Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 20: Truth, Wisdom, and First Causes in Aristotle

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In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. God, our enlightenment. Guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Great. Great. Help us to understand all that you've written. Happy birthday to us, happy birthday, or what? It's birthday, but it's some kind of birthday. Okay, so last time we saw the first reading of the second book of Wisdom, and that first reading was about how man is towards knowing truth. And kind of the opening remark of Aristotle's was that to know truth is in some ways difficult for man, but in other ways, what, easy, right? And the main thing he brought out about each of those was not the same. As far as truth being easy, which might seem naive to say, he was careful to point out three ways that truth is easy. You can't go through life, no matter what you do, without what? Hoping into some truth, huh? Whatever your occupation is in life, right? You're making hamburgers, you're going to discover something about the hamburger, right? If you have a pet cat, you're going to discover something about cats, right? So you can't avoid truth in that sense, huh? It's going to, you know, some bit, however small and insignificant it might be, everybody's going to hit upon some truth. It may not be the same one you hit upon and I hit upon because of what we are exposed to and what we do, but, right? In that sense, get away! But even in some way, a large amount of truth, he said, is easy, right? And that's through the efforts of many, right? So though what I might contribute or discover by myself might be very small, you discover something and he discovers something and so on and so on, and through the efforts of many, right? Like my mother said, many hands make light work, huh? So in some sense, it becomes easy. And then perhaps the most subtle thing is that there's some truth that, what, everyone sees, huh? You cannot avoid seeing, huh? I was at my class last night at the house there, and I was calling something, which I haven't been able to find in the text, but Jack Neumar used it one time in one of his talks there at TAC. where Cardinal Newman, I think it was, in the Aiden University, who was talking about Aristotle and the Nicomaiic and Ethics. And what Aristotle's doing there, at least fundamentally, is clarifying thoughts that everybody has in his own head already. But that you have in your head in a kind of an indistinct and confused way, and not too precise, and then you, what, bring it out, right? And in some sense, he's doing that with the categories, huh? So I was saying to the students there, if you ask the man in the street, is what a man is and the size of a man the same thing? No. Is what a dog is and the size of a dog the same thing? Okay? So that people do have in some way in their mind the distinction between what a thing is, its substance, and its size, huh? And that's the first two categories, right? So you're kind of clarifying things that everybody knows in some way and then building upon those. And so Aristotle's philosophy is not Aristotle's philosophy. It is philosophy, period. When I read the modern philosophers many times, it's their philosophy. It's not philosophy. It's something they've imagined, right? And then it kind of explodes from there. But now when he comes to talk about the difficulty of truth, the emphasis is more not that it is difficult, because that's less controversial, but what is the cause of difficulty, right? And in terms of the three looking parts of philosophy, or the three parts of looking philosophy, natural philosophy, mathematics like geometry, and then wisdom or first philosophy, natural philosophy is more difficult than geometry, and wisdom or first philosophy is more difficult than geometry, but not for the same reason, huh? The cause of natural philosophy being more difficult than geometry is in the things being studied, that they are in themselves hardly existing, huh? I mean, if you take something like motion or time, does it really exist? Yes and no. Someone would say, you know, in time, well, the past doesn't exist now, does it? And the future isn't here yet, right? Is any amount of time in between the past and the future? No. Because if you had any amount of time that was all here, you'd have the before and after together, which doesn't make any sense. So time hardly exists, right? And that's what Augustine says in the Confessions, you know, if nobody asks me what time is, I know what it is. But if somebody asks me what time is, I don't know. And so those things are difficult to know, but the cause of difficulty in them is in them, huh? But in wisdom or first philosophy, the cause of the difficulty is not in the thing, these things are most illuminating, huh? But they dwell in light and accessible to us, huh? Because of the weakness of our mind, huh? And since the cause really illuminates the effect, the first cause is the most enlightening thing there is. Yes, but the first cause is most obscure and hidden from us. And therefore, it's like Thomas' prayer there, a devotee, a devotee, a lot in the day to us, you know? Yeah? Very light in the day to us, and so on. Truly hidden, huh? So, and then he ended up with the discussion of how one man helps another, right? And how we're helped not only by those we agree with, but even those we disagree with, that we have to, what? Refute, huh? I was kind of thinking there of the first book of Aristotle's natural hearing there, the so-called physics, where he talks about the opinions of Parmenides and Leases who say that there's no multiplicity in the world, and there's no change, and so on. And everything's one, and so on. And these are kind of absurd positions, in a sense. But even in arguing against those positions, we develop