Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 36: Being Per Se: Three Groups of Meanings

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

right? So to be a geometry happens to a man. But do they come together and form one thing, geometry and a man? Is one kind of man a geometrical man? No. But in some sense there are geometrical men around, right? There are scientific men, right? There are artistic men, right? There are logical men. I'm a logical man. Or the reverse of that would say, are there human geometries around? What do you think? There the adjective is really the subject, right, of the other one, right? Yeah. So this is what three kinds of being by happening, right? Accidental being, we call it. And you'll see in book six he's going to recall his sense of being but give reasons for not talking too much about it. But yet he'll say something about this, huh? Okay? Because he's a complete universality, right? Yeah. And of course the historian would like to talk about this kind of being, huh? Because that can influence your life, right? See, if they want to hire a black magician, right? We've got to, or the old days, you know, they've got to hire a black and they've got to hire a woman. So find a black woman and he can kill people with one stone. So the black woman might be hired and it's going to be important, you know, her being hired for his particular job in her life, right? So if I'm writing the biography of this black woman, I've got to take into account this kind of being, right? Is it? Um, Stiles Bridges there, huh? Senator from New Hampshire in the old days. Became the Republican leader, I think. But they see it as being considered, you know, for the vice presidency one time and, but the Republican candidate was, for presidency was Landon. And he says, well, you can't nominate him because the Democrats put the two names together, Landon Bridges. Everybody knows the song, Landon Bridges, Falling Down, Falling Down. So they say that he wasn't, you know, made vice-presidential candidate because Landon was a presidential candidate, right? Well, that's wholly accidental, isn't it? But it means you're not going to be the vice-presidential candidate, maybe not the vice-president, right? See? So if I'm writing a biography of Stiles Bridges, you know, I'm going to have to take into account what happened to the poor guys because, you know, that's, that's the story, right? Interested and singular, there, huh? The individual, huh? But philosophy's not going to have much interest in this kind of being, huh? Now, under being by itself, he's going to distinguish three different groups of meanings, huh? And the first group of meanings, we're going to get some help from logic, right? Okay? Okay? By itself are said to be whatever signify the figures of predication. Now, I was talking about that in the break here, I think. The figures of predication, sometimes in Latin I translate the modi predicandi, but when you distinguish the figures of predication, you distinguish them by the way something can be said of individual substances, huh? And the Greek word category there means, you know, predication, sedeth. So some things can be said of individual substances like you and me. And individual substances are a thing that exists, not in some other subject, right? It's not said in some other subject. So you or me, or Gene Autry's horse champion, or the dog Lassie that was so famous in the movies, right? These are examples of individual substances, right? And some things can be said of them by reason of what they are, like you and I are a man, or Lassie's a dog, or Champion is a horse, huh? I saw Champion as a child, huh? Gene Autry came to our town. And of course, Champion got in Champion at the end, and Champion sidestepped all around the whole auditorium, and you know, he doffed his hat, you know, so we were all cheering and so on. But a beautiful horse, magnificent horse, absolutely beautiful. But some things are said of you and me and Champion, not by reason of what we are, but by reason of something, what? In us, that is not what we are. So Champion was beautiful, right? Champion was healthy, right? Maybe Champion was what? Father or son, right? Okay? So things are said of us by reason of something in us. And Thomas distinguishes those eventually into how much and how and towards what, right? And then some things are said of us by reason of something outside of us, huh? Like I am said to be clothed, right? I am said to be sitting, right? I am said to be in this room, and so on, right? As you go from substance along, you get less and less being, right? So to be a man, to be healthy, to be 5'10", to be a father, to be a son. To be a geometer is not as full being as my being a man, right? But my being a geometer is more than my being in this room. Or my being clothed, right? Because these are being said that may be a reason of something outside of you, right? So Aristotle is distinguishing a number of senses of being, but according to the figures of predication, huh? Okay? And of course the fundamental one, as we saw in Book 4, was substance, right? Okay? So this is going to be a very important division of being, right? By itself are said to be whatever signified the figures of predication. For in as many ways being is said, in so many ways it signifies. So as Thomas will say in the commentary, the ways of being said of, correspond in a way to the ways of being, right? Okay? So my being a man, my being a geometer is a different way of being, right? But to be a man, or a man is said of me in a different way than geometry is said of me. Man is said of me for the reason of what I am, and geometry are by reason of