Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 1: The Title and Naming of Aristotle's Metaphysics

Transcript
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Okay, Aristotle's book on Wisdom is called in English, the Metaphysics. I don't particularly like that title. I like to call it, first of all, the 14 Books of Wisdom. And in this premium, this paving the way for the 14 Books of Wisdom, you will call this knowledge that he's talking about here, taking the way for it, you will call it Wisdom, right? Sophia in Greek, in English, or in Latin rather, the word would be Sapientia. Thomas explains the word Sapientia, Sapida Scientia, savory knowledge, tasty knowledge. Okay? Now a lot of times Aristotle refers to these 14 Books of Wisdom as first philosophy. So you can call it the 14 Books of First Philosophy. Now he calls it First Philosophy because it's first in dignity, right? In worth. It is most the character of wisdom of any part or kind of philosophy. The editor of Aristotle's works there, Andronicus of Rhodes, saw that in the order of learning, we think, these 14 Books of Wisdom come after the books in actual philosophy. Okay? So you can call it the 14 Books, the Books in Natural Philosophy. That's not probably as good a way to name it as to call it the 14 Books of Wisdom or even the 14 Books of First Philosophy because they're naming it more from what it is or what it's about and it's from its place in the order of learning. Now, in Greek, Meta means or can be after and Ta is just the article and more briefly in English, Fousika, from the Greek word Fousis, nature, the books in natural philosophy could be called Fousika. Okay? So after the books in natural philosophy. Okay? And what we've done is to run together three words in Greek and made a word out of it, metaphysics, but doesn't mean anything to us. Of course, people use the word metaphysics. We don't see anything they want it to mean, right? Okay? So it's not a very good way we did naming it. But that's what we're accustomed to call it in English nowadays, sounding like physics, huh? But as Shakespeare says, custom is a tyrant, right? So I have to call it the 14 Books of Wisdom. Now, the stuff I'm posting on the Societal Studies and Museum of Tour and the 14 Books of Wisdom, right? I know I get a lot of Christians doing this, but I think it sounds much more impressive, doesn't it? The 14 Books of Wisdom doesn't sound really interesting, you know? And each of these books has got an awful lot in it, huh? That's my favorite way of referring to it. Who said custom is a tyrant? Shakespeare. Oh, Shakespeare. And we obey these things, right? Even though they're unreasonable, right? Sure. I told you about a little complaint about grace before a meal. You know? We always call it grace, huh? Blessed are the Lord in these gifts that you're about to receive and I bow you through Christ our Lord, amen. But that's actually the blessing. And in the tradition of the Church, there's another prayer called the Thanksgiving after you have your meal, right? And grace really means what? Yeah, yeah. So that shouldn't really be called grace. It should be called what? Blessed. The blessing, yeah. We're so accustomed to call it that and no one seems to be able to break out of that, right? Okay. My other complaint is about the birthday song, you know. You hear everybody's birthday, right? Happy birthday. It's not a very good piece of music. Why should it have this, you know, over and over again, right? It's not like, you know, playing the sire for Christmas. The sire is a great piece of music, right? And the birthday song is just something that's been, you know. So my birthday comes up, I say, now I don't want that song. I'll put a Mozart or something, you know. I see the tyranny, you know. I've got to obey that, you know. I'll sing that stupid little song. So I mentioned before, I think, how you go into Borders, bookstores, some of these, you know, bookstores, and there will be a section titled, no, occult, you know, and metaphysics. Yeah, there can't be one category there, the occult and the metaphysical things. And the physicists, you know, scientists, anything outside experimental science, they'll call metaphysics, you know. And if you look at some of the works, especially when they're young, some of the scientists, you know, they have this sneering reference to metaphysics, you know. I mean, just anything outside of science. So I'd rather call it, therefore, the 14 books after the books of natural philosophy, to call it the 14 books of metaphysics. What does that mean, right? And it's kind of funny, we don't have an explicit title, you know, come down in the term to the Aristotle, right? But in this premium to the 14 books, you will use the term Sophia to call it wisdom, right? And when he refers to these books in the physics, the books of natural theory, you'll say, well, that would be taken out the first philosophy, right? You know? So as far as the authority of the author, you want to say it there, right? These would be better called the 14 books of wisdom, the 14 books of first philosophy. But because Andronicus of Rhodes was the editor, right? And he placed these books afterwards, right? I got this particular title, right? It's like, you know, how America got named after a guy who didn't