Welcome back to the new Thinkery. My name is David Barr with me as always. It's my good friend Alex. I'm a good friend Alex.
I'm a good friend Alex. Me Gates, David. And how are you doing, Greg? I'm doing well.
I always enjoy being the second host who's introduced after a good friend else. You were propped up as a peacock today because the episode that was released were recording on Wednesday. Right. Was we announced the that your wife is pregnant and you're expecting your first call at 62, which is remarkable.
She's not 62. I know you are, but you know, we're always denigrating modern science. Greg, but here we are. You know, thank God for modern science.
Yeah. And so with us. Number 15, right? Yeah.
The day age of consent in Ohio is 17. Wow. That's not where we are. It's permission.
Yeah. Right. Right. Right.
Right. Right. But speaking of which, speaking of parents permission by the race of Mr. and Mrs.
Cleveland, we have a, we have a, yes, David, you want to introduce him? Sure. So Tom Cleveland returning now for the third time. He's the director of academic affairs at the Jack Miller Center.
He's a program. Forgive me. Welcome back to that. I'm happy to be here.
Yeah. So what are we doing tonight, folks? We're doing all of Arizona metaphysics. No.
Piece of cake. Yeah. No problem. In the first book, the beginning, it's one of the most famous lines of Aristotle human beings by nature, urine to know.
And, you know, that he has his sort of exposition of that line. And we thought it's a kind of meditation on wisdom and philosophy. And we thought we'd sort of focus on what Aristotle means by wisdom or philosophy and what he's pursuing in this book as revealed in the first two chapters, which are quite dense and have quite a lot going on, Greg, you know, three words into that. He raises his hand with a, I mean, I said, Aristotle.
Did I say his name? Or? I believe it's Aristotle. But I was going to ask this theory question.
podcast, maybe we've done this in the old sold hat. This is a podcast on political flossy. So maybe some folks at home who are listening, maybe you're on the hill, maybe you're an intern, maybe you're a Wall Street banker and you're tuning in for some politics and you're going to get some metaphysics. So help me to understand why we think this is in our wheelhouse.
Can I make a suggestion? Yeah, please, Tom. I think this came up last time we got to last time I was here, I think, when we were doing a prophecy, where we were talking about the Parvonatorelia and I had sort of an explanation. And I just want to say it more stridently and possibly offensively, sometimes like political philosophy, not philosophy, philosophy, studying being.
And so that's what you ought to be doing. And that's what we're trying to do on this episode. Folks, you're here first. The new thing, he's all about political flossy podcast.
We're cutting out the fentanyl, we're going straight for the dough. Yeah, all the animal jokes. Tom, that cuts out a lot of our eye. All right, I'll take it back.
Everyone. If anybody wants to know why we're talking about being like, what else is there? We're talking about non-being. There's nothing to say.
You can't say it. Exactly. The experts on the part of these ought to know. That's right.
So I made a point sort of sarcastically, but it is the case that political philosophy is related to philosophy simply. And if you want to know what's philosophy, it's eventually get to something like the metaphysics. So, and I think my expectation, just a little comments we made before this started, is that there's questions about human longings that go beyond a desire to know that frame how you approach philosophy simply. It's hard to approach philosophy simply without reflecting on those kinds of things.
I guess you have a quick question. You probably know the answer to this, but did it ancient? And for medieval's also, maybe for Abi, was there an order of operations to study Aristotle that philosophers pursued? Like what to read first?
And like, so was there an ascent? Well, I think there was a down from the metaphysics. There's some kind of answer to this. And so far as like, there's a notion that there's like the logical writings, the organon, and then you move from the logical writings to the physics, well, I'm not going to say it.
But there's a logical writing, like, you know, the categories and on interpretation, the prior analytics, the posterior analytics, and the topic, sophisticated missions, possibly if you're an error of you count the rhetoric and the poetics is part of the organon. And then you have the the the the the scientific writings, like the physics and all the stuff on biology and so forth. And then you have like, I think the real question is, like, where do you put the metaphysics? The term metaphysics is not Aristotle's turn.
That's not the title he gave to it. It's just meaning the book you read after you read the physics, you know, the after physics. Nevertheless, it makes some sense that it's it involves questions that are more profound or deeper or higher, if you want to think of the physics itself. And then the real like puzzle is where you fit in the political writings, if you include in that the ethics and the politics.
Now, yeah, so I mean, it is kind of profound question. Like, where do you begin and what's like the foundations of things? In some sense, it makes sense to say that like you began with logic, you move your way up to physics and then metaphysics. But from a different point of view, you begin, and this alluded to in this first chapter, you begin with perception, and then you move in some different directions, like logic might come later.
And so far, it's like, if you think historically, certainly it's the case that like, poetry and politics precede a reflection on being, it might be like a necessary entryway. So those that's not any concrete. No, no, that's very helpful to me. I think to a lot of listeners, the air style has so much and it's seemingly varied.
And I think that making the connections between the texts can be a challenge. Just one small point. I'm going to ask Tom about something you're just saying about the chapters that we read for today actually talk about what the proper starting point of philosophy is in a way. So we'll probably dive into this in just a moment.
Like, is it the perceptions? Is it wonder, is it a yearning or something like those? It seems connected to your eyeballs. It does, in fact.