how I am, right? Okay? And Father is said of me in another way, right? By reason of what I am towards another, right? Okay? And this shows a likeness here between logic and wisdom, huh? Okay? And of course Thomas will often point that out in various contexts, like some, there's a likeness of logic to wisdom, partly in terms of its universality, partly in terms of its immateriality, huh? And this is a very important help you get from logic. Since then, some predicates signify what it is, and that's in the genus of substance, right? Somehow, and that's the genus of quality, right? Somehow much, like quantity, right? Some towards something, right? Some to act upon or to undergo, right? Some where, some when. For each of these, being signifies the same. Okay? And it shows, you know, that grammatically speaking, when you, what, have a noun and a verb, you can always resolve the verb into the verb to be and something else, right? So you can say, man gets well, and man is getting well, right, huh? Or man walks, or man is walking, right? Okay? So that's one group, you might say, of meanings of the word being, right? And they're distinguished according to the figures of predication. And the fundamental one is what is said if you have a reason of what you are. Substance, right? But then there are other ones that are somewhat lesser, right? And later on, in Book 5, there's a chapter on substance, and a chapter on quantity, and a chapter on quality, and a chapter on towards something. It doesn't bother the last six, right? Because that's, you know, being, for example, something outside of you, right? Okay? But yet, that's in some sense real, though, isn't it, though? For me to be in this room, isn't that real? I really am in this room, right? See? I'm a guy who's in prison, right? He's very much aware of the fact that there's something real about to be in a prison cell, right? It's not just, it's not simply unreal, is it? Okay? It's not as real as to be a man, or to be wise, or to be wicked, or whatever it is. But it is, you know. To be in the 20th century, or the 21st century. Not in the 16th century, or the 13th century. You might want to be, but I'd say not. Now, the next meanings of being that Aristotle gives here are in terms of something kind of strange, huh? And in a way, it corresponds to the last thing in Book 4, but it goes all the way back to the problem that Plato raised there in the dialogue of the sophist. How can you talk about falsehood? The Greeks would say, to say what is false, to say what is not. Well, that doesn't say anything. Because what is not is nothing. Can you say nothing? Or what does it mean to be blind, huh? Can someone truly be said to be blind? I think you can say that, right? There are miracles there where our Lord cures somebody of being blind, right? So I'm not just going to deny a miracle. You've got to say that he was truly blind, right? What kind of being is that? To be blind? Finally, you're affirming something primitive of him, so you're finding more, it's more of a denial of a reality than an affirmation. Yeah, yeah. We really, being blind is not being something, right? Yeah. To be ignorant, huh? As a professor, I'm not aware of the fact that the students are ignorant, right? But is that to be? Fine. Because it seems, in reality, outside my mind, being ignorant is really not being. It's not knowing, right? So how can non-being be being? But yet, it's true to say that this student is ignorant, huh? It's true to say that this man is blind, right? So this is what Aristotle says. Further being, and it is signified that it is true. Non-being that is not true, but false. So this includes what we call sometimes beings of reason, huh? Mm-hmm. The ancient Greeks said you can't get something from nothing, huh? Did you agree? King Blair says that, right? Nothing will get you nothing, he says to Cordelia. And Julia Andrews saying nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever did, right? So, um, but what does the word nothing mean there? Does it mean anything? Let's talk about nothing, shall we? Now, I'm not teaching a service to joke, and you can get paid for talking about nothing. It's a philosophy, yeah. Okay. But obviously, you distinguish something. When you're saying you can't get something from nothing, you can't get something from nothing, yeah. Philosophy, yeah. But when the philosopher is saying you can't get something from nothing, they must have meant something by something, and something by nothing, too, right? Right? How can nothing mean something? See? See? So when you talk about nothing, are you talking about something or not? Or not talking about anything? Well, this is a problem that Plato has in the sophist, in the dialogue called sophist. You know, how can you talk about nothing? And yet we can say that nothing is nothing, right? It's true, right? True or false? Nothing is nothing. See? And Wake says nothing is more true than when you say something of itself, right? So nothing is nothing. In some sense, nothing is. It is nothing, right? How can nothing be? In any sense. That's a strange sense, too, right? Well, finally, it comes down, doesn't it, to what you said a minute ago about it's a being of reason. We're considering nothing as something. Yeah, yeah. Intellectually, we're giving it a reality, which it doesn't have an in-reality. And we're kind of, you know, I could say that I'm healthy by my health, right? It's by the health of my body that I'm called healthy. And he's called blind by the blindness in him, right? But blindness is not really like health. It's not really a form, something that you have, right? You don't have something when you're blind, right? So how