discover America, right? It had something to do with making a map or something at one time, and he got the, you know? He made a map, he put his name on it. Yeah, I'll put his name on it now, you know? But I mean, it's kind of a fluke of history, you know? But we're stuck with that anyway, yeah? When we call it the 14 books of first philosophy, is that simply because it's first in dignity? Because one thing I always thought, it was because it's dealing with the first thing. Yeah, you can take it that way, too, yeah. You could say it's first philosophy, first means, what, before all the rest, right? Yeah. But you could take before there, it's referring to better, right? Yeah. Well, as Aristotle would say at the end of this premium, every other knowledge is more necessary, but none is better. This is the best knowledge, huh? So that's one way of taking the word first philosophy, right? Right, okay. Now, another is to take the very word philosophy itself, right? Now, some people misunderstand, I think, the word philosophy. The word philosophy is not used, to my knowledge, really, by Plato and Aristotle to mean the love of wisdom. Although, etymologically, it comes from the love of wisdom. But it seems to me a love of wisdom is more tied up with the meaning of the word philosopher. That the meaning of the word philosopher is a love of wisdom, okay? And philosophy names the knowledge that a lover of wisdom would, what? It seems to me a love of wisdom, but it seems to me a love of wisdom, but it seems to me a love of wisdom, but it seems to me a love of wisdom, but it seems to me a love of wisdom, but it seems to me a love of wisdom, but it seems to me a love of wisdom, but it seems to me a love of wisdom, but it seems to me a love of wisdom, but it seems to me a love of wisdom, but it seems to me a love of wisdom, but it seems to me a love of wisdom, but it seems to me a love of wisdom. Thank you. Pursue. Love. Okay. Now, you know, as Groucho Marx would say in the famous question to make some money when you've missed the big money, right? Who's buried in Grant's tomb? And the obvious answer is Grant, right? That's a great mistake being made. You know, everybody would ask this in the old days of the program, you know? What's my life? Well, if you've missed out on the big money, you know, you have a little consolation money for you, and you can ask this question, and then you can answer that question. Something like that. And I say, well, something like his question there. What knowledge would a lover of wisdom pursue? Well, it's kind of obvious, right? Yeah, yeah. What knowledge would a lover of geometry pursue? Well, geometry, right? What would a lover of Mozart listen to? Well, a Mozart, yeah, obviously. So the knowledge that has most of all the character of wisdom would be the first meaning of the word philosophy, right? If philosophy means the knowledge that a lover of wisdom would pursue. Mm-hmm. Okay? That's a little, it's connected to that first meaning, but it's a little different reason for calling it first, right? Okay? Well, ethics and political philosophy are kind of a wisdom in a qualified sense about human things, right? Or natural philosophy is a kind of wisdom about natural things, right? But they're not wisdom fully or simply, right? Like this knowledge is. But then a third meaning you could give, right? You could say, just as natural philosophy is about natural things, right? And political philosophy is about political things, right? So first philosophy is about first things, right? Mm-hmm. Most of all the first, what? Causes, right? Okay? But there are other senses of first things that's about us. They also defend the axioms, which are the first statements and so on, right? And so, we're talking about the first road in our knowledge here, right? In the during premium, right? But most of all the first causes. So that'd be a third reason for calling us first philosophy, right? Okay? I think I mentioned before how with Aristotle's book that they call the Physics Day, the eight books called the Physics. Well, if you go back to the Greek title of the book, it's the eight books of natural hearing. And perhaps there's more than one reason to call this natural hearing. One reason would be that you're hearing about natural things. Another reason is that this is very close to what we naturally know. There's other reasons, right? You're listening to nature like a, what? Teacher, right? Okay? So there's a number of reasons why you might say these could be called the eight books of natural hearing. When they translate physics, they take the root there of the word natural, which is nature, right? And take the Greek word nature and transliterate, not translate it into English, right? It would be a better translation if they said nature. They tell you more what it's about, right? You see, we're accustomed to name these books in English some way or other, and we're kind of stuck with it in custom as a pirate. Now, with Aristotle's three books about the soul, they customarily call it the Deinema. Now, why use the Latin title for the hat? You know? And the Greek ones for these, you know? I don't know if there's any reason for the hat, but it's customary now. We end up obeying custom, right? Just like in the clothes we wear, right? You may not dress the way