Ethics
Lecture 13: Man's Proper Function and the End of Human Life

Transcript
================================================================================

Or to put it a little differently, it's about the end or good that is desired for its own sake, but not for the sake of anything else, but everything else for the sake of it. And it pertains in some way, it's a kind of foundation at least, of what? The political art, because that's the art that commands all the other arts. Now, in the first complete paragraph on page 2, he says, For if this end, happiness, is the same for one man in the city, nevertheless, he says, it is better and more perfect to achieve and preserve that of the city. For it is worthy of love, he says, it's lovable, when done for one man only. If I help one man, my son, or my brother, or my friend, if I help one man to be happy, that's lovable, he says. That's desirable, right? But it's more beautiful, he says, and godlike, when done for a nation and for a city, right? And notice, Thomas will remark upon that, huh? Why is it more godlike? Well, God acts for the good of the whole universe, right? Well, you and I can't do that, right? But when we act for the good of the whole city, we're more godlike than when we act for the good of just one individual. But even that's lovable, right? And sometimes you can do more for an individual than you can do for your city, right? But nevertheless, it's more beautiful and godlike, right, to do it for a city, huh? So you see a man like, you know, St. Benedict or somebody, right, who set this rule of life, right, whereby, what, he achieves a happiness for a whole group of people, right, huh? You know, he's more godlike, huh? That's the only statues there around the Vatican there, right? You know, the square there, Piazza, in front of St. Peter's, right? Those are the founders of Hordes, I guess, mainly around there, huh? That reminds me of the definition that Socrates gives a philosophy in the Theotetus, huh? Where he says that philosophy is becoming like God so far as possible for a man, okay? So, you can see that reference to the godlike here, right? You can see that same reference to wisdom being godlike, right? And Aristotle gives the premium to wisdom. So, in one way, practical philosophy is trying to be like God, and especially the political philosophy. And another way, looking philosophy and looking wisdom, wisdom in the full sense, is trying to be like God, okay? So, it's very interesting what the Greeks say there, huh? So, he says the knowledge then aims at these things, huh? Being something, what, political, being a form of political knowledge. Now, that's the end of the first part of the premium, right? Where he's mainly saying, what are we after in this book, right? Well, we're after trying to know, right? The end of purpose, huh? That is not subordinating any further end, right? We're trying to find out what is best in human life, right? What therefore could be said to be the end of human life, the end of the purpose of man, right? And this knowledge could be considered to be the foundation of political philosophy, right? Not that our politicians know it. But that means they have the foundation, right? You see? If you ever read the life of Alfred the Great, you know, he's a very impressive man, huh? In England, huh? Very impressive. He had interest, you know, in theoretical life, too. And, you know, not just so much being able to pursue it, because he was so involved in the disorders of the day, you know, but, you know, getting people to read Poetheos and so on. It's a very impressive man. But anyway. Okay? You're the one that fought the games? Yeah. Okay. Now, the second part is, how do you go about this, right? Or how should one try to study these things, to speak of these things? So, and Aristotle begins with the basic principle, right? Enough will be said if it is made clear according to the underlying matter. This is the basic principle that Plato already announces in the tomatoes, right? And the tomatoes in his discourse does, huh? That your way of considering something ought to fit what you are what? Considering, right? Your way of knowing ought to fit the thing you're trying to know, huh? So if I'm going to know the music of Mozart, I'm going to use my ears. If I'm going to know the paintings of Titian, I'm going to use my eyes, right, huh? If I want to know the excellence of the wine, I'm going to use my nose and my tongue, right, huh? Primarily. Well, color can be admired, too, the wine, but you don't really, I don't really have to judge a wine or to know it until you smell it and taste it, right? Okay. When you get a good wine, it's different to say, I know it's good even if I haven't even tasted it. But you can't, you know, sound, you know, sounds like a good wine. No. So what way is suitable to this matter, right? Aristotle descends to the question of even suititude. For suititude ought not to be sought in like manner in speaking about all things. He makes a beautiful comparison. Now, if you're doing the busts of the presidents out there in South Dakota, right, can you be as exact as someone, you know, drawing their likeness on a piece of paper? If you're blowing up rocks, you know, you can't be as precise as that material, right? You can't expect the same precision there. You know, okay? That's a beautiful comparison Aristotle's making, yeah? You can't be as precise or exact or as certain in every matter, right? Okay? You were asking me earlier there about when the wife brings home something and what are you supposed