our understanding of a number of things. Now, why is it appropriate for the wise man to consider this question or this problem, how man is towards truth, that we've just been talking about here and summarizing again? Well, as he's going to show up in the first half here of the second reading, the consideration of truth belongs most of all to wise man. So it's appropriate for that reason that he talked about how man is towards knowing what? Truth. Truth, yeah. Okay? So he begins by stating what he's going to show here. Moreover, it is right, it is correct, it's true, to call philosophy the reasoned out knowledge of the truth. Now, notice here that he calls wisdom philosophy. And why does wisdom have more right to the name philosophy than, say, geometry does, or ethics even, or natural philosophy? Well, his claim on truth is far greater, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. But remember what I was trying to teach you before, that some people, you know, give us the etymology of philosophy, love of wisdom, right? But is that the meaning of philosophy, of the word? Well, in Plato and Aristotle, the word philosopher, the name is the man, means a lover of wisdom. That's not just the etymology of a philosopher, that's a meaning of the word, a lover of wisdom. But the word philosophy is used by Plato and Aristotle to name the knowledge that the philosopher seeks and gets if he's good, huh? Now, we've got to show Mark's question, right? What knowledge would a lover of wisdom have? Wisdom, pursuit. Wisdom, yeah, yeah, okay. And so, wisdom, most of all, is a right to the name philosophy. So, Aristotle sometimes calls wisdom first philosophy, as opposed to natural philosophy, mathematical philosophy, or political philosophy. First philosophy, meaning it's first a dignity, and most of all is a character, wisdom. But sometimes, like here, he just calls it philosophy period. Do you see? Because it, most of all, has a right to that name. Because it's a knowledge, most of all, the love for wisdom is pursuing. We saw what wisdom was somewhat in the first premium. Now, how is Aristotle going to show that wisdom or philosophy is the reason out of knowledge of the truth? Well, he's first going to show that the consideration of truth belongs more to looking knowledge, looking philosophy, than it does to practical knowledge. And then he's going to show that among the forms of looking knowledge, knowledge whose end or purpose is just to understand, wisdom is most of all concerned with truth. So, it goes back to the end or purpose, the goal, of these two kinds of knowledge. But the end of the looking is truth. Now, sometimes you see the Greek word theoretical, which comes in the Greek word to look. Sometimes you see the Latin word speculative, but both theoretical and speculative have kind of other meanings sometimes in English. Speculation is usually used for the stock market or something like that. So, I could translate it in English with the word looking, right? But looking means trying to what? Understand, right? So, he says the end of looking philosophy, of looking knowledge, is truth itself. That's the end or goal. And the end or goal of something is what's most important, what it's most of all about. But the active, it's some kind of doing or making. So, that shows that looking philosophy is more concerned with truth. That's its purpose. That's not the purpose of the art of cooking, okay? Even though the art of cooking might possess some truth about cooking and about food, right? That's not its end. Its end is to prepare dinner. Not only to eat dinner. It's not to know the truth about food, is it? Okay? So, since the end or purpose is what's most important in anything, truth much more pertains to looking knowledge than to practical knowledge. Okay? And the second thing he points out about that. That the practical man is interested in the useful truth, right? And that may not be the same at different times, huh? For men of action, even if they consider how things are, do not consider the eternal, but the relative and the, what? Present, huh? So, I often quote the British Prime Minister who says, England has no permanent friends, huh? Just permanent interests, right? So, is Germany or France the friend or the enemy of England, right? On the Napoleonic Wars, France is the enemy of England, right? In the First World War, Second World War, France is the ally of England, right? We were the ally of Iraq at one time, Saddam Hussein, right? In the war with the Iranians, huh? Because we're mad at the Iranians. And then later on, we're the enemy of them, right? So, this changes all the time, right? So, it's interesting, in particular truths like that, that are sometimes true. And then there's France, our friends. Sometimes it's not true, right? You see? So, those things that are true sometimes, other times not, are necessary to know who your friends are when you're in war and so on. Who's going to support you? Who's going to go against you? But, those truths are not as true as something that's always true, okay? The triangle always has its interior angles, because it's the right angles, right? But France is not always the friend of the men. It's not always the enemy, right? Okay? So, be friends with them, as they say, you know, bear in mind that you may someday be enemies. Or, in your enemies with somebody, you know, don't be too opposed to them, right? Because someday you may be, what? Friends with each other, right? Or, need each other, okay? So, that's kind of a, what? Second point he makes, right? So, he says, truth is the very end or purpose of looking knowledge. It's not the end or purpose of the practical knowledge, right? And secondly, the practical knowledge considers truths. Very often it's interesting these truths that are kind of temporary and relative to the situation. And, while they're looking for knowledge