the Greeks and Romans did, but customary ways of dressing, we follow it out. I don't think we're following custom here. We're following eight customs. Oh, eight customs. Don't they say that the nuns' outfits are derived from the widow's outfits, the Middle Ages is up to? Ours is sometimes, too. Mother Seton, specifically, she wore widow's weeds, that's what they call it. But other nuns, some orders, I think, they came from peasant outfits, peasant costumes, some, depends. Aristotle, in the second book of wisdom, at the end of it, will talk about the influence of custom upon how men think, right? But also you can talk about the influence of custom upon what men think. Thomas talks about that in the beginning of the Summa Kata Gentilens. So custom has a tremendous influence, huh? And I think so, I think in the modern times, men are more slaves of custom than they were in Greek times or in medieval times. But let's call us the 14 books of wisdom, you know? Now, when you say the 14 books of wisdom, we're giving, as I mentioned before, the editorial and reference division, right? Okay? You've read those titles before, right? And reference, I use those two words. For editorial purposes, and to be able to refer, you know, to any passage you don't have a book, you might want to, right? I think I mentioned how the division of Matthew's Gospel, let's say, in the 28 chapters, that goes back to the University of Paris, I guess, in the 12th century. And everybody had their own reference division, right? And it was kind of annoying because, you know, they couldn't refer to the same text too clearly. And so it kind of officially divided it into... But that's kind of what? Yeah, but it's editorial purposes, right? And now you'll... When they published the Gospel of St. Matthew, you have 28 chapters there, right? Homer's works were edited in Athens there, right? And that's when they divided them into the, what is it, 24 books? Each of the Elyse and Addison. And, of course, you can subdivide, maybe, you know, the books of Aristotle are, in some places, subdivided into chapters, right? And I follow the one that you have with Thomas's commentaries, which are divided into lexios or readings, huh? Sometimes you can divide them down into verse and that sort of thing, huh? Now, this is a necessary division of a work, right? Okay. The book won't get published without that, probably. Without that division, right? And, yeah. But now there's a second division, right? Which you find, for example, in Thomas's commentaries on a work of this sort. There's commentaries on the Gospel of St. Matthew and so on. And I call that other division the logical and understandable division. Okay? And I call it logical in part because it follows a rule that I teach in logic, which I call the rule of two or three, which is a rule, for the most part, at least, right? And it's a kind of division that really helps you to, what? Understand the work, right? It makes the work understandable, huh? It improves the mind, right? Okay? To know that the, you know, that there are 14 books of the metaphysics doesn't really teach the mind anything, right? Okay? Or even to know that there are 28 chapters of the Gospel of St. Matthew, does that really help you to understand the Gospel of St. Matthew? No. It is useful to refer to, you know, in, you know, in chapter 19, he talks about, um, the, uh, you know, your property away and so on, right? And, uh, of, uh, So it's useful to refer it to a particular place, right? This parable is in this chapter, or this miracle, or this, you know, Sermon on the Mount is in chapters, what, 5, 6, and 7? Okay, it's useful. But now when Thomas begins his commentary, say, on the Gospel of Matthew, he, of course, has already separated the four Gospels, right? But Matthew emphasizes the humanity of Christ, and that's represented by the man in a lot of the symbols there of the Gospel. And Thomas says, well, as man, he came into this world, he proceeded through this world, and then he went out of this world. So the Gospel of St. Matthew is divided into three parts. In the first part, which is chapters 1 and 2 in the editorial division, right? In the first part, chapters 1 and 2, is about his coming into the world, right? Chapters 3 through 20 are his progressing through the world, right? And then chapters 21 through 28 is going out of this world through his, what, passion and death and resurrection and so on, right? Isn't it much more? And then he'll subdivide each one of those parts, right? Usually into two or three, and you'll see a reason for it, huh? So like the middle part there, Thomas says, well, he progresses through the world like a teacher, huh? Like a preacher, like a Dominican. And so 3 and 4 are his preparation for the life of his preaching, right? And then the teaching is in chapters, what, 5 through 20, huh? And, okay, now 3 and 4, before you can go on and preach, you have to be, what, endowed with grace by the sacrament, so you have the baptism of Christ, right? Then you have to be, what, tested, right? You have the temptation of Christ, right? Now he's ready to go. See? So it really helps you to understand the work, right? And I can go on talking about the Gospel of St. Matthew, but really marvelous the way he does that, huh? So usually you divide into two or