Prima Secundae
Lecture 1: The Four Orders of Reason and Division of Sciences

Transcript
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you, God, and thank you, Guardian Angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Deo Grazius. God, our enlightenment. Guardian Angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand what you've written. Tomorrow is the 28th, I guess. That's when we celebrate Thomas' feast now, you know. That's what you do. We do it on March 3rd. We have St. Ephraim tomorrow. We have to reconcile our differences with our separated brethren over here. Warren Murray is saying, he's having a dinner at his house there, you know, in honor of St. Thomas, and he invites some people there who are... Just don't forget St. Ephraim. You have in front of you Thomas' premiums in Nicomachean Ethics, and Aristotle's premiums, huh? Now, what's the difference between these two premiums, huh? And, of course, what does the word premium mean, huh? It means what? Paving the way is probably the best way to translate paving the way. Paving the way. Yeah. Okay. And just about every work of Aristotle has a premium at the beginning, right? And they have different things in the premiums, but the most important thing is to see what you're aiming at in this book. But sometimes it'll say something about the importance of the book, right? And something about the way of proceeding, and so on. And perhaps two of Aristotle's most important premia is this one to Nicomachean Ethics, huh? And the premium to wisdom there at the beginning of metaphysics. Because these premia are, in a way, respectively, one a premium to practical philosophy, and the other to, what, looking philosophy, theoretical philosophy, huh? One thing I've noticed when reading these two premia and comparing them to other ones, in those two premia, and perhaps only in those two, do you have at the end of the premia an epilogue, where Aristotle recalls what he's done in the premium. And when Thomas, in his commentary, divides Aristotle's premium, you divide exactly into those parts, huh? But in both epilogues, Aristotle recalls the last thing he did, and then works his way back to the first thing he did. So it's kind of interesting what he does, huh? So if you look at the end of this premium here, for example, which is on page three, because I have another text from Aristotle starting on page three, huh? He says, let this much about the hearer, who is or is not a suitable person to hear lectures on ethics, and why. That's the last thing he does in the premium. And how it should be received, huh? How not to proceed, huh? And then the first thing he does, and what we propose, then use the Greek verb form for premium, pave the way, which is probably the best way to translate it in English, huh? And I used to always tell students that almost all of Aristotle's books are divided like Shakespeare's Roman and Juliet. And what's Shakespeare's Roman and Juliet divided into the prologue and the, what? Play, yeah. And the prologue is very short, but it prepares in some way for the kind of play that's going to be here, what's going to happen, right? Now, in Thomas's, some of the Thomas's works, you'll find at the beginning of them, it's not the word premium, but the word prologus, huh? Prologue, right? Epilogue is the opposite, right? At the end, huh? Now, what is Thomas's premium, huh? Well, Thomas will have a premium that kind of stands back and looks at the broader picture, right, why Aristotle's premium will be directed to the book at hand, right? But Thomas, in his premium, he'll stand back and kind of for the help of the teacher or the help of the student, he'll kind of see this in a larger context, right? So maybe look at Thomas's premium here first, huh? Okay. So you all have that in front of you there. So he begins with a quote from the philosopher, which is Aristotle, right? When Aristotle's describing the wise man at the beginning of the premium to wisdom there in the metaphysics, the sixth and the crowning attribute of the wise man is it belongs to the wise to order things. That's a very famous quote, sapienti cest ordinare, in Latin, huh? It's quoted again and again, right? Now Thomas here gives the reason why what Aristotle says is true, right? The reason for this is that wisdom is the greatest, huh? Perfection of reason. Wisdom is the name, right? Of the greatest perfection of reason. And in that premium, Aristotle will show you what wisdom is about, right? And it's a property of reason to no order, right? Now that fits in also with the definition of reason that we learned from William Shakespeare. Remember that definition of reason? What is it? Yeah. The ability for large discourse looking before and after, right? And before and after is what you mean by order, huh? So, if reason is characterized by looking for order, then the knowledge that perfects reason will be most of all your knowledge of what? Order, right? And most of all for the highest perfection of reason, which is that of wisdom, huh? And he makes a comparison there, huh? He's talking about being proper to reason to do that. For although the sense powers knows some things absolutely, to know the order of one thing to another belongs only to understanding or reason, huh? Thomas often uses absolute as opposed to order, or absolute as opposed to relation, and so