Prima Secundae
Lecture 10: Whether Man Wills All Things for the Last End

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And how did I pick up English? Is that the natural way to speak? You heard about the Greek thinkers, you know, who thought there was some natural language, right? And so they kept the baby away from human beings so he wouldn't hear any words. And they're trying to see what language he would speak. And then you know what the natural language of man is. It's kind of crazy, but anyway. Is English natural? Or is French or, you know, Greek? None of these are natural, right? How did you acquire this not natural thing? Yeah, by imitating your parents and brothers and sisters, right, and so on. And so that covers an awful lot of things, right? But in, you know, all the professions and so on, we imitate those who are already in there, right? You know, so the younger guy, you know, before he gets up and hits the ball, he's observing and eventually imitating the older man, right? Who's proficient in this art or thing. So Thomas is going to make use of the fact, right, that what we first know, we naturally, what, know, right? And what we naturally know or naturally come to know, it's through that that we come to know those things that we don't naturally, what, know, right? And then the same thing in the case of the will, right, huh? What we naturally want is the cause of our, what, wanting things that we don't naturally want, huh, okay? And then he's going to use the principle, which Shakespeare also points out in Coriolanus, nature not being able to be more than one, he says, right? But let's go back to the text here. Just as in the going forward of reason, the beginning is that which is naturally known, right? That the whole is more than the part, right? So in the going forward of the reasonable desire, which is the will, is necessary that the beginning be that which is naturally, what, desired, huh? So Aristotle begins the metaphysics by saying all men by nature desire to, what, to know, to understand the text, he says in the Greek. And that's the beginning of philosophy in a sense, something natural, right? Natural desire there. But this is necessary to be one, huh, okay? Because nature does not tend except towards, what, one. Now the beginning in the going forward of the reasonable desire is the last in. Whence is necessary that that which the will tends toward under the notion of the last in be something, what? One, one, huh? It's kind of a very subtle argument there, right, huh? And Shakespeare saw that, right? Notice how custom, in that sense, kind of imitates nature, right? And custom kind of determines you to one, right, huh? Okay. So if you acquire what is not natural, but what is natural, and nature tends towards the one, right? And the beginning of all are willing is the willing of the last in, right? And that's got to be something natural, right? And therefore we, what, inclined by nature to one last end, huh? I think how it says at the beginning of the commentary on the first psalm was one thing men have in common. They don't want to be happy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember as a little boy there, you know, one of my first thoughts about happiness. I didn't know if you can use the word happiness, you know, but I was convinced there was something that if you had it, nothing else would matter. Must be something of that sort, right? I don't know how this occurred to me, but I don't know if it occurred to you, but, you know. And the idea was to discover that one thing, which, when you had it, nothing else would matter, right? I didn't stake this to what that one thing was for a while. But there's a kind of determination to one, there's kind of a, you know, this argument is hard to see than the first one, you know, more, you know. It's a very interesting argument, huh? When Aristotle is considering even the axioms there in the fourth book of Wisdom there, right, he sees, they all go back to the axiom about being and unbeing, huh? And he says that's the natural beginning of all the axioms, huh? It's the idea of something one there, right, huh? And so, in a way, in the other axioms, like we say the whole is more than a part, right? To say a whole is no more than one of its parts is to deny that a whole is a whole, because a whole has parts, right? You know? So, you see, it all rests upon the axiom about being and unbeing. You can't both be and not be at the same time, right? No odd number is, what, even. No prime number is composite, huh? Well, to say that some number is even and odd, right, is to say that it's, what, divisible to two equal parts and not divisible to two equal parts, right? Or that it's more than, it's an even number and differs from the even number by one. It didn't cut a diction, right, huh? That's what Father Owen Bennett used to, he'd make the point, it takes a long time to be able to grasp that, right, say, unfold it. Yeah. But even a child knows it in some way, because if you, if a child's in a candy bar, you take it and you say, mine. He says, no, mine. No, it can't be both at the same time. Now, the third argument, it's a little more difficult