and looking for things that are true always, huh? Okay? Do you see that? So, something that's always true is more true than something that's sometimes true and sometimes not true, right? Okay? So, it's kind of two reasons there to say that truth is more the concern of looking knowledge than of practical knowledge. It's the end or purpose of it. It isn't of the practical. And even when the practical does consider truths, it considers things that are less true because they're sometimes true and sometimes not true. Does this make sense? Now, in the third paragraph, he's going to reason, from what we saw in the premium, that wisdom is about causes and, in fact, about the very first cause. He's going to reason that wisdom is most of all about truth, even among the looking sciences. Now, the principle he's going to use here, as I mentioned it before, we saw it in the study of the Ethics, right? It's often stated by Aristotle and Thomas following him in a very brief way by saying, you'll see it like, that is a kind of rich more so. Right? You agree? Brevity is a soul wit. But I'd like to kind of expand a little bit, right? Let's just state it again. We stated it before in the Ethics. It comes up a lot. But the principle that we stated, the number of causes. If the same belongs to two things, to one of them, cause, meaning the cause being, because of the other, it belongs more to which? The other. Yeah. Belongs more to cause. Yeah. Okay? Okay? Now, I gave some very simple examples to illustrate this principle here, right? So I take the example of the fire and the air around the fire, right? And the fire is hot, and the air around the fire is hot. But the air around the fire is hot, because the fire is hot, which is hotter than the fire, right? And if the water is wet and the cloth is wet, but the cloth is wet because of the water, which is wetter. Yeah. And sugar is sweet, and my coffee is sweet, but my coffee is sweet because of the sugar, which is sweeter. Yeah. Now, you may recall, are using that principle in talking about which is better, right? Which is gooder, which is more good, the end, or that which is for the sake of the end, right? So if good or desirable is said of the end, and that which is for the sake of the end, but it's said of that which is for the sake of the end, because of the end, then which is more good or better? Yeah. Yeah. So if good is said of health and of medicine, but the medicine is good because health is good, which is better, to be healthy or to take medicine? To be healthy, yeah. Now, you can show it by induction, too, but... I mean, this is kind of the reason for it, right? And we apply it in logic, the same principle. We say, if the premises of a syllogism are known, and the conclusion is known, right, of the syllogism, but the conclusion is known because of the premises, which is more known. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you can confirm that by saying if the premises were not more known in the conclusion, why would you use the premises to arrive at the conclusion, huh? So if you go through geometry there, one syllogism acts another, right? And what you know already is used to prove what you don't know, right? Okay? And eventually the unknown becomes known, right? But it's because it becomes known because of something already known. So the other thing is even what? More known, right? Or we apply it to the question of mover and moved, right, huh? You know, if I got the boxing gloves on, right? And we go into the boxing ring and I... You get knocked out, right? Was it the glove or the boxer who knocked you out? Well, I can say both, huh? Because it's the glove that, you know... But the glove knocked you out because of the boxer, right? So it's more... He's more the guy who knocked you out than the glove, right? Because they put the boxers, the big worldwide champion's gloves on your hand and you get you in the clean, you'll find out that it's not the main cause of winning the gloves, you know? It's not the magic of the gloves that's going to make you... Unless they've got some weights in there or something. Okay. Well, now I'm still going to apply that to the question of truth, right? And if true is said of the cause and of the effect of the cause, okay? But the effect is true because of the what? The cause. The cause. Which is more true? The cause. Yeah. And if the cause has a cause, right? Then that cause is going to be more true, right? So what's going to be most true? The cause. The cause. The first cause, right? So if wisdom is about the first causes, it's not only about truth as the other part of the philosophy, but it's about what is most true, huh? Okay? But we do not know the truth without the, what? Cause. And then he gives that principle. Which I try to state more clearly. In my presumptuous way. But each thing by which the like and meaning belongs to others is itself the same most of all. That's the principle, right? As fire is the hottest and is itself the cause of heat for others. Hence the cause of what comes after, namely the effect being true, is also the most what true. Therefore it is necessary that the beginnings of the things that always are be most true, right? And there Aristotle seems to be saying that things like the angels that always are, right, they have God as a cause. He's the cause of their necessity. He's kind of hinting that he knows about creation there, as Thomas would say. For they are neither just sometimes true, nor is there some cause of their being, but they to others, huh? And then he gets kind of a corollary of all this. Whence is each thing is towards being, so also is it towards what? Truth, right? Okay? In the same way, being was sort of the cause and the effect, but the effect because of the cause, the cause is more being, right? That's kind of interesting, huh? Because in the Old Testament, God says, I am who