can what you don't have be said to be had, right? It's kind of strange, huh? So this is kind of a being of reason, huh? Most beings of reason are negations of some sort or lacks. They're kind of non-being, right? But in reason, they have a kind of being. Okay? So when the mind thinks about nothing, it's thinking about something, right? But something only in reason. Not something outside of reason, right? Outside of reason, nothing is nothing, right? Right? But nothing is something to think about. Right? I remember as a little child, you know, I used to think, you know, what would it be like if there was nothing? Nothing. Nothing worse, you know? Just nothing. It's kind of, you know, I don't know what this imagination is doing. You think about nothing, they used to wonder about nothing. It's strange, you know? There's nothing. God, none of us, nothing. You know, absolutely nothing. You see? Is that thinking about something or not? You see? Reason can do that, right? Take the statement, Socrates is Socrates, right? Socrates appears twice in that statement. And then the statement, Socrates is Socrates, is the statement, Socrates is Socrates. Wow. And that whole statement is itself, right? So I can get as many Socrates as I want. But I'm multiplying Socrates in my mind, right? And so these are beings of reason. In reality, there's only one Socrates, huh? So this is how Deconic refuted Bertrand Russell, right? Because Bertrand Russell is saying the part is equal to the whole. And he says, you know, he can take all the numbers, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and put an even number against opposite. You know, one, two, two, four, three, six, four, eight, five, ten. You can always have an even number corresponding to any number. Oh. So therefore, the even numbers equal all numbers, therefore the part equals the whole. But Deconic says, I can do it much simpler. I can say one, two, two, two, three, two, four, two, five, two, six, two, right? You're multiplying what? The beings of reason there. Just like, I can put Socrates, right? I can say Socrates as much as all men, right? I can say Hercules, Socrates, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Socrates, Benedict XVI, Socrates, you know? I can say as many Socrates as there are men in the world, right? So Socrates is as many as the rest of us. And that's, what? You're taking these beings of reason, right? So, I mean, he's confusing real being there, right? With the beings of reason, huh? You can have as many Socrates as you want in your, you know? Because the mind's ability to reflect upon itself. I know, and I know, and I know, and I know, and I know, and I know, and I know, and I know, and I know, and I know, and I know, and I know, and so I can go on forever, right? So, but Aristotle, notice the comprehensions of Aristotle's mind, right? He takes into account every sense of being, because this is a strange sense of being, right? But people are said to be blind, right? Some people are said to be ignorant, right? In fact, we didn't say it's something. Some people are said to be blind, right? He's dead, right? What is it, to be dead? Is that some kind of being? No, to be dead is not to be, right? But we still say, to be dead. Yeah, we get to the hospital every day and he's pronounced dead, to be dead. He's dead, yeah. But is that to be? In some sense it is. It's true that he's dead, right? Right? Because there's a little bit of, you know, a lot of people who haven't been born yet, they're not dead. No, no, no, no. So it's true to say John Paul II is dead, right? But is that to be? Huh? But to be in this sense here, right? What sense is it to be, right? Her style is distinguishing this sense of being from that according to the figures of predication, right? To be a man, right, is to be in the first, according to the first figure of predication, right? To be a geometer, right? In how, right? To be 5'10", right? To be a father, right? And so on. But to be dead, that's to be in this sense here. It's true. But that's not to be in reality, right? Outside the mind, right? You know? So it's very subtle. We've got to stop here, I guess, when we're over here. But one more class, we're going to go to California. I'm going to go to California here, but TAC for five weeks, so. So the next week you'll be here? I'll be here, yeah. I'm going away a week from the Saturday, on the 21st. I'll start teaching out there on the 23rd, so. On the 21st, so. Maybe one hour. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our covenant, guardian angel, strengthen the lights of our minds. Order and illumine our images and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas the Quine, this angelic doctor. Pray for us. Help us to understand what you have written. Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen. So we're in the ninth reading here, which is the most central reading on the names of the subject of wisdom. The main name there is the word being, because wisdom is about being as such, and being as being. What Aristotle does here is to begin giving a distinction into two. Accidental being, or being by happening. And then three groups, you might say, of meanings of being as such, and being per se. And the accidental being, and being by happening, he distinguished three kinds of that. But perhaps it's easiest to see with the most accidental, right? When two things happen to a third thing, like it happens to me, I happen to be a Christian, and I happen to be a geometer, right? So then you can say that there is now a Christian geometer in this room. But this is what you would call being by happening. Because really, what makes me a Christian and what makes