Natural Hearing (Aristotle's Physics)
Lecture 92: Equivocal Words and the Nature of Badness

Transcript
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A man, he spoke in words so few and said so much. He was the brevity and saw a wit. You know? But, you know, times we'll quote scripture, you know. God has made a verbum abbreviatum, an abbreviated word, right? But Christ says an awful lot in a few words, huh? So, here you go, my lecture more or less. It's kind of more of a Shakespeare, huh? I haven't learned more from Shakespeare than any of the modern philosophers. It just doesn't say much to them, does it? So, next time we'll look at St. Thomas, then do we come back to natural hearing, or do we move on? We'll move on to the Dianima. Dianima? Yeah, yeah. Which chapter from Brother Vernon was thinking there was chapter 13? That sounds about right. It should be hard to find, though, right? Yeah, yeah. He's sorry, I have to leave. Let's come back to something last time we were talking about there, in the second stumbling passage there from Friar Lawrence, huh? Where he said, For not so vile that on the earth doth live, but to the earth some special good doth give, huh? Nor ought so good, huh? It touches upon the thought, the statement that nature, huh? The sense of what a thing is, is the measure of what's good or bad. So it's strained from that fair use, the thing revolts from true birth, from its true nature, right? And then stumbles on abuse, huh? Now, it's so interesting if you compare on nature, on the one hand, what we mean by nature here, and then what we mean by bad. If you really understand what bad is, then you'll see a connection between that and... On nature. It's being measured, yeah, by nature, huh? And I think I mentioned last time, or some time anyway, that the word bad has at least three basic meanings. It's a word that is, what? Equivocal, by reason, okay? When you say a word is equivocal by reason, the phrase, when you say a word is equivocal, you mean it has many, what? meanings, huh? And many here, in the sense of what? More than one. Yeah. Many as opposed to one. Not many as opposed to few, huh? So even the word many is equivocal by, what? Reason, right? I mean, yeah. So, now sometimes we distinguish between the word that's equivocal by reason and the word that's equivocal by chance, huh? And you find the distinction in Aristobel and you find it in the Neopatine philosopher as you follow the down to Boethus, Thomas, and so on. Now what's the difference between a word that's equivocal by reason and a word that's equivocal by chance? Well, simple, yeah. There's an order between the ones. So you can say that a word that's equivocal by reason, which sense of the word reason is there involved? Because the word reason has at least, what? Two meanings in English, right? When I give you a reason for something I say that's using the word reason in one sense, when I say that I'm an animal with reason, an animal that has reason, it's another sense of the word reason, right? Now when I say I'm an animal that has reason, huh? What is the definition of reason in that context, huh? The ability to know the power by... Okay, okay. But perhaps Shakespeare's defined the best, huh? For us in Hamlet. That's ability for large discourse, huh? Remember that? Looking before and what? After, right? Okay. What's the definition of reason when I give you a reason for some statement, huh? It's the cause for your thinking that such a thing is so. Okay. So, it's not necessarily the cause of the statement being true, right? See. The best reason I can give for saying a statement is true is the reason why it must be so, right? In which case, my reason is containing the cause of the statement being true. Okay? But if I say my reason for saying you're sitting is that I see you there, right? Sitting. That's not why you are in fact sitting, is it? But it's why I think you are sitting, right? Okay? So, you could say really the reasons of the sense is a thought, right? Of the cause or a thought of why someone thinks some statement is true or why they think some statement in some cases is false, right? Okay? Now, are those two meanings of the word reason are they connected? Yeah. Because reason in one sense gives reasons in the other sense. Okay? And reason in one sense has many reasons in the second sense, right? One reason has many reasons. And this is always a nice way to what? First distinguish things by the one and the what? Many, right? You know, when you're talking about defining, for example, every time in the dialogue when Socrates asks somebody what something is, they'll come out with many examples of it rather than the one definition he's looking for, right? And Socrates will play. I ask you for one thing and you give me what? Many, right? And sometimes he'll play in that Greek proverb, you know, where a man hands you a dish and, you know, he drops it and he breaks it into many. I ask you for one and you give me many. Now this is not, you know, going to the most essential differences but that's the first thing you see. The difference between examples of a thing and the definition is that there are many examples of a thing, maybe potentially infinity in some cases, but there's only really one maybe complete definition, right? Okay? And when we distinguish between a word