either. The third reason is because since, what, actions voluntarily, huh, get their, what, species from the end, right, is necessary, as has been had above, that has been had above, is necessary that from the last end, which is, what, common, they sort the notion of their genus. Now, what does this mean? Just as natural things are placed in a genus according to the formal common reason. Since, therefore, all things desired by the will, as such, are one genus, huh? There's something common to all of them, right, huh? It is necessary that the last end be one. And especially because in every genus there is one first, what, beginning. But the last end has the notion of a first beginning, as has been said, huh? Now, that's a rather difficult thing there, huh? And sometimes you refer you back to the fourth argument, because it's of God and so on, huh? But let's just say a little bit about it. It's kind of hard. Get your mind around it. In the fifth book and the tenth book, I guess, of wisdom, Aristotle talks about the one, right, huh? What do you mean by one? He gives two different properties of one. And that it's a property of the one to be a beginning. And then it's a property of the one to be a measure. See any evidence of that, these two properties, huh? Well, let's take the one that's most known to us, and that's in book seven of Euclid. The one is the beginning of what? Numbers. Numbers, right? Numbers, right? But not the only one around, but the one that's most known to us, right? One is the beginning of all numbers, and secondly, the one measures all numbers, and some numbers are measured by other numbers as well, and they're called composite numbers, I guess. But there are numbers, what they call prime numbers, that are not measured by any other number, but one is not a number. Oh, that's right. That's it. You've never been in love with us, eh? Pardon me. Yeah. Okay. So in the poem, a little poem there, Shakespeare, right? That love has murdered a number, right? Because maybe the love and the love won, right? One is not a number, right? So it's a number, right? And one is the measure of all numbers. Well, there you see a little bit of the truth of this statement, right? In the one that is most, what? Known to us. What do we take to measure something? Our ruler? Yeah, you take something one to measure, right? Yeah. Okay. Christoph says the virtuous man is the measure of all men, right? So is it something one that is the measure? Let's speak of a unit of measure. Yeah. Standard of measure. That's going to be something one, right? Bar there in Paris, right? That is the measure of length, right? The meter, I guess. We need more evidence of this here. That the one is the, there's practically one to the beginning. There's something as a statement that's in my head, but I don't know if it's in terms of power. Yeah. Yeah. The moral power is one. Yeah. That's infinite. Is the teacher one or many? One. Yeah. He's the beginning of learning, right? Our teacher here is Thomas, right? One man, right? And we kind of measure ourselves by this one man, right? We compare that little ball there, you know. We compare Deconic and Dion to Thomas and Paul Drexchart, you know. You measure. I measure poets by, what, Shakespeare, right? I measure musicians by Mozart, right? You don't measure just by one. You certainly tend to very few, right? You tend towards unity, right? You have a measure, right? You see, the original meaning of measure is that whereby quality is made known, right? Is that true about other things, that things are made known by something one? I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, in geometry, for example, are some things more certain than others, and they are much more than what? Yeah, yeah. The statements known to themselves are before the statements known to other statements, right? And the statements known to themselves are beginning of the statements known to other statements, and they, in a sense, measure them, right? They're true to the sense. But the statements known to themselves are distinguished into those known to the wise, those that are given science, and then those that are quite common to all the sciences, huh? And which measures which? Yeah, the axioms measure the, what? Private principles, right? Okay. So if I say no odd number is even, right, in arithmetic, that rests upon the axiom, ultimately, of contradiction, right? So that's the beginning of everything, right? Aristotle points out that the axiom about contradiction, or the axiom about being and unbeing, is, he says, a natural beginning, right, of all, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nature tends towards one, right? But it also measures all the rest, right, as far as their truth are concerned. They all, in some sense, go back to that, huh? Okay. But that's something, what? One, right, huh? Do you see a little bit of the truth of this, right, huh? Okay. Now, this is not explicitly in this text here, but Thomas talks about sometimes. Suppose the same belongs to many things, right? But to some of them, more than to, what? Others, right, huh? Do you think it belongs to all of these things, per se, or