am, right? So he's first in being, huh? He's the first in being, huh? But then in the New Testament, he says, I am truth itself. But that makes sense to Aristotle as a philosopher, right? That primacy in being and in truth would both belong to the first cause, huh? Yeah? So this is the reason then why, or one reason I should say, why it's appropriate for the wise man to talk about how man is towards truth, right? Because the consideration of truth belongs most of all to the wise man. Okay? And even more so than among the other forms of looking philosophy. Okay? Now there may be other reasons you could give why it's appropriate for the wise man to talk about how man is towards knowing the truth. Because that's giving a very general direction to our proceeding, right? And it's the wise man who orders everybody else around. Okay? But the reason why he talks about this right here, Thomas says, is to give a reason for what he's done in the previous reading. Why it was appropriate for him to talk about that here. In the wisdom. Okay? Now, in the rest of the second reading, and in the third reading, and then in the fourth reading, huh? Thomas says that what Aristotle's doing here is something that he's kind of assumed up to this point, and that is that there are first causes, huh? Okay? So it's kind of backing up in a way this reason, right? He's saying that wisdom is about the first causes, and the first causes are most true by this argument. Therefore, the consideration of truth belongs most of all to the wise man. That assumes that there are first causes to be known, right? And so he's going to manifest that now, Thomas says, right? Okay? Now, another way I like to look at these intermediary readings here in the second book, between the first and the fifth reading, right? The second, third, and fourth readings. I like to say that they belong to what I call the subplot of the 14 books of wisdom, huh? And I borrow that expression, you know, from our study of plays, right, huh? Sometimes in Shakespeare's plays and other people's plays, sometimes too, I suppose, there seems to be two plots, huh? Somewhat independent, huh? But one may be the chief or main plot, right? The other kind of a subplot, huh? Maybe they have certain connections, you know, but kind of a two-sturbing, storylines going on together, right? Well, a hint of that is back in book one, where Aristotle has finished the premium to wisdom, so he knows what wisdom is aiming at. He knows that this is the most desirable knowledge there is, right? And now he's got the question, well, can I learn wisdom from my predecessors who have pursued it? Or must I myself undertake some investigation of this, right? And so, in order to answer that question, he has to recall what his predecessors said and why they said it, right? And then examine whether it seems sufficient what they said, right? Okay. But, as I mentioned before, when he enumerates what they said and why they said it, a little bit like what we did when we went through the fragments of the Greek natural philosophers, he wants to kill another bird with this same stone, right? And that is, he wants to go through what they said about causes, not only as a preparation for discussing the sufficiency of it or not, or the insufficiency of it, but also to see if they touched upon any other kind of cause besides the four kinds of causes found in what? Natural philosophy. And so, when you go through that part where he recounts what his predecessors said and why they said it, you're really killing two birds with one stone, right? You're preparing the way for the examination of the truth of what they said or falsity of it, whatever it comes out, but you're also coming with a positive conclusion or a confirmation of something positive that there are indeed only four kinds of cause. Well, now, in the second book, Thomas says he's going to show that there are first causes that there are that there are that there are that there are that there are that there are that there are that there are that there are As a way of confirming one of the premises in the reasoning here, that wisdom is about the first causes, when obviously it couldn't be about the first causes there if there is no such animal. But at the same time, it represents a kind of advance, right, in our study of the causes. Because we've learned in the first book in the subplot that there are indeed four kinds of causes, and now we're going to learn that each one of these kinds of causes is the first cause. So in a way, we're getting kind of analogies to the existence of the, what, first causes. And when Thomas is trying to prove, say, the existence of God in the Summas, he'll come back to the second here as one source for arguments for the first cause, for the existence of God in particular. So there's a real advance there, right? But in this respect, the 14 books of wisdom, in their order, remind me a bit of the order of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. Now what Aristotle does in the 10 books, Nicomachean Ethics, in the very first book, he investigates what happiness is. And he draws a line around it, he says, right? In paragraphia in Greek, huh? And separates it from everything else. And says something about what the end or purpose of man is. That's man's own act according to human virtue throughout life, right? But then he goes through all the virtues of man, right? And shows which ones are eventually better than other ones, huh? And then in the 10th book of Wisdom, I mean 10th book of Nicomachean Ethics, rather, he comes back again to say more precisely and more fully and completely what human happiness is, you see? So what's interesting about Nicomachean Ethics, if you've ever studied the whole work, is that there are two considerations of happiness. And one, a more drawing a line around happiness, right? And the other, more fully penetrating