on, right? Okay? And now in the second paragraph, he touches upon a very famous distinction, which is given again by Aristotle in the Twelfth Book of Wisdom. He's talking about the order of the parts of the universe, how the one part of the universe is ordered to another part of the universe, huh? But in addition to all of that, there's an order of the whole universe to God as its end or purpose, huh? And Aristotle says the order of the parts of the universe to each other is for the sake of the order of the whole universe to God. This is a very famous teaching of Aristotle, huh? But it's a more general point, huh? That the order of the parts of some whole is for the sake of the order of the whole to its end or purpose, huh? So he says, So you can talk about the order of the different parts of this chair to each other, right? Like this part here comes in at what kind of an angle? Acute angle? A right angle? No. Sightly of two, right? Now, the reason why this part of the chair has that order to the seat is on account of the order of the order of a chair to something called, what? Sitting, right? So sitting is not a part of the chair. but the whole chair is for the sake of sitting. And therefore the order of the parts of the chair to each other is an account of the order to sitting. In Aristotle it seems about the whole universe, that the order to each other of the parts of the universe is an account of the order of the whole universe to God as it's in their purpose. Pretty profound thinking in Aristotle's part, right? But you can see it in these things like the example of the house here, right? The order of the parts of the house to each other is an account of the order of the house to be dwelling to protect us from the snow and the other elements out there, yeah. For as the philosopher, that's Antonin Messia for Aristotle, for as the philosopher says in Book 12 of Metaphysics, the order of the parts of an army to each other is because of the order of the whole army to its leader, meaning to the inner purpose of the leader, which is victory, right? I know Aristotle takes the example of the army because that's a more clear example of order than the city, right? There's more chaos in the city, right? So if I have a chance to speak to soldiers, they tell me, Aristotle compares the order of the whole universe to the order of an army. It's just a nice way of complimenting them, I guess. Now because of this connection between reason and order, the reason most of all is looking before and after, Shakespeare says, trying to know order. You can, to some extent, divide or distinguish the knowledge of reason by the order that it, what, considers, huh? And Thomas begins there by saying that order is compared to reason in four ways, huh? Now obviously you can't divide things into four, right? That's just shocking, right? So Thomas is obviously combining these two divisions, right? So if you read the text, you'll see that he has in mind, although he doesn't state explicitly, a distinction that obviously is of order in comparison to reason. The order not made by reason, and the order made by reason. And then he subdivides the order made by reason, starting at home with the order made by reason in its own, what? Acts, huh? In its own acts. And then in the acts of the will, voluntary acts. Now the will is not reason, but it's what? Close to reason, right? And then he goes to the order made by reason in exterior matter, huh? Like the order made by reason in wood, huh? Or in metal, or in plastic, or... Okay, so in matter, exterior matter. So he has a division into two, and then the second of these he divides into three, and that's how he gets his four, what? Orders, right? So he says there is an order which reason does not make, but only considers, as is the order of natural things, huh? And this is an order made not by reason, but by nature, huh? Maybe ultimately by God, but... Now, in the next three orders, he'll use that same phrase, an order which reason by considering makes, right? And first, in its own acts, as when it orders its thoughts to each other, and assigns the thoughts which are signifying vocal sounds. So in the syllogism, it takes two statements, right? And he orders them to a conclusion, right? There's moreover a third order, which reason by considering makes, in the acts of the will, right? So I might want money, right? I guess if I want to pay the stock market or something. Or I want to buy a ticket to the Seussnakes or something. I want to bet on a horse. Hot tip, you know? Got it from the horse's mouth. And there is a fourth order, which reason by considering makes in the exterior things, huh? You know, it's a matter. Which is a cause, such as a box or a house, right? Or a chair, or any of these other things you make. On the basis of this distinction of order, which is what reason is especially looking for, he now distinguishes four different, what? Groups of knowledge, right, huh? And because the consideration of reason is perfected by the firm disposition of knowledge, there are diverse forms of knowledge according to the diverse orders which reason properly considers. For the consideration of the order of things which human reason considers but does not make belongs to what? Natural philosophy, right? Actually, an example, I say, you know, spring comes before what? Summer and summer before fall. Now, if