to say? You see? And it's not as clear here, right, as things might be, say, in geometry, you know, or something, you know? Now, Aristotle shows that there's much insidermity in these matters, but there is much difference, he says, right, in error about good and just things, huh? Which political knowledge considers. So that they seem to be by custom only. Now, this is not Aristotle's position, right? But he's pointing out that some people think that, right? Which is a sign that the matter is not as certain as, say, the matter of geometry. Okay? So that they seem to be by custom only and not by nature. And there is much error about good things due to many being harmed as a result of them. For some have perished through wealth. So is it good to be wealthy? Someone says, well, it's good to be wealthy. Yeah, but maybe they kidnap your kid so they can get a ransom, right? They kidnap your wife or something, right? Or Lindbergh gets his, you know, baby, you know? Okay? So is it good to be wealthy? So they're not going to kidnap my kid because I don't have any money to give them, right? Right? So it seems on the one hand that it's good to be wealthy. But Aristotle announced this. I mean, he buys his son an airplane and his son crashes in the Athens airport and he's got no son. I still got my son, but that's because I wasn't wealthy enough to buy him an airplane. You see what I mean? You see? So some have perished, huh? They've been killed because... their wealth. So is wealth something good? There's an ambiguity there, right? You can't be too precise about these things. And others have, what, perished through their courage, right? Okay? Your mother's always warning, you know, when you're trying to lift something heavy, you know, be careful, you know, because maybe, you know, she knows people who strain and hurt themselves trying to lift something too heavy, right? So maybe a strong man will try to lift something that a weaker man would not. As a result, he gets unstrung, right? And, right? So, is it good? The woman is beautiful, so she gets raped or stoned by the pirates or something, right? So is it going to be beautiful? You know, the plain girl that left and not her, you see? And there seems to be something imprecise about these human goods, huh? You see? We should be content, therefore, he says, in speaking about such things and from such things to show the truth, what? Roughly, right? Now, when Thomas elaborates on this showing the truth roughly, he says that part of this is that you're applying something, what, universal and simple to something that is, what, singular and complicated or composed of many things. And in speaking about such things and from such things as are, for the most part, to conclude, such as are the same, right? Now, you know the standard example, huh? Should you return what you borrowed? Okay, but now, I borrowed your gun, right, huh? And now you want your gun back and you're mad at your wife or something, you see? Or somebody. Maybe I shouldn't, you know, maybe I should misplace your gun or something, right? There are times when I shouldn't give you back your gun, right? Okay? And should you ever go through a red light? Should you go through a red light? No, it's not the red light, right? I think it's the answer you give when you take your driving exam. Well, there are times you should go through a red light. You know? When I go to Assumption there sometimes at Salisbury and Park, you know, the lights are frozen or whatever it is, and everybody stops, stops, stops, stops, and the red light is there. What do you do? Well, common sense would tell you, you know, you see the caution after the time that there's something wrong with the thing, right? So at times, you should look through a red light, right? And maybe there's some kind of emergency so you might do this, huh? So, can you give a rule? Always return what you borrowed, huh? Let's say we're at the party, you know, we need some more drinks and so you lend me your keys so I can drive your car and get some more booze for us, and so on. And I come back and you want your keys back because you want to go home but I can see that you've had too much. Well, maybe I shouldn't return to your car now, huh? You demand this in your car. Maybe it's not the thing to do now. No, see? So these things are not... They're not absolutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Should I marry an un-Catholic? What do you think? Ordinary. Yeah, ordinary. I know, right? You know? My mother married an un-Catholic. So I did a bouquet, but someone ought to make a universal rule because I wouldn't be here. Yeah. That explains what my father said when he heard your name. That's Scandinavian. They're not Catholic. Yeah, I know. That happened. When my wife liked to tell the parish priest, you know, you know, that she didn't get, you know, engaged in some and so on. Oh, oh, fine. Wonderful, wonderful. What's the young man's name? Oh. And we've really worked with him. Oh, he thinks that it helps me in philosophy so you don't realize that. Maybe as I am by Thomas. So, I was in the military school, right? I used to have federal inspection, right? And the military officers would come from Washington, D.C. or someplace. And, you know, your rating is a school. It would depend upon that, right? And we had a very high rating. You know, we would get two years of college credit for our military training. And my company was the best company, I don't know, drill-wise or something like that. So we were assigned to be the official escort for the military