through themselves, huh? Because if something belonged to a thing to itself, wouldn't it be in kind of abundance, right? So if in the room, the air is not evenly, what, warm, let's say, right, huh? But some parts are more warm than others, right, huh? And as you approach, right, the fire, they get hotter, right, huh? Well, then, it's by their distance in the one fire that they're more or less, what, right? And that fire, in a sense, would be kind of the measure of them all, right? But also the beginning of all theirs, right? Again, going back to something more known to us there from logic, right? If you, you know, look, you know, even in a superficial way at the statements that are conclusions in geometry, some of them would be more known to us than others, right, huh? As they go back to the, what, beginning, right? So, they're measured as more or less known because they're closer or further away from the beginning, right? The beginning is something one, right? It kind of measures those things, right? Well, now, you could speak in a way of all the things desired as being in a common genus, right? Namely the good, right? But some things are desired more and some less as they approach the what? It's starting to design itself. Yeah. Okay. And, you know, it's kind of a common beginning in philosophy that the through itself is always more so than the through what? Another. Yeah. What is sweet through itself, like sugar, is sweeter than what is sweet through another, like that. Yeah. So, now, if something is so through itself, it's going to be more than one? So, that gives you a little idea of this third art, right? But it involves things that are not, you know, maybe it's clear right away at first, right? Thomas puts it at third, right? And especially because in any genus there is one first, what, beginning, right? But the last end has the notion of a first, what, beginning, right? So, it's what's first in the source of everything else in the genus of the desired, right? Of the good. But, and then Thomas at the end adds here, just as the last end of man is simply to what? The whole human race, so the last end of this man is to what? This end, huh? Just as is necessary that of all men there is naturally one last end, so of the will of this man, right, that it be, what, established, yeah, in one last end, huh? So, that's enough, I guess, huh? So, that's enough, I guess, huh? So, that's enough, I guess, of the way. So, that's enough, I guess. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you, God. Thank you, Guardian Angels. Thank you, Thomas Aquinas. Deo gracias. God, our Enlightenment, Guardian Angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order the blue in our images, and rouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Praise to you. And help us to understand all that you have written. Father, Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Amen. So you're celebrating Thomas today, today? How did it get to be this day, do you know? Is this the old days? No. It was March 7th, the old days. Why, I don't know. It must be there was a church dedicated on this day or something. I don't know. I was reading Thomas there in the Questionis Dispitate, the Spiritualibus Creaturis, and he's talking about how man's way of arriving at Beatitude, right, is divided against all the angels' way of arriving, because they arrive all at once, or they're lost all at once. That's it, you know? And we arrive at our goal in time. So we have a chance to repent. I used to always think, you know, gee whiz, if you make that wrong choice that the angels did, there's no chance to, what? Repent, huh? And so Christ didn't come to save the fallen angels, huh? Again, you realize how clear things are for the angel, right? That he can make a, what, definitive choice in a way that we don't make, at least as kids, and maybe even, you know, come with it later on, right, huh? And only gradually, right, does that will become, you know, strongly committed one way or the other, huh? So I don't know if Thomas will talk about that here sometime, but that's kind of a nice contrast between us and the angels. So we're up to Article 6 here in Question 1, huh? Whether a man wills all things, that he wills an account of the last end. To the sixth, one goes forward thus, It seems that not all things, whatever that a man wills, he wills an account of the last end. It seems to me the man in the street, and the average guy would probably think this way, right? Thinking about, doesn't know why he's doing what he's doing, right, huh? I remember a professor out at St. Mary's College, where I first taught, and he had, he was in Arabic history, you know? And I guess he had to learn Arabic for this, which is about a hard language, I guess, for us to learn, and so on. He said, I don't know what motivated me, you know? She doesn't know why he's doing this, you know? I met another guy who was, his specialty was Restoration England, right? And I said, now, why did you decide to specialize in Restoration England? Well, I was in college, and I had a professor, and he gave an interesting course on it. I'm interested in it, and so it's kind of, you know, kind