me a geometer are quite different. And they don't really come together to make one thing, do they? Is that really anything, a Christian geometer? To be a Christian is something, right? To be a geometer is something, right? And both of those would be under being as such, or being per se. But to be a Christian geometer is no such thing, really. We do speak of there being a Christian geometer, because, why? Because to be a Christian and to be a, what, geometer, happens to the same, what, subject. Or I'm a white geometer, okay? But my color white and my, the art of, or science of geometry in me, they don't come together, right? My science of geometry is not painted white or anything like that, you see? And so, there's nothing by which one could be a white geometer. Nothing by which one could be a Christian geometer. Unless there was a white geometer. Unless there was a Christian, what, geometer, right? So Aristotle, as we'll see in the sixth book of wisdom, is not going to spend too much time in being by happening, huh? But one interesting thing that Thomas points out is that, in God, huh? God is altogether simple, and yet, he's universally perfect. He's lacking in nothing, as we'll see when Aristotle touches upon that in the chapter on perfect. Um, but it's all, what, in a simple way, huh? So, God's substance is also his knowledge and his justice and his love, right? There's no distinction of these, huh? A thought was kind of anticipated by the philosopher, Greek philosopher Zonophanes, who says, the whole of God sees, the whole of God hears, okay? It's not like his ability to love is one thing, and his ability to understand is another, like they are in me, not exactly the same thing, right? Um, but you and I, we don't have our whole perfection in our substance. So you take away from me my being a geometer, and my being just, and my being Christian, and my being many other things, um, I'd be extremely imperfect, right? And incomplete. So, all these things that are added to me, right, make me a more complete man, but it's accidental what? Being, huh? Okay? This is the condition of the, what, creature, huh? That he has his perfection in actually many things, huh? And many things have to happen to me. I had to learn geometry. I had to be baptized. I had to be brought up to be just by my parents, and so on, before I got a little more perfection than I had, just by reason of the fact that I'm a human being. But when you go back to God, all these things are something, what? One. And the reason why we have many thoughts about God is because we start from creatures, where these things are really many, many thoughts corresponding to them. But, although we say God is just, and God is, uh, love, and God is wisdom, and so on, these aren't different things in God. But the one substance of God is all of these. But let's leave God aside for the time being, huh? But, uh, we can see that accidental being is important for the perfection of the creature. God doesn't have anything like that, though. Nothing happens to God. Okay? I just happened to be reading chapter 19, you know, where the young man, I guess he is, comes up to Christ, and what must I do? And he calls him good master, and so on. Christ says, why do you call me good? One alone is good, right? But in the Greek, it's, you know, with an article, right? Ho agathos, right? The good one, right? It's like being said by, what? In Tona Messiah. Just like when Christ says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. You have the article there. I am the life, huh? Okay? Just as Aristotle calls Homer, the poet. Or in the Federalist Papers, they quote Shakespeare, but they call him the poet, or as the poet says. You ought to know that. You've heard the story of how Alcibiades, you know, was talking about Homer, and he happened to be next to a school, so he wanted to get a copy of Homer, and the teacher didn't have a copy of Homer, so he just knocked the teacher right to the ground. Now, I wish I had that, you know, going, class, you're a copy of Shakespeare, you know, and I say to the high school teacher, well, I don't have a copy of Shakespeare. Oh, whack! Down he goes, huh? But that's what we call Antona Messiah, that's the name of that figure of speech, huh? We've talked about that, how important that figure of speech is for the Bible, right? The word Bible, the word Gospel, the word Christ, they're all said to Antona Messiah. And now he's said to be, what, the good one, huh? Oh, I got a class, huh? But your goodness or my goodness requires that anything happen to us, right? Okay? And so faith, hope, and charity, for example, these have to be different things in us, and it happened to us, huh? Okay, so don't, you know, don't have too much contempt for accidental being, huh? That's the way you've got to get whatever perfection you have as a human being, huh? By this, huh? What they used to say in the catechism, you know? Why did God make me to know him and to love him and to serve him, right? And to be happy with him forever in the next world? But to know God is one thing, to love God is another thing, right? And you should have both of those perfections in you, huh? But these are things now happening to me, huh? Now, that was in the first big paragraph after the opening line. The opening line is proposing that distinction between being by happening and being by itself, right? Katis and Bebikas, Katato. And then the first big paragraph there is subdividing being by happening. Now, the last three paragraphs are dealing with three, you might say, groups of meanings of the word being, but they all come under being by itself, huh? And the first group of meanings we are led into