we were doing it, we might have fall followed by what? Spring again, right? Instead it's followed by winter, right? Yeah. Well, like it or not, you're not responsible for that order, right? In this part of the country anyway, right? Nature sees that winter follows upon fall, right? Before you get back to spring. Now, he says, like natural philosophy would be, what? Metaphysics or wisdom, right? Which are considering the order made by God, you might say, huh? Okay. But whether the order is made by nature or ultimately by God, it's an order not, what? Made by our reason, right? Okay. So he's not concerned here with distinguishing between natural philosophy and metaphysics. That belongs to metaphysics and to that. But he does mention both of them, right? The order, however, which reason by considering makes in its own act belongs to rational philosophy, or as the Greeks call it, what? Logic, right? But logic and ratio, logos and ratio are the equivalent words in Greek and Latin, which considers the order of the parts of a speech to each other. Like in the speech that we call a definition, right? The order of the genes and the differences. And the order of beginnings, as Thomas often calls the premises of the syllogism, right? To conclusions, right? But the order of voluntary acts belongs to the consideration of moral philosophy. You'll see later on a little problem here with our naming and Thomas' naming because he's going to use moral philosophy to cover not only what we call ethics, but also what? Domestic philosophy and political philosophy, And that's, of course, the order that Aristotle is going to be concerned with in the Nicomagian Ethics and also in his book on what? Politics, right? And the order which reason by considering makes in exterior things, or exterior matter, constructed by human reason, belongs to, and they called these in the middle of time the mechanical arts, huh? They used to distinguish between the mechanical arts and the liberal arts, right? Or the servile arts, they called them, and the, what, liberal arts? the mechanical arts, and the mechanical arts, and the mechanical arts, and the mechanical arts, and the mechanical arts, and the mechanical arts, So, you see how Thomas is kind of standing back and seeing the whole life of reason in a sense, right? It's always after order, but sometimes an order not made by reason, sometimes an order made by reason. And he subdivides the second one because he wants to get us down to the subject in the way of this here. Thus, therefore, it belongs to moral philosophy about which turns the present attention to consider human acts as they are ordered to each other and to the end. And there he's going back to that division that he touched upon from Aristotle, right? The order of the parts of the whole to each other in their order to their what? In their purpose. So he's saying, well, in moral philosophy, we're going to consider what the end of man is, right? And then the order of everything else to each other and account of that end, huh? And notice he uses the term human acts, huh? And now he defines what he means by human acts, right? Not just anything done by man, but something that is peculiar to man, right? I call acts human which proceed from the will of man according to the order of what? Reason, right? For if there are some acts in man which are not subject to the will and reason, they are not properly, as that's specifically called, what? Human, huh? But natural. Just as is clear about the acts of the plant's soul, which are what? Generation, growth, nourishing, right? Okay. So I guess when I fall asleep at night, I'm what? Digesting my food, I guess. Okay. And when I was younger, I was growing, right? Why, you're growing, right? But did I choose, you know, to do this? No, these are not really a consideration then of moral philosophy, right? If I put too much food in my mouth or drink too much wine, that could be subject to my will, right? Therefore, just as the subject of natural philosophy is motion or a movable thing, so also the subject of moral philosophy is human acts ordered to a, what? An end, huh? Thomas is putting in there. Second PhD. Now Thomas is going to divide up practical philosophy, right? And actually, you know, the way we divide practical philosophy and the way we divide, say, looking philosophy and the way we divide the mechanical arts, it's all a different way in each case. He's going to explain now the basis for the division of practical philosophy into what we call ethics, what he calls monastic, but not in the sense in which you keep on monastic. And then domestic philosophy, right? And then political philosophy. It should be known, he says, Father, that because man is naturally a social animal, by nature, that man is a social animal, political animal, since he needs many things for his life which he cannot himself alone prepare for himself. It follows that man is naturally a part of some multitude, of men, through which he's given help to, what? Live and to live well. Now this help he needs for two things. First, for those things necessary for life, without which the present life cannot be at all. And the domestic household, of which he is a part, aids man in this. For every man has from his parents' generation, right? And nourishment and discipline. And likewise also the individuals who are parts of the domestic