inspectors. And I was, you know, in the position of taking role, right? Well, this jerk shows up late. When the whole company is, you know, in dress uniform there, waiting for the military men to come out for their lunch with the school authorities and so on. And this guy's, you know, scared stiff because he's late and he's going to... I said, stay right here, I'm not going to mark you late. I won't mark you absent. Stay right here. So when the military instructors went out there at what I had done, he commended me for my prudence, right? You see? So, in some of these circumstances, right, we've got to... you've got to do something and not do what you normally would do, right? And it says, in the same way, one should receive each thing said, right? For it belongs to the educated man to seek certitude. And the Greek word there, akabea, can be translated as certitude or it can be translated also as precision, right? And either way, it makes sense, right? For it belongs to the educated man to seek certitude or precision in each kind of subject to the extent that the nature of the thing admits, huh? Now he gives a beautiful example here from the liberal arts. Now you know the liberal arts involve, what, the trivium, grammar, logic, and rhetoric. And then the quadrivium, which is geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. And Aristotle takes the most precise thing, the mathematician, right? And then the most loose thing, the rhetorician, and his arguments, right? And for it seems about the same thing to accept the mathematician persuading. If you let the mathematician persuade you by rhetorical argument, you're demanding less precision or less certitude than the subject or matter of mathematics admits, huh? But to demand from the rhetorician the certitude of argument that you find in geometry is to demand more certitude, more certitude than the matter of rhetoric allows, huh? Okay? Because rhetoric is about human actions and the singular and all kinds of exceptions and so on. So in one case you'd be demanding more certitude and in the other case less certitude than is befitting the matter, huh? Again, that idea to virtualize in the middle, right? So I can demand more rigor in the arguments than is possible, right? leading up to the election, right? I'd see on the news broadcast and so on there was interviewing somebody who's going to win the election and so on, you know? And trying to make a prediction, right? And a lot of times they kind of sidestep it or they qualify it, you know, and so on, right? But even, you know, things more exact like economics maybe, you'd read the interviews with the top economists in the U.S. Newsmo Report or someplace like that and towards the end of the article it'd say, economists are saying, barring unforeseen circumstances the economy should da-da-da by such a date, right? But he's kind of hedging his thing a bit, right? And the same way when you talk about what the stock market is going to do, right? Well, I guess some people understand the stock market better than other people, right? But they don't always call it right, huh? And so, you're going to demand the precision about the stock market or the economy or who's going to win the election that you can about whether the triangle has interior angles equal to two right angles, see? So the rhetorician will use Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Example, right? So if you ask me, you know, what's a good Chinese restaurant to go to? I say, well, the Westboro Mandarin. I had a wonderful meal there last week, you know. And that's a reason to go to the Westboro Mandarin, isn't it? Yeah. But are you sure to get a good meal there? No, but we use that kind of argument all the time in human things, right? Right. We reason from one singular to another singular of the same kind. And, of course, the strength of the argument depends on how much they're alike, but there's always some difference, right? So you might have the wrong chef on tonight, and even the good chef can make a mistake, right? And so you can't have that kind of certitude when you're arguing from past examples like that. And even the enthymeme, which is like a syllogism more, but the enthymeme, for the most part, you're reasoning from things that are true, for the most part, right? A man's staggering coming out of a bar is drunk. Well, yeah, I suppose most of the time he is. But people do stagger for other reasons, right? I thought shopping with my wife there last Saturday, and I got pretty kind of dizzy. I'd go home, you know, and I'd go to bed, right? And for about a day or so, I was, you know, like top-heavy, you know? And finding my wife said, and my friend said, you go see the doctor. So I'm going to go see the doctor, you know, and checking me out to do the super day to the heart or something like that, you know? And I ran a tennis down, a memorial there on Wednesday there, you know, a little keratin scan, they call it, you know? Well, I don't think it's treated to the heart, you know, but it could seem to me a little bit dizzy. They'd say, well, Perkis is drunk again, right? You know, so he could have, you know? And not everybody who's on steady his feet is, you know, like I was putting against the wall, you know? So, I don't know what it was, but... So, the matter doesn't admit a complete universality, unless you, you know, state something very gentle like do good and avoid the bad, right? But, you know, to return what you're about is not always true. Now, in the next to the last paragraph, in the last two paragraphs here, First, I was