mainly by, what? Logic, right? As Thomas explains in the commentary, the ways of being said of are proportional to the ways of being. So, some things are said of me by reason of what I am, huh? And some things, like I'm a man, or I'm an animal. I'm a substance, most generally, right? Other things are said of me not by reason of what I am, but by reason of what I am. of something in me in addition to what I am. Like I'm 5 foot 10, that's how much of me there is. Okay, that's how big I am or how tall I am. Other things are said of me as regards how I am, right? I'm healthy, or I'm white, okay? And some things are said of me towards another, like I'm a grandfather, or I'm a teacher, right? Okay? And some things are said of me by reason of something outside of me, like I am clothed, right? I am in this room, and so on. So there's a different kind of being, a different kind of thing, you might say, corresponding to these different ways in which something is said. And to some extent the man in the street realizes that what a thing is, is not the same thing as its size. When we say somebody was in your knee height to a grasshopper, you see? If you really grew up, right, you're a human being, but your size was what? Changing, right, huh? And your qualities are changing, right, huh? Okay? And your relations are changing, and so on. These are different kinds of things, huh? And probably this distinction of being according to the figures of predication, according to the Ten Jain that we first meet in our studies in the first book in logic that's come down to us from the father of logic, Aristotle, the categories. This could be said more than any other division of being to be a division of the kinds of being or the kinds of what? Things there are, okay? The substance of a thing, what it is, is a different kind of thing than its size. And the disposition and the habits of the thing is another kind of thing. And the relations of the thing, what it is towards another, is another kind of thing, huh? And so on. Now, the second kind of being as such, he says, it's a kind of being you have when you say a statement is what? True, right, huh? And then none being would mean false, huh? Okay? And that's what we say in life, huh? You know, you say something and I say, that isn't so. Okay? And even if you made an affirmative statement, right? If you say, purpose is standing now. I say, that isn't so. But it is not. What does that mean? It's false, right? Okay? Purpose is sitting. It is so, right? It's true. Okay? Now, this kind of being could be said to be, in some ways, more inclusive than being according to the figures of predication. Because we can bring in those beings according to the figure of predication. You can say, I am a man. I am 5'10". I am a geometer. I am a father. And so on. Because the mind can think about all those things, right? So, my humanity and my geometry and so on, are not only real things in reality, but they can also have being in my mind. Okay? But in addition to that, there are some things that have being only in the mind. And outside the mind, there are nothing or there are none being. And we took the example last time of to be blind, right? We use the words to be, don't we, right? But to be blind, is that many to be? Or is it not to be? Or to be dead, right? Is that to be? See? When Hamlet comes out on the stage in the famous soliloquy there in the play, and he says, to be or not to be? He's thinking that we're going to end it all, right? Like it's pretty bad, right? And so, he's thinking of death as not to be, right? Okay? But the mind says, you can be dead. And he's the word to be there. And it's true to say that John Paul II is dead, right? Or someone else is dead, right? It's true. So, some things have being in the mind and outside the mind, but in addition, some things have being only in the mind and not, what? Outside the mind. So, in some sense, this is more, what? Universal. The second to division of being, huh? But notice, if you're interested in the being that is in things outside the mind, the division of being according to the figures of predication is really what you're interested in, huh? The fact that man and the size of a man and the knowledge of a man could have being in his reason, too, is kind of secondary. But they can also, things that have no being outside the mind can have being in the mind, huh? Now, if you look at Plato's dialogue there, this is the sophist and so on, and where, you know, he's talking about a man who's mistaken or saying false, and the Greeks would say, he's saying what is not. And you find that phrase sometimes in Shakespeare, right? Like I mentioned, I think, Anthony and Cleopatra. The steward is being asked, has Cleopatra given up all her possessions? Well, like a woman, she's hid some of her jewels from Octavius Caesar, the winner of the battle. And the steward's not going to lie to protect Cleopatra now, because he knows where his toast is butter now, right? That's how it's butter now. He says he's not going to say what is not, okay? He's not going to say that Cleopatra, when he's asked, you know, by Octavius Caesar, he's not going to say Cleopatra is turning everything over to him. He's just giving up everything, because he knows that is what is not. So they have that same phrase, right? Well, then Plato or Socrates raises the problem. How can you say or think what is not? That isn't saying or thinking at all, is it? Now you could, you know, change it a little bit and say, can you think of nothing? Is that not thinking at all? And of course, and I was quoting what is a common opinion of all the Greek philosophers before Aristotle, you can't get something from