family in each other in the necessities of life, right? So the wife makes the pie and the man grills the steak on the thing, yeah? And shovels the snow, too. Otherwise it'll be no pie. Yeah. So the family is saying it's necessary for the very being or living of man, right? Especially when he's young, huh? But in another way, man is aided by the multitude of which he is a part for a complete sufficiency of life. So that man not only lives, but lives well, right? Now I couldn't live well without Shakespeare, but there's no Shakespeare in my family, which I come from. I couldn't live well without Mozart, but no Mozart in my family. I couldn't live well without Thomas Aquinas, but there's no Thomas Aquinas in my family. I couldn't live well without, what, wine, and there's no Wittner in my family, right? So in order for me to live well, I've got to, what, be a part of a community called the city, right? And thus the civil multitude of which he is a part helps him not only as far as bodily things, right, as regards many artificial things, which one also does not sufficient, but also as regards even moral things insofar as insolent youth, whom paternal admonition is not able to correct, are forced through public power by the threat of punishment, huh? My mother used to say to me, you know, get out of hand, it'll be out of my hand, you know. Now, the next point Thomas is going to make here, and maybe it can be a little more simply than what he has in the text there, but he's saying that not every action of individual man is an action of his family, and not every action of the family is an action of what? So if President Obama or something like that sits down to relax this evening, right, and picks up his Shakespeare, right, would you say the United States has sat down to read Shakespeare today? Do you say the Obama family is reading Shakespeare? No. But when a father makes a decision to, let's say, buy a house in this neighborhood, right, because this is a better neighborhood or a safer neighborhood or something, then this is an action that he does as father, right? Or if I sit down, you know, to read some fairy tale to my children, right, or just considering my good, the good of Dwayne Burkwest, I wouldn't sit down to read the fairy tale, I'd sit down to read Shakespeare, right? But as a father, I choose to, what, read the fairy tale to my children because that fits their age or something like this, right? Don't have a TV set, but it has some good fairy tales. Okay. But now when I go to vote, in A. Fort Soria, if I was a member of the government, if I was a, then I would do some things that are, what, belong to me as a citizen, right? Okay. So that's why there can be kind of a, what, distinction between these things, right? What should I do considering the fact that I'm a man? I'm an animal that has a reason. I should study geometry, you know, I should listen to Mozart, et cetera, et cetera, right? But that's considering the end, which is the good of Dwayne Burkwest, the good of his mind, right? His mind won't be good without Euclid, okay? His emotions won't be good without Mozart. It would be disagreeable to be without any wine. But then, you see, the good of the family, the common good of the family is really the, what, children, right, huh? So, you're considering now a different end in the things you might do, right? But not everything that the father does does he do for the good of his family, right? He has some... He has some... He has some... He has some... He has some... He has some... time a little bit to himself, okay? And even a president, right, or a senator is not always doing everything for the good of the country, even if he... Okay? But Thomas is going to make this point, right? It should be known, however, that this whole, which is a multitude of citizens, or the domestic family, so the city or the family, right, has only a unity of order, by which something is not simply one, right? And therefore, a part of this whole can have an act, which is not an act of the whole, as a soldier in the army has an act which is not that of the whole. Now, I'm trying to give this across to students. I used to take this example. If a student from, let's say, Holy Cross, beats up a student from Assumption, so another student from Assumption will go over to Holy Cross and find some Holy Cross to impede him up. Is that the just thing to do? I don't think so. Or if an Italian, you know, kills an Irishman, let's say, right? So an Irishman finds an Italian he can kill. No. See, that's obviously unjust, right? And you wouldn't say that what that Italian did or what the Irishman was going to do is an act of the Italian community or vice versa, right? But if I hit you with my fist, right? And hitting me back, do you have to hit my fist? It might hit me in the jaw or something. Some other place, right? And I'd say, well, my jaw didn't hit you. My fist did. But you see there the difference in unity of the man, right? And his parts. So you can hit me in another place than my fist, right? Or in the case of, you know, somebody of your family could give up something from my family. That's right. Someone else in my family. The big guy in our family could go beat the little guy in your family. That doesn't make any sense, right? Okay. Nevertheless, he says, the whole itself has some act which is not private to some part