going to talk about the third part now, the premium, huh? Which is about the hearer, as he says in the epilogue there on the next page. And who is or is not a proper hearer of lectures on political matters, right? Now, he says, in the principle here, Each man should be judges, I guess. Each man judges well what he knows, and of these things he is a good judge. The man educated in something about that, and simply the man educated in all things. Hence, the young man is not the proper hearer of political knowledge. For he is without experience of the actions in life. While the arguments are from these and about these, huh? So, insofar as you lack experience, you're not a capable judge of these things, right? And it's suitable here of these things, huh? I remember one of my earliest defenses of the Catholic faith when I was a very little boy. And I learned somehow from my mother that you don't have children until after you're married. And that seemed to be a pretty good argument for the importance of the sacrament of matrimony, right? That you can't have children without the sacrament of matrimony. Well, this is kind of a lack of experience about these things that I had, right? You know? So, I'm not really a good judge of these things, right? But it's like, you know, the young man, and then the man who's been married 20 years, right? Talking about marriage, right? Well, the young man who's hardly knows what the woman is like, is not a good judge of these things, huh? But the man who's been married 20 years is a good judge of, you know? So, he's a more suitable hero of lectures about domestic things, huh? And so, Aristotle's talking here, eventually, about political knowledge, right? But you need a vast experience to be able to judge these things, huh? And most people don't have that, right? Especially the young, huh? Okay? But even in terms of ethics itself, huh? The young man doesn't have enough experience, huh? And you can see this even in men who are not very religious, you know, and so on. But sometimes, when they get a little bit older, they see the failure of their ways as being younger, right? And they're able to judge these things, huh? So, some people are not a suitable hero of these things because of their inexperience, okay? Others, because, what? They're going to follow their emotions. They want to do what they want to do. And they don't want to follow a reason. So, they are useless here, right? Further, being a follower of the emotions, as a young HDR, right? He will listen in vain and uselessly. Since the end of this is not knowledge itself, right? But action or doing. Okay? So, we learn, for example, about friendship, like we did in the book Seda 9 there, you know, the book 8 that we had mainly from. But why do you study friendship in ethics? What's for the sake of being a friend, a better friend, and knowing whom to choose as a friend, and so on, right? It's not just to know what a friend is, but to be a friend, right? Okay? And he says, In this regard, it makes no difference whether he is young in age, and therefore willed by his emotions, or youthful in character, right? He's a playboy. Expression is well said, though. He's a boy. And therefore, he lives by his emotions, right? Okay? So, it makes no difference whether he's a boy or a playboy. In any case, he's a useless here of lectures in ethics, because he doesn't want to live by reason. He wants to live by his, what? Emotions, huh? For the defect, in this case, is not by time, but to living and pursuing each thing by emotion. But knowledge is useless to such as it is to the, what? Incontinent, huh? And Aristotle will compare them, you know, to a man who listens to a medical advice, but doesn't follow it, right? So, the doctor tells you you need to get exercise, or you need to do this or that, and if you're not going to act upon his advice, well, then why go and listen to the doctor in the first place, right? And that's what people like in ethics, right? Why listen to lectures on ethics unless you want to do what's reasonable? Okay. And the incontinent are those who, what? Know that something is bad, right? But they're overcome by their emotions. So, what good does it do for me to know that I shouldn't drink too much when I can't resist drinking too much when the stuff is available, right? In that case, I'm useless here because the end here is not to know that you shouldn't drink too much, but to not drink too much and to act upon that knowledge, right? And so, if I can't act upon that knowledge, then what good does it do for me to know it, huh? But to those desiring and acting according to reason, it will be very useful to know about such things, right? So, he recalls then in the top of page three the three things he's done. Left this much about the hearer. Who is and who is not a suitable hearer of these things, huh? The man who has some experience and who wants to live a reasonable life, right? He's a suitable hearer of these things, right? But the man who lacks experience or who lives by his emotions and can't control his emotions, he either can't understand what is being said or he's not going to profit from what is being said because the end or purpose of this knowledge is not to know but to act according to it. The purpose of knowing about courage and moderation, the ultimate end is not to know what courage is and what moderation is, but to be courageous, to be moderate, right, huh? Okay? To be just and so on, huh? And how it should be received, right? This matter doesn't admit of complete, what, certitude, right? Or complete