that's univocal, when it's equivocal, you first do so by the one and the, what, many, right? Okay? But now, when you say that a word is equivocal by chance as opposed to the reason, you're really saying that it just happened that these two meanings or these two things that stand out of the word or more have the same, what, name, right? But in some other case, it didn't just, what, happen, right? Okay? And perhaps you can use reason in either sense here to explain it, right? There's a reason why these two or three things or whatever it is have the same, what, name, right? There's a reason why those two meanings of reason have the same name, because they are connected between the two, right? And you can say also that reason here, as opposed to chance, is the, what, cause, huh? Okay? So perhaps when you say equivocal by reason, you're thinking more of reason as a cause, right? Although in some sense they're both a cause, right? Okay? There's a reason why these different things have the same name, right? There's a reason, it's by my reason, right, rather than by chance as a cause, that this word was placed upon many things, huh? as my old teacher Deccanian correctly said he says every respectable word in philosophy is equal by reason it's amazing how many words there are of this sort but the words in the axioms are all of this sort the words that are used in wisdom are all of this sort the words that tend to be used everywhere are of this sort now sometimes you find people using the word equivocal period to mean equivocal by chance and sometimes they give a new name to this and they call it an analogous name right which in itself is a example example of one way that we sometimes name things equivocally right or why does the equivocal by chance keep the name it's the equivocal in the broad sense and you say by chance and by reason why does the equivocal by chance sometimes keep the common name as its own and the other get a new name like you'll see sometimes analogous name yeah yeah yeah the name or the particular kind that adds nothing over the common meaning right keeps the common name and the one that adds something noteworthy right gets the new name on it okay so I always quote my mother is saying you know she would like when I call man an animal right and I said well man is not just an animal right okay so sometimes the beast keeps the name animal and then man is given his own name man and so we contrast man against the animals right so I just mentioned that you know thing I think there's a certain danger though of using the word analogous because analogous is the Greek word for proportion right and not all names equivocal by reason are sold by reason and proportion so I think sometimes people are kind of led astray by that and they get you know more narrow and not as broad an understanding as they should right so I like to use the spirit equivocal by reason more than analogous because I think that tends to misbead a lot of people you know although Thomas will use that a lot of Thomas I don't think Thomas does right yeah how would St. Thomas define his term in analogous really well sometimes you divide names that have been things community into three right and he'll say either they have entirely the same meaning and then we call it univocal or entirely different meanings and we call it equivocal or purely equivocal is not a phrase on use but they mean equivocal by chance right and then they have meanings that are partly the same and partly what different right okay and he calls that analogous right so that's when we're looking at it as in between the other what two right okay but the other way of dividing it is into equivocal univocal and then subdividing equivocal into equivocal by reason and equivocal by what chance yeah and both ways of dividing are quite acceptable right you see just like when I talked about the goods of man right but the Greeks usually divide them right away into the goods of the soul goods of the body exterior that's right now sometimes I put the goods of the soul and the goods of the body together because they are what goods inside of us right so the inside goods and the outside goods that's okay and then subdivided the inside goods into the goods of the soul and the goods of the body right but sometimes you know like when St. Paul or somebody speaks of the inner man and he's thinking of the soul right and sometimes people lump the goods of the body with exterior goods as material goods right okay but anyway you divide them into three right away or into two and then subdivide one in both cases at what you're getting the same thing essentially yeah yeah and I don't say one is correct and one is incorrect I think they both might have some what yeah it has some usefulness to divide it both ways okay you know if one wanted to divide you know I've never seen them do it just so much explicitly but you can say names said of many things by chance names said of many things by reason and then subdivide names said of many things by reason where it means entirely the same thing right or because the meanings are not the same but they're connected right but in both cases you have a reason right so if I say man of each one of you it's not by chance that I say man of each one of you but if I say man of you and that man there the meaning right well then we