but of the whole. Has the striking together of the whole, what? Army, right? And the drawing of the ship is an act of the multitude drawing of the ship. So he goes on to compare these two differences, right? There is, however, another whole which has a unity not only in order but in being put together, right? Or bound together. Or even in continuity. By which unity of something is one simply, right? And therefore, there is no act of the part which is not of the, what? Whole, right? Whether I hit you with my fist or kick you, in the case, it's an act of Dwayne Perkwist. An aggressive act of Dwayne Perkwist. And likewise, in things composed or bound together, the act of the part is chiefly of the whole. And therefore, it is necessary that the consideration of such a whole and its part belong to the same knowledge. However, it does not belong to the same knowledge to consider the whole which is only a unity of order and its parts. And hence it is that moral philosophy, and I put in parentheses because of the change in meaning there, right? Which we call this practical philosophy that the whole now, right? And we use the term moral philosophy as kind of a synonym for ethics, right? Which is just the first part, right? I guess I try and explain that in terms of the philosophy of doing, is divided into three parts. The first of these considers the acts of one man ordered to an end and is called monastic, right? Well, that could be misleading here, right? Especially to think of monasteries as being a community, right? Now, he says, but we call this part, what, ethics today, right? So ethics is considering primarily the inner purpose of an individual man, right? And what he should do to achieve that end, right? The second over considers the acts of the domestic multitude. What's the end or purpose of the, what? Family, right? What's the end or purpose of marriage? And it's called, what? The domestics, huh? But the third considers the acts of the civil multitude. What's the purpose or end of the city? And it's called, what? Politics, or we call it sometimes political philosophy. So, in the books that have come down from Aristotle to school, there's a number of books called ethics, right? The Edemian Ethics and so on. And the Nicomagian Ethics is the most famous. There's also a book called Domestic, right? From Aristotle? Yeah, no, they don't think it's by Aristotle, it's by somebody in the school, right? I don't know. Yeah. And then there's a book called The Politics, right? Which is political philosophy. What Aristotle did is write the greatest things, right? So he wrote about the city, right? Maybe he's to his assistant there to do the book on domestics, right? Just like he wrote the books in natural philosophy on animals and left the book on plants to one of his students, right? He picked out the best, right? For himself. So you see what Thomas is doing here? He's giving a kind of a, what? Premium to the whole of, what? Practical philosophy, but also situating it in the whole of the life of reason which is knowing especially order and this distinction of the four kinds of the orders they have on the board here, right? And distinguishing our knowledge by the order that it considers, right? So natural philosophy and later on wisdom or metaphysics, first philosophy, is considered the order not made by reason. Made by nature and by God. And then the order made by reason in its own acts, it's considered in logic, in the acts of the will and practical philosophy and in matter by the, what? Mechanical arts as they're called or in the surva arts they're called sometimes. So, okay? This one is natural philosophy and... Yeah, it's in the text here before he came in at the bottom of page one there, right? Right, yeah. So after he distinguishes these four orders, he distinguishes the knowledge of reason by the order that it, what? Consider it, right? So everybody's a copy of that now? My hands on it. Okay, I'll give you a copy of this. Thank you very much. Okay, so let's look now at Aristotle's premium to the Nicomachean Ethics. Which is the first of the two things I've reproduced here. The second thing that began on page three there is the time when he draws a line around the purpose of man, right? Which is also in book one, right? It's not until book ten that gives us final consideration of the purpose of man. Now, as we said before, there's going to be three parts to this premium, huh? And the first part is going to be saying what it's aiming at, right? And Aristotle's going to bring out what's most essential there. It's aiming at the end or purpose of man, right? So he's leading up to that, huh? And then he's going to say some things about how we should proceed in this science, huh? What you should expect me to proceed in what way. And then finally, who is or is not a suitable here. You may have to exclude some of you people if you're not a suitable here. Either because you're too inexperienced in life or because you're leading a disordered life, huh? So if you have no experience of the things that ethics is about, you won't be able to understand the book, right? And if you're leading a disordered life, it won't do any good to know it. So, because the end or purpose of this is not to know, but to act in accordance with this knowledge, huh? So, let's look at Aristotle's beginning point. Aristotle's beginning point.