precision, right? Mm-hmm. In me, things have to be said for the most part, right? Do you believe in free trade? Yeah, I would say, in general, I would say good in free trade. But maybe there are certain industries that are just starting up in a country that have to be protected, right, to get their feet in the ground. Maybe you should make some exceptions, right? And what do we propose, huh? Well, that's, we propose to what? Draw a line around the, what, end or purpose of man, of human life, the end or purpose that is desired for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else, as a kind of foundation of political knowledge, right? That's what we propose, okay? All of that, as they say, is the first of the two parts that logically and understandably you can divide the whole world, right? Later on, we look at, we can look at some wisdom. We'll see our style of the premium, too, right? In the first chapters of book one of the 14 books, right? But the 14 books of the metaphysics, the 14 books of wisdom, that's the, what, editorial and reference division of the work, right? The logical and understandable one would be the premium, and that would be divided against the rest of book one and two through 14, right? See? So, if you look at Shakespeare's plays, in a lot of editions, Shakespeare's plays are divided into five acts, right? That doesn't mean anything, those five acts, right? It's useful to refer to, you know, it's in act four, scene two, and maybe I'll give you that if I'm in reference, maybe even the number of the lines. But probably the best way to divide it is into the tying of the knot or knots and the untying of the knots, you see? That makes, that illuminates the work, right? Shakespeare says in one of the plays here, tying them must untangle this is too hard a knot for me to untie. See how he ties the knots later on. But that helps you to understand what the play really is doing, huh? Five acts is kind of arbitrary, right? Now, next time we'll look at this key chapter there where Aristotle's, you know, drawing the line around the inner purpose of man, right? And we've already done that, but we didn't see a little bit of what he does here. But, of course, he leads up, you know, to that gradually and he follows into some things. We're always going to look at that kind of central chapter there. But after he sees the connection between this and human virtue, then he goes through all the virtues in the middle of books and he comes back in the 10th book to see what precisely is the end of man. We'll look at this next time. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angel, strengthen the lights of our minds, or to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, and help us to understand your return. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. First of all, there's a whole dialectic leading up to this chapter where he defines the end of man, or draws a line around it, as he says in Greek. Well, let's just look at the little part here on the drawing a line around the end of man. And those words, drawing a line, is a translation of the Greek word, perigraphe, which means literally, draw a line around it. But to say that happiness, of course the Greek word is eudaimonia, but to say that happiness is the best seems to be agreed upon, and it is desired that what it is be said more distinctly. Perhaps this will come about if what man does is taken up. That's tied up with what we saw before, right? That a thing's end or purpose, if it has its own act, is going to be in that act, right? That's what it does, yes. Yeah, yeah. For just as the flute player, and the sculptor, and every artist, and even more generally, like the long induction we made, and generally everyone for whom there is something to do. Okay? Maybe you can say more precisely, everything that has its own what? Act, as Plato defined it in the Republic. Okay? So the eye is something to do. Maybe to see, right? And the ear is something to do, right? And then, for example, the flute player, the sculptor, the cook, and the barber, and so on, they all got something to do. They all have their own act. And so in general, everyone for whom there is something to do and some act, the good and well-being seems to be in doing this. So also it would seem to be for man, then, if there is something he does. He has his own act, too. Are there, then, some doings and acts of the carpenter and the shoemaker, but of man there is none? He is by nature without anything to do? Sometimes you wonder, right? An idle mind is a devil's workshop, right? But is he by nature without anything to do? And notice, those comparisons he's made up to this point are all taken from the different human occupations, right? Carpenter, shoemaker, flute player, sculptor, and so on, right? But perhaps the ones in the second paragraph from the fine arts, right? And then for the more practical arts, the carpenter and the shoemaker. But then the fourth paragraph, he goes to what? The parts of man, right? Okay. Or just as there seems to be something done by the eye, and the hand, and the foot, and generally by each of the parts, we call those parts organs, right? Each of the tools. Should one also lay down something that man does besides all these? And then he starts to say, well, what is that? What then will this be? To live seems to be common even to the plants. But what is man's own asat? We're seeking man's own what? Well, his own act now, right? To find out what his own end is. So the nourishing and growing life, therefore, should be set aside. My purpose