call that a man not because it's an animal with reason but because it's a likeness of a man with reason so it points back to you right but if I say the word bat you know the baseball bat and that comes out of the belfry that's more or less it's by chance right that those two should have the same name okay so let me know if you wanted to right and you see something you have in common yeah in his use of the term analogous of St. Thomas of taking cognizance of the Greek sense of the term being proportion does he bring that in in a well he does sometimes more charming than Aristotle you see there's a famous text in the Nicomaiic Ethics there where Aristotle distinguishes some of these right and then he divides the one by proportion or by analogy to the Greek word for proportion if you look at in Euclid there you see the word proportion there in the English translation but the Greek word is on here right okay but Aristotle distinguished that from other kinds of okay so in a sense you're giving the name of the part to the whole right in a sense that but we didn't have a name for the whole right you know that happened in other things like you take the word virtue right and the word virtue is really taken from one particular virtue namely what courage yeah see and if you want to get the English equivalent of the word virtues the English equivalent is madwood okay now madwood it seems the name especially courage if you look at Shakespeare's use of the word manwood it's usually in the sense of what courage right but when the boy there decides to leave the company of those bad guys associating with because they're stealing and robbing and so on he said because it goes against his manwood right now he's moving the word manwood to what talk about virtue in general because he's talking about it goes against his sense of what justice but notice in Latin you can see the word virtues it comes from vir the man the male as opposed to the woman right because normally the soldier who's supposed to have this virtue is a vir a man right and not a woman okay I was looking at that discussion about women priests and so on I was looking in the catechism of the Catholic Church there you know the official right now and of course when it talks about who can be ordained right it says men but then it has in the it says vir v-i-r-i to make very clear then it goes on to say that a woman cannot be ordained you know but so you have to specify that right so let's come back to now the word badger is an example of A word that is what? Equivocal by reason, right? And I've heard people, you know, who make a somewhat superficial study of evil and the problem of evil and so on. You hear them sometimes say they don't agree with Thomas, you know, or with Augustine, that evil is really a what? A lack. A lack, yeah, a non-being, right? And of course they're maybe thinking that Hitler is, you know, turned out in his tanks and aren't anymore people. And so on, and shooting at you and so on. That's not just a lack, right? But they're misunderstanding, what? The nature of deprivation because it has to exist in some place. Yeah, well, but not that, but to misunderstand the fact that the word bad is what? Equivocal by reason. Oh, okay. And Thomas and Augustine are talking there about the first meaning. Oh, okay. In reference to which you have to understand the other meanings. Yeah, okay. Okay? So the first meaning of bad, then, is lack in a strict sense, which we'll come back to in a moment, right? What that means exactly, huh? Mm-hmm. Okay? The second meaning of bad is what has this lack, right? Okay? And the third meaning is what causes something to have a lack, right? Those are the three basic meanings, you might say. So, I'll tell you some example of that. You can say, blindness is something bad, right? In that first sense, huh? It's a lack, right? Now, to be a blind man, is that good? You want to be a blind man? No. See? You see, there's something bad to be a blind man, right? It could be a blind dog or a blind cat, right? And then, you could say, what blinds a man, right? Okay? So, if I poke one of your eyes out, or during the Spanish Civil War, you know, they'd take you and they'd pop in a chair and prop your eyes open with a toothpick and then shine a light into your eyes until you went, what? Sure. Oh. Blind. That's really horrible, right? Okay? So, you know, many things that might make you go blind, right? There's two examples there, right? You know, poke somebody's eye out at the store, right? That's not good, right? Mm-hmm. You know, the horrible scene there in King, what? Lear, right? Where they blind, what's his name? Gloucester. Gloucester, yeah. Yeah. That's really a horrible scene, huh? They've seen it, you know, so it's in all states, you know, particularly, they use it with a bandage around your eyes and, yes, it's really, yeah. So, when you say that evil is a lack, we're talking about what? Yeah, the first sense, yeah. Yeah. To which the others must be, what? Lincoln. Yeah. And defined by, right? You see? Okay? So, this is closest to that, and then this is a little further away, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? Just like I was mentioning, you know, the word political there. Remember, example I use sometimes. The first meaning of political is the polis in the city. And the second