nothing. That's kind of a common thought that men have, huh? Nothing gets you nothing. And so, they must mean something by something, and they must mean something by nothing, right? But now that sounds like a contradiction, right? How can nothing mean something? How can nothing be something to talk about? And I was telling you about the joke there, my old undergraduate teacher at Kassarik said, you know, philosophy is the only subject where you can get paid for talking about nothing. And what are we doing right now? Talking about nothing, huh? And I was telling you, I was a little boy, I used to wonder, you know, what if there was nothing? And I don't know how I got thinking about that, but can't you think about nothing? Hmm? Can't you? See? So when you think about nothing, are you thinking about something or not? Or you're not thinking about anything? See? Because if you're not thinking about anything, you're not thinking, right? See? But if you're thinking about something, when you think about nothing, well then, aren't you saying nothing is something? Right? Well, nothing is something in the, what? Mind, right? Okay? And so I can say that nothing is nothing, right? What is nothing? Well, it's nothing, right? And is that true or false? It's true, right? So it has this being of reason, huh? It's a rather strange thing, huh? But it is a being of reason now. So there are some beings of reason, like nothing, or blindness, right? And they're not being in things at all, right? There's nothing out there corresponding to nothing, is there? Is there? See? It might seem to be something more corresponding to blindness, but really that's an unbeing too, although it's a subject there in which it is, right? An animal or a man that by nature should have sight, right? But doesn't, huh? Well, it's really a non-being of not having, huh? And you have blindness? Is that not? have something. But we speak as if, you know, we could have blindness, like we could have health or have knowledge or have love or something else, right? So in some sense, this second sense of being kath-al-to, being as such, being by itself, through itself, in some senses, in some ways, it's more universal than the division of being according to figures of predication. Now, the third distinction, you might say, of a group of meanings, and that's the last paragraph from this page, is between being by ability and being by what? An act, huh? Distinction of being and act and ability, right? And to some extent, this is the most universal of all because it is going to include both, it could be used as a division of being according to figures of predication because there's something that is able to be a man, right? But it's not actually a man yet. And then there's something that is actually now a man, right? And there's something that's able to be a geometer and there's something that's actually a geometer, right? And I was able to be 5'10", and now maybe I'm actually 5'10", if I haven't shrunk, and you see, you shrink a little bit older. Okay? Or, I was able to be a grandfather, right? And now I'm actually a grandfather, huh? Okay? And you see the same thing about being in the mind, right? It's able to be there, and then it's actually there, right? So, in some sense, this last division is the most universal. And later on, you know, when we study act and ability in the ninth book, and we find out that act is, simply speaking, before ability, we're on our way to seeing the first cause as pure acting. So, to some extent, this could be extended even to God and speaking about God. So, it's kind of interesting how, if you look at these three divisions and the lasting paragraphs, Aristotle, in a way, is ascending from the less universal to the, what? More universal. And that's kind of appropriate to wisdom, huh? I think we've talked before a bit about this, but we'll come back to it when we get to the sixth book, but it's mentioned here now in passing. When Aristotle talks about the order of determination, they call it sometimes in Latin, the order of consideration in natural philosophy, and then we look at the order of consideration, say, in geometry, and then the order of consideration in wisdom. You have three different orders, right? And there's perhaps at least two things that can be said regarding to each of the orders. If you may recall, in the very first reading of natural philosophy, in the very beginning of the books of natural hearing, Aristotle shows that he should consider the general before the particular. And so Aristotle, in the eight books of natural hearing, he talks about natural things in general, he talks about change in general, and then in the later books he descends to change in place, to change in quality, to growth, and so on. So he goes to the general, to the particular. But the other thing he does is to go towards matter. Okay? So he goes from the eight books of natural hearing to the four books in the universe to the books in generation of corruption, he's going towards matter. And then he does this again in the state of living things, because he goes from the soul towards the body, right? And the further he goes on, Thomas explains, when he orders the books in the beginning of the book on sense and sensible, the more he goes into matter. So this is what characterizes the order of natural philosophy. And we don't mean that it always does, or always goes in that order, right? Or that natural philosophy is the only one that does these, but most of all it does preceding these words. And you go to a mathematical science, and let's take geometry, well there the order is different, huh? There you go from the simple to the composed. You see that even in the