in life is to feed myself and to grow. Okay, I even reproduce myself, right? Because the plants, they feed themselves, right? They grow, they reproduce, right? So is that man's own act? The thing that is unique to him? Now, higher than this would be something sensing, right? To see and to hear and to smell and to taste and touch and so on. But this also seems to be common to the horse and the ox and every animal, because animal is defined by sense. There remains, then, the doing of what has what? Reason, right? So how is Aristotle proceeding here? Well, it is an inductively and from the general to the particular. Yeah? Well, you can see there's also a division here, right? Yeah. And he's dividing what you find in living things, right? And he's eliminating what we have in common with the plant, and even what we have in common with the animal, right? In order to be left with what is peculiar to man, right? So it's kind of an either-or argument, right? I think I mentioned before in the part leading up to this, Aristotle says everybody somewhat agrees upon a name for what the purpose of life is, right? And even that it means, you know, to live well and do well, okay? But then you can say that the plants are alive, the animals are alive, right? The man is alive. What does living well mean for a man? Living the life of a plant, well? Living the life of the cat here, well, right? See? Or does it mean living the life of a human being, of a man, well? Well, it can relate to the first two, right? So you're left with the third, the life that involves reason. And then he makes a distinction which is going to be a basis for the distinction of two kinds of virtue we talked about. But of this, the one is obeying or persuaded by reason. So Mozart represents what? He represents the emotions as, as it were, listening to or obeying what reason, right? And that's something that the emotions have to be habituated to doing, right? So Plato makes a comparison, you know, of reason is to the emotions a bit like the man is to the horse, right? And if you've known horses or you've seen the Western movies, when a man first gets on a horse, the horse tries to throw the man off, right? But if the man continues to get back upon the horse, he can maybe eventually, what? Tame the horse, right? Okay. Washington Irving there in his descriptions of the West there when he came back here in 1832. Really kind of remarkable descriptions of the way they tamed these horses on the prairies. How wild they seem at first, and then all of a sudden they become, what, very docile to the human being, huh? So it's kind of a proportion there, right? The reason is to the emotions a bit like the man is to the, what, horse, right? And therefore you have to kind of train the horse to obey the man, huh? And this is what we do with emotions. And of course it begins with your parents, really, huh? Don't really want any more candy, do you? If you've had enough, huh? Okay, I guess so. So you're starting to listen to the reason of your parents, right? But if your emotions did not listen to the reason of your parents at all, then there may be no, even less so, listen to your own reason. So there's one part of a man that isn't reason, doesn't have reason itself, right? But it partakes of reason, right? And in some sense listens to reason, obeys reason, right? You see, it's very much the way Mozart represents this in the instrumental music, huh? As opposed to the romantic period, you know, where the emotions are kind of on their own, right? As Astley said years ago, the one thing the romantic would not admit is that reason, that emotion should be subordinated to reason. Heaven is no, see. And the other is being reasoned essentially, right? As having reason and thinking and so on. And this being said in two ways, the ability and the court to act, which is more principle, right? For this seems to be said principally, right? If then the activity of man, if man's own act is the act of the soul by reason or not without reason, right? So it's either acts by reason like thinking or sensing, not sensing, but reasoning or understanding itself, right? Taking counsel and so on. Or not without reason because both the emotions and even more so the will can listen to reason and obey it, go along with it. Well, we say that the act of something and its good act are the same, generically speaking, as of a harpist and a good harpist, right? And thus in all, adding that it excels by virtue. Now we talked about what virtue was, right? And the virtue is what makes a thing good and its own act good, right? For it belongs to the harpist to play the harp, but to the good harpist to play the harp well. And you can do the same thing with all the different hearts, right? It belongs to the cook, the cook, but the good cook, the cook well, right? Then if this is so, and further that we lay it down, that the act of man is some kind of life, and this the act of the soul, and actions with reasons, but if the good man is well and fairly, and each is computed by its own act, its own virtue, if then it is thus, the human good turns out to be the act of the soul, by what? Virtue, huh? I see the word soul originally means what? The cause of life within living bodies, right? So, if man's inner purpose is to live well, right? It's an activity by the soul, right? But by the plant soul, or the animal soul, or the soul that has reason, right? By the soul that has reason, huh? But perfected by what? Virtue, right? And if there are many virtues, as we find out that there are, we talked about some of