of a haphazard. It's going to happen that way, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So let's see what Thomas says here, huh? Those things which are ordered to the last end are called, what? Siriosa, huh? Serious, I'd say, I don't know. As it were, what? Utilia, useful, right, huh? Useful for that end. But, what? Laughable things, right? Are distinguished from serious things. That's what we do when we distinguish tragedy and, what? Comedy, right, huh? And Aristotle, you know, quotes the advice of Gorgias de Rhetorica. You should kill your opponent's seriousness with jesting. And he's jesting with seriousness. So one kind of, what? Excludes the other, right, huh? In the same way, in a play, you can't really be serious and comic at the same time. Although you can sometimes squirt the borders of doing that, huh? Therefore, what a man does jacuzzi, huh? He does not order in the last, what? And, of course, for someone who everything is a joke, I don't know. It's even more serious to think. Doesn't seem to be ordinate to do anything beyond this immediate pleasure. But anyway. Moreover, the philosopher says in the beginning of the metaphysics that the looking sciences, which are called speculative in Latin or theoretical in the Greek, huh? From the word for looking. That the looking sciences, the speculative sciences, are sought and accounted themselves, huh? But one cannot say, huh? It cannot be said that each of these is the last end, huh? So I'm studying arithmetic there in books 7 and 8 of Euclid. And for its own sake, and this is not the ultimate end, right? If it's for its own sake, then how am I doing it for the end of human life? Therefore, not all things which man wants or desires does he want or desire on account of the last, what? End, huh? Moreover, whoever orders something to some end thinks about that, what? End, huh? But not always does man think about the last end and everything that he wants or what does, huh? Man, therefore, does not desire all things or do all things on account of the, what? Last end, huh? Now, it's my wee, wee clue of mind, huh? Wouldn't you be kind of thinking along the line of these objections and saying, That's my experience. And if one was proud and did not listen to the master, right, Thomas, one would be, what, deceived, huh? So you see how pride is a cause of, what, deception, right? But against this is what Augustine says in the 19th book about the city of God. That is the end of our good on account of which we love other things. But it, the end, on account of itself, huh? Like Aristotle said, you quote him saying that the end is what, what is desired for its own sake and not for the sake of something else, but everything else for the sake of it, huh? These are those three phrases, huh? Well, Thomas gives two arguments here in the body of the article. The answer should be said. It is necessary that all things which man wants or desires, he desires an account of the, what, last end. And this appears by a two-fold reason, huh? First, because whatever man wants or desires, he wants or desires under the notion of the good, huh? Which, if it is not desired as a perfect or complete good, huh? Which is what the last end is, it is necessary that it be desired as tending towards a, what, perfect good, huh? A good that is complete. Because always the beginning, I suppose you could say, of something is ordered to its, what? Yeah. It's conservation. It's completion. Just as both in those things which come to be by nature, huh? As well as those things which come to be by art, like this. These buildings out here, right? Now I come here every week and, you know, they're tending towards that, I hope. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Some what? Consummate perfection, which is through the last what? End. That's an interesting argument, huh? Secondly, because the last end, in this way, has itself in moving desire, just as has itself in other motions, the first what? Mover. But it is manifest that the second causes moving, the move movers, right? Do not move anything except according as they are moved by the first mover. Whence the second things are desirable, are desirable for the sake of something else, do not move the appetite except in order to the first thing, what? Desirable. Which is the, what? Last end, huh? That makes sense, even though you don't stop and think about the fact that you have this in your desire, right, huh? Why did I get up this morning, right? Why did I pick up this book, or why did I eat this, or what did I, why did I do this, you know? Just like, you know, in thinking there, you don't stop and think that every statement you accept, you accept because of the axioms, and in a way because of the axiom of being and unbeing, right? Something cannot both be and what? Not be, right, huh? But do you think about that explicitly when you... I don't think we really have that. To be or not to be, that is a question, because you cannot both be and not be, right, huh? Okay? That's underlying all you're thinking, right? You think without holding that. When you, you know, stop and think about something else and you say, is this so or is it not