definition, the first thing he defines is the point, and then the line, and then the angle, then the figure, and so on. So, but in general, you can see geometry goes from what is called plain geometry to what? Solid geometry. And the simple to the composed. So you go from the circle to the sphere. Or from the cube, I mean the square to the cube, right? That's not a general particular, is it? The cube is not a kind of square, is it? The sphere is not a kind of circle. But you're going from the simple to the composed. Now the other thing that the geometry does, and this again for the most part, it takes out the equal before the what? Unequal. And if you look at the definitions and the axioms and so on that Euclid gives, he gives the equal before the unequal. The quantity is equal to the same to each other. If equals, that's attracted from equals results, equals so on. And then the whole is more than part. He goes from the axioms of equality to the axiom of inequality. So the equal before the unequal. When he defines the species of triangle, he defines the equilateral triangle first, then the isosceles, and then the scalia. He defines the particular kinds of quadrilateral, the square first, and the trapezium life, right? You see that in the beautiful theorems, you know. In the first book of Euclid it ends up with the Pythagorean theorem and the converse of it, and that's a theorem of equality, right? That the square and the side opposite at the right angle is exactly equal to the squares and the sides containing it. But then, at the end of the second book of the elements, he shows that in an outtuce angle triangle, the square on the side opposite of the outtuce angle is greater than the ones on the sides containing it. and then in the acute angle triangle, the square and the side opposite of the acute angle is less than. So he goes from the equal theorems to the unequal theorems, and if you look at the proofs of 12 and 13 in book 2, he uses the Pythagorean theorem to prove both of them. So he not only considers the equal before the unequal, but he proves the what? Equal. Yeah, through the equal theorem. And notice in the mathematical sciences in modern times, the fundamental thing is the equation, right? Which is named from equality, right? And they talk about unequal things sometimes, but to equations. Everything goes back to the equal, huh? Now this is not characteristic of wisdom or natural philosophy, right? Like, for example, water is more known to us than hydrogen. Right? And hydrogen is more known to us than proton. But the proton is simpler than hydrogen and hydrogen is simpler than water, right? So we don't cope with the simple to compose, do we? If anything, we're the reverse. And in wisdom, wisdom is all aimed ultimately to know the first cause, and the first cause is God, and God is the what? Simplest. So you're going from the creatures who are composed towards God and so it's just the reverse of this. I don't know if anything. Okay? Like St. Teresa of Avila says God is altogether simple. And the closer you get to God, she says, the simpler you get. Like the martyrs they said. Now, how does wisdom proceed? Well, as you'll see in St. Wisdom, the process basically you can say is that it's going towards the material. the material. Okay? So we start off with material beings that are known to us, right? And we work our way towards these material beings. You can see that even the dialectic of both three, where Aristotle takes it for granted that matter is a cause, right? But then the question is, there's some cause inside It actually is. Is it only in matter or is there, you know? Now there are clearly material substances, but now there are also these immaterial substances, right? So as you go, in wisdom, you're going towards the immaterial. And again, I'm saying, verily separated. Towards separated. Towards the immaterial. And so we call them the separated substances. But notice, just three verbs. And to some extent, in wisdom, we go from the less universal towards the more universal. Now, we're going to see this very clearly in the book that I emphasize, indeed. The book entitled, the ninth book, rather, the book which is about act and ability, right? You'll see in that book that in the first part, he talks about act and ability as they are found in motion, right? In reference to motion. And then, in the second part, he goes to complete the universal consideration of act and ability. It's a beautiful way he does this. But he's ascending from something less universal to something, what? More universal. And you'll see when Aristotle studies substance, he begins the material substance, right? Then he's trying to get an understanding of substance that is applicable even to the immaterial things. So he's going from a less universal to a more universal consideration. And in a way, you see how these two go together. Because the more universal something is, the more it is apt to be able to be said of immaterial things as well as what? Material things, huh? So if you're trying to know immaterial things and to know them in part by what can be said of them, right? You want to move towards something very, what? Universal. Okay? Like we say about God, God is one, right? Very fundamental there, huh? In the Bible, even, that God is one, huh? But one is a very universal thing. It can, in some sense, be said of all things in some way, right? Although it's equivocal by reason, right? But it's very universal, right? So you're going to move towards the most universal. Now I mentioned that, which you'll see better when you get to book nine. But it's kind of interesting in these three meanings, or these three groups of meanings of the word