those, according to the best and most what? Perfect, right? So Aristotle will go through all the virtues, the main virtues anyway, that we mentioned, the moral virtues of what partakes of reason by listening to or obeying reason, and the virtues of reason itself in Book 6, right? And then in the 10th Book, in the Comachian Ethics, he'll come back to this and say, well, now, the virtues aren't all equal, right? Okay? Just like we say, what? For the Christian, the chief virtues are faith, hope, and what? Charity. Okay? And of course, as our friend St. Paul tells us, charity is the greatest of the three, right? Okay? But as Thomas points out in the disputed questions on hope, right? Hope is greater than faith, huh? But you gotta have faith first, right? Okay? So the virtues, even faith, hope, and charity, they're not all, what? Equal, huh? Okay? In the same way for the purely human virtues, right? They're not equal. Of course, in the 10th Book, the virtues of reason itself will be seen as being superior, huh? To the moral virtues, which partake of reason. But then the two chief virtues of reason are political foresight and wisdom, right? And Aristotle will speak then of the two supreme happiness for man, right? The happiness, which is more human, according to political foresight. The happiness of Winston Churchill, right? And then the happiness of the philosopher and wisdom, which he calls a more divine happiness, huh? But then, on the top of page four, he adds a third part, right? Because the end of man, activity in accordance with reason and by virtue, for a day or a week or a month, huh? No. It's gotta be through what? Life, right? And he quotes the old proverb, right? Aristotle often quotes the proverb to come back to something that's more homely and common to his audience and to people in general, right? For one swallow does not make a spring in one day, right? And thus, neither one day nor a short time makes one blessed and happy. A line, therefore, has been drawn around the good, right? So this is not the most perfect definition of the end of man, right? But it does draw a line around it and tell you somewhat what it is, right? But after we've gone through the virtues and then compared them, then we can determine more exactly what that end is, huh? Okay? He set up the target. Hmm? He set up the target. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. He does use that word skopas in Greek there, you know. If you know what the end is, like a man who has a skopas, the target, he can see the target, he can aim at it, right? And you know, if you're aiming at a target over there, you know, you've got to be a pretty good aim to hit the target, right? But if you're not aiming at the target, you know, just shooting your arrow out in 360 degrees or 360 degrees this way, I mean, you could say that for all practical purposes, you probably never hit the thing, huh? Nearest Adler goes through the moral virtues in Book 2 in general. When he arrives at that definition, we saw moral virtues, let's say. Habit with choice, right? Existing in the middle, but the middle towards us, right? As determined by right reason, which would be the virtue of foresight or prudence in Book 6. When he gets into that book, he gives a few little rules about how to become virtuous. I mean, in general, it's repeated acts that makes a man virtuous, right? But he gives one rule, which is that you're trying to straighten out a stick, right? And let's say it's bent, huh? And you want to make it straight, what do you do? Do you just bend it back until it's straight? No, because if you go, it's going to, you know, you've got to bend it a little bit in the opposite, what, direction, then you can straighten it out, right? So, if I'm a little bit of a coward, huh, and I want to be courageous, right, then I've got to bend a little bit in the direction of being maybe foolhardy, right? Or, an old Dominican was saying, you know, the young brothers, right, in the, you know, being prepared for the Dominican Order, they tend to be a bit puritanical, he says, right? But in a sense, that's the way you have to hit the mean, you can't hit it directly, you've got to bend a little bit away in the extreme that is closer, right, to the, to the virtue, right? And then he says, look at yourself, what are you inclined to, right? Because you might be inclined, let's say, to get angry, very easily, like St. Francis de Sales, so he has to bend in the opposite direction, right? Someone else might be kind of, what, meek, and people walk over him, and so on, and he's got to bend a little in the other direction, right? That's something taking into account you in particular, right? And what's his third piece of advice? Worry, pleasure. Yeah, be careful of pleasure, he says. That's kind of interesting, huh? This is not a, a Christian is saying this, right? Or a priest, or anything like that. This is the pagan philosopher, right? Saying, you know, watch out for pleasure, right? That often leads people astray, you know? So what was the second one? One is in terms in terms of the fact that the virtue itself is closer to one extreme than the other, right? So considering that fact, you have to bend usually a little in one direction as a rule, right? Yeah. Okay? So that if you start out life being a coward, you'll probably never end up being courageous, right? Sure. But if you start out life being a little bit rash, you know, like I told the story there of George Washington, right? You know, his first military encounters there, you know, and how exhilarating it was to be shot