three, and subdivide into two or three, and you can kind of see the reason for this, huh? So when Thomas divides the 14 books of wisdom, or he divides the 8 books of natural hearing, right? Actually he divides most of Aristotle's works, he divides them always into two. And what are the two parts, huh? And then, what they call signs in Latin, the tractabos, which means what, the drawing out, the main work, right? Okay? And the premium, we just got through, not this class, but the classes before, talking about the premium to Nicomachean Ethics, huh? And the premium to Nicomachean Ethics occupies the first readings, or the first Alexios, first maybe three readings, or that, of the book one of the Nicomachean Ethics, right? So that premium that occupies the first part of book one is going to be divided against the rest of book one in books two through ten. Again, that's the tractabos, the drawing out of what you've been told you're aiming at, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? And, um, the same way here in the metaphysics, huh? In the 14 books of wisdom. In the beginning of book one, you have a premium, right? And, like the premium to Nicomachean Ethics, it has an epilogue, right, where he tells you what he did in the premium at the end. It's only two, I recall, of the end, where he had an epilogue at the end of the premium itself. But this is kind of the main premium to looking philosophy. Just like the premium to Nicomachean Ethics is the main premium to, what, practical philosophy. And we don't have a good premium by Aristotle to the whole of logic, right? Like you have to the practical and looking philosophy. But Thomas Aquinas at the beginning of his commentary on the positive analytics gives us the best premium we have to logic as a whole. It's really a magnificent thing. Now, you've heard me compare that a little bit to the division of Shakespeare's Roma and Juliet, huh? Now, if you're going to give the logical division of Shakespeare's Roma and Juliet, it'd be into two. The prologue and the, what, play, right? And, in a way, the premium is a little bit analogous to the prologue, right? The prologue, in a way, prepares you for the kind of play that Roma and Juliet is. Prepares you for a tragedy, right? Okay? Expect to feel pity and fear, right? In fact, they're mentioned in the prologue, right? Whose misadventure and piteous overthrows. The fearful passage of their death-barked love, right? You're being prepared for a tragedy, huh? And they compare it sometimes to a overture or something like that in music, right? Where you kind of set the tone and prepare the audience of what's going to come up. So, that's the first division, the first logical and understandable division of the 14 books of wisdom, right? The 14 books of wisdom, that's the first editorial and reference division, right? But the first logical and understandable division is the premium against the rest of book 1 and 2 through 14. That's the stretching out, the laboring of the thing, huh? Or laboring the thing, okay? I think I mentioned how I admire the premium to Dei Verbum in Vatican II, right? So, if you were to divide Dei Verbum, there's what, eight chapters in there, something like that, you see? But you divide, actually, the premium against the eight chapters or whatever it is. That's the main work, right? And the premium reading, marvelous premium in there, the way it prepares the way, right? If you look at the way it starts, it starts with talking about eternal life, right? Which is the ultimate goal of the Word of God, right? Eternal life. But then it comes down to faith, hope, and charity. And they are like some of the means to eternal life, huh? And especially faith and hope, which disappear, right? When you get eternal life, charity remains perfected. But faith and hope disappear, huh? But it's a beautiful, the way it's quoted, huh? A beautiful quote from Augustine there at the end, you know, that by believing, we will come to hope, and by hope, we come to love, right? Showing the order of those three. But you see that at the end of, you know, St. John's Great Gospel, right? These things are written that you may believe, he says, and that believing you may have life, right? Well, eventually, you know, life of grace is an invention of eternal life, right? So that's the end of why he's writing, huh? That's what he's aiming at, huh? And that's the most important thing in a premium in philosophy, is what, in Greek, they call the skopas, huh? The target, right? The goal, what you're aiming at, huh? Okay? In Latin, they sometimes express it as the intensio libri, right? The intention of the book, but that's more abstract. In Greek, it's very concrete, you know, with that target you name it, huh? The skopas. Let's start to look here a little bit at the premium wisdom. Now, you'll notice that in the editorial division here, right? There's three, what, readings, right? Okay. But the logical and understandable division of the premium is into two parts. And these two parts, Aristotle, in the epilogue, will recall. But the first part, which occupies the first and the second reading in the editorial and reference division, he's going to show, what is wisdom aiming at, right? That's the main thing he wants to show. That wisdom is aiming at knowing causes, right? But...