being, being as such, or being by itself, ha, thot, to in the Greek, per se, in Latin. He's in a way going from the less universal towards the more universal. Because the second division there, being and reason, in a way includes all those beings according to figure predication, because they can be in our reason too. I can think about substance, or quantity, or quality, relation, and so on. But I can also think about nothing. I can also think about blindness, right? I can also think about ignorance. Although ignorance is really not being, but the non-being of knowledge, right? Okay, but I find this all around my students, you know? This ignorance in myself too. Okay? And Socrates is always saying that, right? He knew that he did not know, right? He knew his own ignorance, and the other Greeks apparently didn't, right? Okay? When you know your own ignorance, are you knowing something? Is that something, your ignorance? Or is that the lack of something? Well, if you're talking about real being, being in things, it's not being at all. It's an un-being of something, right? But ignorance is ignorance. There's a lot of ignorance around. You know? The reason, huh? We can talk about ignorance, right? Ignorance is not knowledge. What is it? It's ignorance. Okay? And then the division of being according to act and ability can be said both of real being, right? So I can be able to be a geometry if I'm actually a geometry, right? I can be able to be 5'10 if I'm actually 5'10. Something is able to be a man, right? When I sit down to dinner, there's something in my food that's able to be human flesh and blood and bone or something, right? But it's not actually that yet, right? In the book about the soul, Aristotle says, Is food like the fed or not? Well, he says in the beginning, it's not like the fed. But eventually, it's like the fed, right? After it's been digested and so on, huh? Okay? So there's an element of truth in saying you're fed by what's unlike you. And also, element of truth in saying you're fed by what is like you. Okay? So, he's kind of ascending here to the more universal. Okay? Now, perhaps there's another reason for the order here, too, besides this going from the less universal to the more universal, as far as the first two ones are concerned. And that is, if you recall, going back to book four, right, huh? In book four, when Aristotle was showing that wisdom is about being as being, and gave a reason for saying it is, but then he raised a question, doesn't being mean more than one thing, right? So just because you have one word doesn't mean you have one knowledge about that. And if the word, you know, just happened to cover different things, like the word bat covers a baseball bat and a flying mouse, right? There would be no reason to have a science of bat as bat, right? They would talk in one part about the baseball bat and the other one about, because there's no connection between these two, right? One doesn't help you to understand the other, huh? But there is one part of philosophy called political philosophy, which is about everything called political, right? And that's because there's an order or a connection among these meanings, huh? And there's a reason for studying the city or the nation and the government in the same knowledge, right? Because the government rules the city or the nation, right? It has other connections, too, with the city or the nation, huh? You get the government, you deserve this. But anyway, as you tap the customs of the people and so on, right? But the basic connection is that government rules the city, right? And that makes sense to talk about what? Revolution, in the same knowledge you talk about government. If by revolution you mean a change of government, right? How can you talk about the change of government without knowing about government, right? And so on, see? Well, Aristotle wants to point out, then, if you recall in the fourth book, that being is like the word political. It's equivocal, but it's equivocal by reason. And what's the fundamental meaning of being? Well, he says it's substance, right? And then he points out that other things are called being, not because they are substance, but because they have some connection with substance, huh? And he gives a plethora of meanings, enough to confuse the student a bit, but Thomas there, having pity upon us, says this plethora of meanings can be reduced to four basic meanings, right? And they are what? Substance, right? And then accidents, huh? And the accidents are not substances, but there's something of the substance, right? Quantity is the size or the measure of the substance, right? Quality is the disposition of the substance, right? Relation is how the substance is towards another, right? How I am towards this person, a husband, or towards this person, a father, or towards this person, a teacher, right? Or towards this person, a grandfather, and so on, huh? And then he says, the third sense is the coming to be of one of these things, or the seizing to be, too, but just take the coming to be as a little, for example. You might say, well, that's kind of strange. Coming to be, as Plato said, Plato often distinguishes being, becoming, and then being, right? And science is about being, and dialectic is about becoming, and sophistry is about non-being, right? Okay? And you might say, well, there we distinguish between being and becoming, right? And you might say to yourself, becoming or coming to be is not being, is it? Is coming to know the same thing as knowing? If you were, the student would be done before the course is over, right? You might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well, you might say, well