at, you know, and so on. And of course, you know, a little bit floridness there, right? And then later on, of course, in life, you know, say, well, I was younger than, you know, say. But you might, you know, straighten out, you know, and be courageous and not risk your life unnecessarily, but still be a courageous man, right? But you have to maybe, you know, been a little bit that way, right? Harry Stiles says if you start out life being stingy, what you tend to is you get to be an older man, you tend to be more stingy because your physical powers start to decline and so you need your wealth or your money or whatever it is. in order to maintain yourself, and so on. So if you're stingy and you're young, the chances of being generous when you're old are not very good, right? See? But if you, you know, a little bit extravagant, right? And then, of course, as you're being extravagant, you're probably into some financial problems. Then you say, well, I've got to, you know, watch my money a little bit more carefully, you know? Then you kind of, what, pull back a big extravagant, but you are truly, what, generous, right? And so in terms, or as a second example of moderation or temperance, right, huh? That the virtue is closer to the defect, right, huh? Okay? So unless you bend a bit that way, you probably never will, what, straighten out, huh? But then the second rule he gives is in terms of you as an individual. Know thyself as the seven wise men said, right, huh? Because you yourself as an individual might be inclined more to one extreme than the, what, other, right? And therefore you must incline a bit in the opposite direction, right? Whatever that is, in order to, what? Straighten yourself out, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the third rule he gives is a different kind of rule, but watch out for pleasure, okay? He's a practical man, Aristotle, huh? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't have any mind as well-balanced as Aristotle, you know, because you have, you know, these very, let's say, abstract sciences like logic or wisdom, and then you have very concrete things like ethics, right, and political philosophy, and he did anatomy with animals and so on, huh? Mm-hmm. He did considerable historical research, right, into all the Greek cities, yeah, and how they changed our governments and so on, and he wrote his books on revolution, huh? Which is still useful to students of politics today. He's getting, in some sense, the best, most balanced mind in history, but you can't all be Aristotle, right? Mm-hmm. Plato was supposed to come into school and said, Aristotle, he's the mind of the school. Mm-hmm. He was a famous guy, you know, huh? People come over to Greece to study under Plato in the academy, and he calls this one student, you know, the mind of the school. It's like over the great going down to Paris to defend the teaching of Thomas at the end of his life. Mm-hmm. Kind of amazing thing. Or like Haydn imitating, what? That was hard. Yeah, yeah, in his life, yeah. High Haydn's latter symphonies are so much better than his earlier ones because of Mozart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's marvelous to see that the older man, in a sense the teacher, in some sense the younger man, recognizes in these three cases, Plato and Aristotle, apparently, Albert de Grey and Thomas, and Haydn and Mozart, and appreciates the excellence of the younger one, and has no envy of him, right? I think that's all, you know? Envy is such a, it's one of the capital vices, as you know. And, you know, envy plays a considerable role in the Gospels there with the Pharisees and people of that sort. I mean, it's really, it's really, or as Scripture says, because the devil's envy of us, in a sense, that he tempted us, right? And sin came into our world, and so on. So, envy is something, we've talked about that before with the novelists, right? How the novelists, you know, observing human friendship, and just kind of ordinary human friendship, see that the black mark upon human friendship is envy, right? And to the extent that you feel envy over your friend's greater success, much greater success than you, there's a contrary to what friendship really is. But the fact that that envy is very frequent or easily felt is a sign of how much we're inclined to that vice. In the book of Job, it says, Pride kills the great one, and envy the little one, huh? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So they say that the aristocrat is more subject to the vice of pride, huh? But the democratic times are more subject to the vice of envy, huh? The kind of humility with respect to Chesterton. One episode, I remember, was, although they were more equals, and somebody had read to Balak a piece of poetry written by Chesterton, and he didn't know who it was by, and Balak said, Who wrote that? And they said, Chesterton. Ah, he said, the master. Yeah. I think I told you that story about Deckeray's little daughter asking him, you know, why don't you write more like Mr. Dickens, you know? Out to bleak house you go. So, so we turn to Wisdom now. I'm going to give you too much Wisdom here, but I'll mess these out around. Everybody get a copy here of the Premium of Wisdom? I'm going to give you a copy here of the Premium of Wisdom here, but I'm going to give you a copy here of the Premium of Wisdom here. I'm going to give you a copy here of the Premium of Wisdom here. I'm going to give you a copy here of the Premium of Wisdom here. I'm going to give you a copy here of the Premium of Wisdom here.