meaning of political is the government. Well, the government is not the polis, but the government, what? Rules or directs the polis, huh? So, it's political in the second sense, but it's defined in reference to the first sense. And then we take up a revolution. Revolution, okay? Okay? And revolution is a change of what? Government. Government, right? Okay? So, revolution is not as close to polis as government is, right? Okay? Government is what rules the polis, huh? Revolution is a change of what governs the polis, right? Okay? The same way here. The first meaning of bad is a lack. The second meaning is what has that lack, or you can be said to have a lack, right? Something, you know, what lacks something. Okay? And then the third meaning, what causes that lack in something. Do you see that? Okay? So, everything has to be understood in terms of what lack is. Now, when they define lack, of course, the word lack, look it up in the fifth book of wisdom and see it has many meanings. But lack in the full sense here, huh? It's the non-meaning of something, first of all, in a subject, able to have it, right? And also a subject that is what? By nature, apt to have it, right? Okay? By nature, apt to have it, huh? And you can go on and maybe make it more precise. And when it should have it, right? And so on, huh? And when it should have it, right? Okay? Okay? Okay? So, if you understand what bad is, in its first meaning, it's something opposed to what? Nature, right, huh? Okay? Do you see that? It's something that you are apt to have by nature, that you don't have, right? So, in that sense, it's contrary to nature. So, the very meaning of bad there is what? It can't be understood, except in reference to what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not bad for the chair not to see, right? Because the chair is not by nature apt to have that, nor should it by nature have that, right? Or for a stone to take something, you know, natural as opposed to artificial, right? It's not bad for the stone to not see, but it is bad for a man not to see, or for a, what, dog not to see, right? Or for these cats not to see, you know, see? It'd be bad, right? Okay? Because by nature, they should have, what, sight on them, okay? It's not bad for the trees for them not to see, yeah? But they don't have to go from one place to another, right? And maybe there are lower forms of even animal life, you know, the ones that Aristotle describes as a marine biologist, that don't move from place to place. They are affixed to the floor of the ocean or something, like clamming or something. And they might just, what, work by touch, right? When something comes in, they surround it, right, or catch it and get the nourishment that way, because their meal comes to them, so to speak, right? But these animals have to go out and hunt, like the cat that hunts the mouse, then they need to have it, right? And they're not the big cats that hunt, but bigger animals, right? They need eyes, right? And so on, huh? So by nature, they are apt to have this, and they should have this, right? So for the cat, you know, the hunter, you know, that chases its victim and so on, its meal, right? It would be bad for them to not have sight, huh? So if you understand what the bag is, you see it's necessarily connected with nature. That's very interesting, huh? Yeah. It shakes between the nail and the head, but it's something that the Greeks saw, too, huh? Another place this comes up, you know, very interestingly, is when you study, in logic first, when you study the category of quality, and when Aristotle talks about quality, he divides it into four species, which is quality. And the first one he talks about is disposition or happiness. And the second one he talks about is innate ability or inability. And the third he talks about is sense qualities. And the fourth one is shape or figure. Now, why does he give disposition or habit first? Among the four species of quality. Even though innate ability or inability might seem to be more fundamental than disposition or habit, right? But why this before these other three, right? In a way, the other three seem to presuppose at least a disposition, wouldn't it? Yeah, well, the second one here might seem to be more fundamental, the way your habit and ability is disposed, right? But why does it begin with that one, right? You know, Airstyle enumerates things and looks before and after, right? You know? But most of us don't have to worry about fighting any order, any reason for the order, just, you know, by chance that they came out. But when Airstyle is, you know, considering the matter as such, he's very careful in the way he is, he said that. Well, Thomas explains the reason for this in the Prima Secundae, the Summa Theologiae, when Thomas is going to take up human virtue and vice, right? He recalls the doctrine here of the categories, right? Because the human virtues or vices are certain, what, qualities of men, right? And so he has to say, what kind of a quality they are? And of course, they're going to turn out to be qualities in the sense of disposition or habit. So he recalls quality and the division of quality in these four, right? But there he explains why Airstyle begins with disposition or habit. And the reason he gives is that by disposition or habit, one is well or ill-disposed