so, right, huh? You're kind of implicitly saying that it's one or the other, it can't be both, right? Now I know which it is, right, huh? So I really have in mind, in some sense, right, the first things that I know, right? That all other things that I know depend upon, huh? So this goes back to the general argument that there are four kinds of causes, huh? The first cause is what? Something that all the rest of them depend upon, huh? It compares this to the mover, right? But that's when it's closest, because we sometimes use the word mover even for the end, huh? The end moves us through this, right? Your puns, those beauty moves into climbing the tower, right, huh? So in some sense, the end is said to move, huh? So if the last end is the first mover, then nothing else is moved without, what? That first mover, huh? Now what about these laughable actions, right? People want to be amused, huh? Apparently this is a fairly common thing. Even in monasteries. The first effort should be said that lucrous actions are not ordered to some, what? Extrinsic end, right? But nevertheless, they are ordered to the good of the one, what? Yes, just it. Insofar as they are pleasing him or giving him some, what? Rest, right? But the, what? Consummated good of man is his, what? Last end, huh? So in some way, it's ordered to the good of the man, but not to his, what? Complete good, right? So in some sense, it's ordered to, what? That complete good, right? Either there's a part of it or something that's necessary as a rest, so you can pursue more seriously that last end, huh? People talk about, you know, the Gospels, you know, is there any example of the Gospel of Christ's humor, right? It's kind of hard to find an example of this. Maybe you could force a couple of texts, you know? But did our Lord tell jokes or not? What do you think? No. It was wordplay. Did our Lord not tell jokes or did the Gospel writers think that it was not good to recount these? Maybe they weren't that good. And that's impossible. Well, he could have been humble and told that joke. A lot of times they take it for the Trinity, you know. The thing about, you know, when man first falls, he would be like one of us, you know, huh? You know, kind of like, you know, how funny, you know, they would try to be like one of us, huh? That's kind of in a way what the devil said, right? He would be like dogs, right? Only good and evil. Can be seen as possibly as like a component of the fine land? Yeah, it's contributing in some way, right? And Thomas, when you get to the Secunda Secunda, I think, is where he gives an example there from John, where someone, you know, was too serious, so to speak, and John was saying, well, you know, you're going to break this thing, huh? Yeah, yeah. So. Would it be a means to the end or a part of the end if we're considering more philosophically not, you know? Well, probably more a means, you know, it's certainly in terms of what he calls here rest, right, huh? You know? Oh, requiem prestantes, right? Delectantes, I suppose. That's closer to the end, right? But it's not a complete joy. Our hearts are restless until they rest in need. The pleasures are pleasures, but we don't satisfy fully with a main point in that direction. Yeah, yeah. Second objection. He answers in the same way, right? About the speculative science, which is desired as a certain good of the one, what? Speculating. So he's comparing that to the play, because the play there is for the good of the one playing, right, huh? Which is desired as a certain good of the one speculating, which is included under, right? The complete and perfect, what? Good, huh? Which is the last end, huh? So, I mean, the lower science is necessary to get to the higher sciences, huh? And so you're on the way to the higher sciences, huh? It's kind of interesting, because Aristotle, when he's in the beginning of metaphysics, he's talking about in the premium there, he argues that this science is not practical, but what? Speculative, right, huh? And then he almost argues as if it's the only speculative science, huh? Because the lower sciences are studied for their own sake, but also for the sake of what? The higher science, right? By the higher science of which you eventually know God, right, huh? Well, I've quoted that quote, a passage of Thomas, he says, where I study the body so I can understand the soul. And I seek to understand the soul so I can understand the angels, huh? I seek to understand the angels so I can understand God, but that's it. I don't seek to understand God to do something for this. So I can get a good job. Teaching theology. Finish my PhD. Now, what about always thinking about the end, huh? Because one doesn't seem to be always thinking about the end, huh? To the third, it should be said that it's not necessary that always one think about the last end, huh? Whenever one desires or what? Does something. But the power of the first intention, which is with respect to the last end, remains in any what? Desire of anything. Even if one does not think about the last end and act. I think it's a beautiful example. You have to understand this a little bit. Just as it's not necessary that the world