what human happiness is. But what's in between those two, in books 2 through 8, right? Are many other things to be considered, especially what the different virtues are and so on, which enable you to come back and determine about human happiness more fully and more perfectly and more completely, do you see? Now there's something like that here in, if you look at the first two books of Wisdom, right? In the first book, among other things, you learn that there are four kinds of causes, right? And then you reason in the second book here in the middle that in each of those kinds of causes, there's a first cause. So in a sense, you've arrived at the first causes, haven't you? But in a kind of imperfect way, not a very clear understanding of exactly what the first causes are. And then in books 3 through 10, the middle books, he's going to consider many other things, like being and one and so on, to enable him to come back in the last books of Wisdom to a much fuller knowledge of what the first cause is. Do you see? That's kind of interesting, huh? If you look at Thomas, say, in the Prima Secundes, I mentioned, I think, in studying to come back in ethics, Thomas begins with a rather full consideration of human happiness, right? And then he talks about the virtues afterwards, right? But he doesn't have two considerations of human happiness, you see? In the same way in the Summa Contra Gentilis, right? A very, very interesting consideration of human happiness is there in the third book. But there isn't two considerations, right? Okay? But that is what Aristotle does in the Nicomachean Ethic sense. Very interesting in the order there, huh? Okay? So, in a sense, in the subplot of the first two books here of Aristotle's, 14 books of Wisdom, you can say, Hey, we're not left rotating the wind, or whatever they call us. We do make some progress towards knowing the first causes, right? In the first book, we learn that there are, what, just four kinds of causes. So we must look for the first causes in one or more of these kinds of causes, right? And in the second book, in the subplot, we learn that there are, indeed, first, what, causes in each kind of cause. And so, in a way, we've, what, come to the goal of Wisdom, in a way. We've arrived at the first causes. But in a kind of imperfect way, and a much more perfect way we can do in the last books of Wisdom, but after we've considered many other things, okay? That's a different reason the one Thomas gives here. Thomas gives the reason he's backing up what he's, his argument here, right? His reasoning from Wisdom being about the first causes, to his being, most of all, about truth, and therefore, appropriately talking about how man is towards truth. That's kind of the main plot, right? But there's a second thing being quite there. And one thing I appreciate in Aristotle, and you see it already in Plato, in the way Plato presents Socrates in the great dialogue, the Phaedo, the Greek dialogue called the Phaedo, where they're discussing whether the human soul is a mortal or not, and they become discouraged, right? And they fall into a kind of despair, the friends of Socrates, a kind of despair or distrust of arguments, you know, about the immortality of the soul, and a kind of despair of we're never going to find the truth about this matter, right? And the man narrating it, Phaedo there, and the man who narrates it, you know, what did Socrates do, you know, huh? And I said, Phaedo says, I never admired Socrates more than at this time, right? And if you read the dialogue, he gradually leads them out of their despair, right? And gives them a certain hope that they can find the truth by reasoning out these things. And then when he finally gets them going again, and they start to make some progress again, they get a little bit overconfident. And now he's saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, right? You don't be so bold, right? You have some fear. What belongs to the teacher there to strike a balance between hope and fear, the hope of overcoming the difficulties in the way of knowing the truth. If you don't have that hope, you're going to give up. But at the same time, you've got to have some fear of making it, what? Yeah. Otherwise you'll become more overconfident and you'll make stupid mistakes and so on. And a teacher like Socrates there, he can see these guys are discouraged, they're despairing. Another time they get a little bit cocky and so on. And so he kind of striked that balance. I think I told you that story there where my teacher, Kusari, told me about he was in class once he was on, right? And he had some questions he wanted to pursue further, you know, than was possible in the class. And he went to see one, see Dion in his office. And Dion talked much differently in the office than he did in class. And, you know, Kusari said, you spoke much more confidently in class than you're doing now, you know? All right. Well, he says, Dion says, it's the business of the teacher to encourage the student. Yeah. But now you had a guy who didn't need encouraging, the guy who needed to be, what? You know? You know, so. Frightened. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it seems to me, in other things in life, it's an imbalance of hope and fear are necessary, right? So when a man's running for public office, right, if he has no hope of getting elected, well, he's not going to, he's going to go through the motions, right? But if he has no fear of losing, if he doesn't run a bit scared, as they say, he's going to run a bad campaign, too, huh? And sometimes a man who's been elected a number of times thinks he can elect him again, right? And so the guy who's feared that he may not be able to challenge the big guy, right, is really working the district, huh? And the... That he may not be able to challenge him, right? That he may not be able to challenge him, right?