towards one's nature. See? And the nature of the thing, or what it is, is what is first in that thing, isn't it? You must be, a thing must be what it is, before it can be anything else, right? So the nature of the thing, or what it is, is what's first in that thing. And since by disposition or habit, you are well or ill-disposed towards your nature, right? Looking back to his nature, what comes first? That's why this one is even first by Airstyle. That's kind of a very subtle explanation that Thomas said. But notice, when you speak of the decision of habits, you have good ones and what? Bad ones, right? Well, you're either well-disposed towards your nature, or you're ill-disposed towards your nature, okay? And of course, you have virtues and vices of the soul, and your virtues and vices of the body, right? So health, you might say, is a virtue of the body, right? Okay? And justice is a virtue of the soul. But again, you see, it's just, you speak of good and bad primarily, right? Okay? Not in these other ones, huh? If you start to speak of good or bad, you're talking about a disposition or habit, right? Okay? So if you're talking about beauty, you're really up here, see? Health or beauty or strength, right? If you're talking about shape, period, without any reference to good or bad, you put it down here, right? Okay? But if you're talking about beauty, right? Okay? That's not going to be up here. So you're well or ill-disposed towards your nature. So again, you see that nature is the measure of what is good or bad. People who don't understand it don't understand the basic thing you have to understand in order to do, let's say, ethics, you know, and other things, huh? Okay? So do I have a right to use my mind any way I want to use it? So... Now some people think you have a right to use your sexual organs any way you want to use it, right? You know? Whatever pleases you, right? You know? Well, so I discuss this, you say, well, now when you say the same thing about your mind, use your mind to, you know, deceive and to be mistaken and to abort the truth and so on, right? Mental contraception, right? It's okay with you, right? Yeah? But notice, huh? I think part of the thing about the sexual organs is that they're ordered not just to the pleasure of the individual, right? But they're ordered to, what? Reproducing yourself, right? But even more than that, they're ordered to, what? The preservation of the species, right? They're ordered to generating new members of the city, the nation, right? They're ordered to generating new members of the church, if you're a Christian, right? So, it's ordered to, what? A common good, right? And so, you can't just use that as if that were ordered to your, what? Private good, right? Private good is always subordinated to the common good, huh? Okay? So you have to use them in a way that is compatible with the common good, huh? Any other use is going to be perversion, right? The way it should be, huh? But no, it's the same thing that can be said about the mind, huh? Albert the Great there, right? I'll teach you, sir. He used to have a beautiful passage from Albert the Great where he says that if you use your mind to know anything other than God, right? Or the view to knowing God, right? Unless you'd be forced to it by some necessity like you've got a farm today or something, right? But if you don't use your mind ultimately to know God, you have a perverse attitude towards the mind, right? You see? But notice, huh? To know God is really the, what? End. Yeah. In a sense, you might say it's the common good of reason. You can speak more broadly if you wanted to that wisdom is the common good of reason, huh? Wisdom is ultimately a knowledge of God, right? So I should use my mind in a way that's going to, what? Lead to what? To God, huh? It's interesting. I was reading a student newspaper, not newspaper, student paper there and of course he's criticizing Heidegger. I don't know if Heidegger is an atheist or an agnostic or what he is or he knows what he is, you know? But he's sort of, what? Critiquing Heidegger in the light of Christian theology, right? Catholic theology, right? And that to me, you know, as a Catholic is quite acceptable, right? It's quite contrary to what Karl Marx says, right? If you look at Karl Marx's preface to his doctoral thesis, right? He quotes with approval David Hume, right? Who says no one should be allowed to judge philosophy, right? Philosophy is altogether supreme, right? Now this is quite contrary to what the Greek philosophers would say, right? That human wisdom is, what? The highest court of inquiry, right? That it can... There's no wisdom higher approach. Human wisdom could be, what? Judged or arraigned before, right? Okay? But notice now, this of course is more what the theologian does, right? When he judges the philosopher, right? Okay? So I got thinking about this and maybe he could make another argument just within philosophy, right? And that is, can you be a philosopher if you don't think there is a God? Well, notice that. Yeah. You do not think there is a God. That's you think. Let's put it more clearly. If you think there is no God. You do not think there is no God. You do not think there is no God. You do not think there is no God. You do not think there is no God. You do not think there is no God.