaded by another, but to less wise by him. So if anybody else directed the wise man, the other man would be the wise man, right? So the wise man directs everybody else. Wisdom is the knowledge that directs other knowledge, and not vice versa. That kind of comes out of what we saw. We all think of the chief artist, right? The polian who commands the head of the cavalry, right? The medical doctor who commands the pharmacist as being wiser, right? So wisdom in the full sense is going to be the man who commands everybody else. This is the knowledge, right? So he knows all things in some way, right? In a way that's possible for man in general. He knows things difficult to know, right? He's more certain, right? He's more able to teach. He has knowledge more honorable or desirable for his own sake. 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Because he puns the two senses of general, right? In Troilus and Cressida, you know, the black satire. And Cressida comes over to the Greek camp, you know. The general of the army, at Lebanon, right, is their kiss, right? And Ulysses sees this, right? She's kind of a, you know, hot issue here. And Ulysses says, she's been kissed by the general, but she hasn't been kissed in general yet. We all want to get to the act. This is the downfall of Cressida, you know. You know, with a loose woman, you know, actually. But two different senses of general, right? So Shakespeare sees those two senses of general, right? But Hegel's confusing those two senses, huh? So although Aristotle could reason, you know, from, let's say, wisdom being about the things most difficult to know, because it's about the first causes, right? He doesn't reason from that. He reasons from the first three, that's about what is said of all, and from the last three, to what is a cause of all. He wants to keep those two things distinct in our mind, just like Thomas does when he has a whole chapter of the Holy Spirit. God is a cause of all, but He's not said of all. People get mixed up when they say, well, being is said of everything, right? Everything that is, to be, right? Everything that is can be said to be in some way, and therefore be a being. And God is, what? He says, I am who am. He's being itself. They can easily confuse the two, right? So Thomas has a whole chapter devoted to that. Distinction between those. It's like, you know, Aristotle for Psalms, right? Because to some extent, Plato made that confusion, too. He wanted to take what was said of many, and put it in the world by itself and everything. He would partake of that. The man himself, a part of the individual, man. In a way, he started to make that same mistake. So let's see how he starts to reason now. So the first activity of the wise man is that he knows all things in some way, right? Wisdom is the knowledge of all things in some way. But nobody could know all things. No man could know all things in particular. He says that these, to know, oh, it's next to the last paragraph, please, do you? Of these, to know all things, necessarily belong to the man, most of all, having the knowledge of the universal. For he knows in some way all things placed on the universe. Now someone might say, you know, how can anybody know all things, right? Because there seems to be an infinity of things, right? But notice, do you know what an odd number is? Do you know what an even number is? And do you know that no odd number is even? Well, in a way, you're making a statement about how many things. Yeah. Infinity of odd numbers, right? Infinity of even numbers. So in knowing the universal, an odd number, in a way, I'm knowing an infinity of things. In knowing the universal, even I know an infinity of things. In Fort Tior, you know a number, right? In knowing prime number, a composite number, right? I know an infinity of things. It's kind of obvious that there's an infinity of composite numbers, right? But you could have a theorem, right? It shows there's an infinity of time numbers, too. Kind of marvelous, you know, things that he does. So in some way, I know an infinity of things, right? I know an universal. So if the wise man knows all things in some way, he must know what is most universal, right? Okay? Now, in the second thing, he says, and perhaps the most universal, let's use the word perhaps, right? Because the first clause is even more difficult to know, right? He says, and perhaps the most universal are the most difficult for men to know, for they are furthest from the, what? Senses. So if the senses know the singular, that's the beginning of our knowledge, the most universal would seem to be furthest away, right? Okay? Now, if you have any experience of teaching philosophy, you'll notice this is a common statement, especially from women, but, you know, this is so abstract, right? I have a hard time in philosophy. It's so abstract, you know? I do that again and again, right? Now, what do they mean when they say abstract? What do they mean? Yeah, it's very universal, right? Separated, right? Abstract means separated, right? That's a common thing, you know? It can be something more concrete. So in some way, it seems to be. That's why Thomas, in the question 117 article 1, Prima Faris, the summa elogiae, he has a question on the teacher, right? And he says, the teacher has to leave the student from what? Proposiciones minus universalis, from less universal statements, right? To understand more universal statements. And you use sensibilia exempla. The sensible examples, it's all right. Now, the third thing about the wise man, or wisdom, is that the wise man is more sure than other men are. And wisdom is more certain than other sciences. Now, Aristotle recalls something that we learn a lot in the posterior analytics. It's the very same example he gives. Which is more certain? Arithmetic or geometry? The reasoned-out knowledge of numbers, or the reasoned-out knowledge of lines and angles and plane and solid figures. Which is more certain? Yeah. Now, what's the reason why it's more certain than geometry? And a lot of times, they take the simplest thing in arithmetic, which is the one, the unit, and the simplest thing in geometry, which is the point, right? And the point adds something to the one. It's indivisible like the one, but it has a position. It's here or there, right? So when I consider three points, they can all be at the same line, or just two of them, right? And I consider the three ones of three, I don't think it's two that's right. Because they're not here or there, are they? More abstract science, huh? Now, if you study Euclid with the, you know, heat sedition, for example, right? Is it the addition you had out there? Now, do you put sedition away? You've got Heath's notes. Yeah, yeah. Now, in Heath's notes, he reports what the great commentators, like Popes and so on, find out about these, right? When he's in geometry, he's proving a theorem, sometimes you have to distinguish the number of cases of that theorem, because the line can be drawn in positions a little bit differently. And what they see is that Euclid doesn't give all the cases. His custom is to give the most difficult case. And these are cases for us dumb-built, right? But the commentators, like Popes and other ones, they will what? Distinguish other cases, and sometimes it gets very way and there's too many cases, but down to the centuries to demonstrate. Now, in arithmetic, you don't have to do that, because the points can't be in a different position. Excuse me, the ones can't be in a different position. Now, I know from practice, from experience, that sometimes, you know, when I'm thinking about the cases, have I distinguished all the necessary cases? Sometimes they say people distinguish more than is necessary than really aren't, you know, essentially different, right? So you have a little, you know, uncertainty there, right? Have I distinguished all the cases so I really see that this covers everything, right? You never have that problem with it, because you don't have to consider position. So the ancient mathematician says that a point is one having position. So you add more to be considered, you have less amplitude. And you go from geometry to natural philosophy, there's more things to be considered. When you go from, let's say, sphere in geometry to the earth, well, the earth is not just a sphere, but it's, what, material. And as soon as things happen, like, what, poles get flattened and so on, right?