But you have in the run show that we did a head of time, you had a passage from the life of Alexander, you had in mind, you want to start us off with? Oh, yes. Well, I mean, like, there's a flute, or a sub-flight ball, Jan? Yes, exactly.
Plutarch has a, in his life of Alexander, Alexander was supposedly was really, you know, apparently a student of Aristotle. And there is a discussion of the metaphysics in this work. And an anecdote is told by Plutarch saying that he had studied these very important themes and questions with Aristotle privately orally. And then Alexander found out that Aristotle had published the metaphysics.
That is, he had published the secret teaching to everyone. And Alexander said, like, how could you do that? That seems like, you know, irresponsible to have done so. And Aristotle's response, according to Plutarch was, don't worry, I wrote the metaphysics so absurdly that anybody reading it would not be able to make any sense of that of it.
So that's a, that's a, like an interesting, helpful, which is kind of crazy. I mean, Alpha is kind of a, it's structured this introduction, and then it's trying to show that his account of the four causes from the physics is complete. That's a good reason to take it as following the physics, by the way, then little Alpha is like this weird, it's the next book, it's like, can we chapters, then you get book beta, which is just a series of problems. And he lists them.
One is a master on right now. Is that that's the one you're the master of, right? I've definitely worked through it. That's a really good one.
Okay. So you're a master of beta. Yeah, I'm a master of beta. Good.
I'm a master of beta. I'm a master of beta. I'm a master of beta. Sorry.
Sorry. Who is that like, Romel's Balear? Actually, I have a public, I thought you were serious because I published like three pages article on beta. I was nice of Greg, he must have read that nobody reads.
No, that's fine. Some people are alpha guys and the other guys are beta. Some are beta. Tom's more of an alpha.
Tom's more of an alpha. I got a series point to time. You had a series point to us, but the series point here was that I was just outlining the benefits. Go ahead.
Yeah. Yeah. You totally cut them off. Sorry.
I had a really important joke to make. Anyway, so a couple of the problems in gamut deltas, like all these weird definitions, and it then goes to these problems, these math books, Kappa, he repeats the problems. It's very, it's a very acclimactic. That's it.
What was your, your very witty joke that? No, I didn't have a joke at a series point on just falling on the hills of Tom's remark that Aristotle wrote this in a very difficult way. Actually, there's probably at some odd, everyone universally accepts or recognizes that it's difficult, I would say. But I think that people by and large scholars think they kind of cracked it and have it figured out.
And then they sort of, I mean, there's a kind of dogmatic version of the metaphysics that says, here's what Aristotle's saying, a B C D E, right? And I think, you know, I was reading Buell's book in preparation for today and just a little bit right. Like actually, no, even this is written politically in the way that we study political philosophy that even the metaphysics is just difficult. It's actually written in an intentionally politic way that he's not as forthcoming or as he might seem at first brush.
That's just. I mean, a great sign of this. I think this already came up with what Tom was saying is that there's an order of reading Aristotle's text. And then there's like an order of rising to science as presented in the first two chapters where you start from Seth's perception and work your way up through experience, memory, to art or technical ability to science, right?
And along the way, and so there's that, it's like, no, that's not how actually people learn. They learn through like a series of study and aerosols works. Even more so, as he's laying that out, he's doing it in part to do certain presuppositions or expectations we have for this like queen of the sciences metaphysics, right? This science that would make you wise.
And it's clear that some of these are not going to deliver, right? That these are these are assumptions. You ask, well, where are these borrowed from? And from his examples, as well as how he sort of just describes them.
What do you mean they're not going to rise? It's like, aparetic or? Yeah, like that we have a certain expectation that this science of wisdom is going to be, you know, I mean, we can go through the final. Yeah.
That in itself is a teaching too, I guess, if you understand that. Yeah, but these are assumptions. These are not his assumptions. Oh, I think these are these are common assumptions we make about that he's aware of probably.
Yeah. And he's trying and then there's the question is, okay, and he's basically we're seeking the science, right? We're requiring after the science. It's not that he simply thinks that this is the case.
And so if you take it straight on the surface from like a, from like a dogmatic standpoint, you can miss all that and not realize that what he's actually involved in here, as he always is, like an ethics, he's seeking after the good, whatever that might be. So far as we can understand it, he's seeking for this science and the extent to which it can fulfill these assumptions with, I think no, no expectation that it will actually fulfill these assumptions, right? It'll actually spread off. It should we've been like, begin the thing itself?
Yeah, let's do it. Let me be the first line and connect it to what I just, which is that it's the first line is famous all humans by nature, urine to know or stretch toward knowing. But the word there and Greg will tell me duh, but the word there is a, which is a perfect form, but then a daddy points out and sort of focus on this and says, well, yeah, that means all humans by nature, urine to have seen, right? To have completed themselves in knowledge.
And perhaps what's the subject of the metaphysics is the extent to which knowledge admits of completeness, right? We have this yearning for complete knowledge to what extent can we actually deliver on that? Or to what extent does knowledge have far more unsatisfactory or unsatisfying and incomplete sort of outcome, you could say. Not for the first one.
Go ahead, Tim. Well, I was going to say just as a terminology thing, there's like at the end of the chapter one, the term, or like one of the terms is wisdom. Or like it's like chapter one seems to be an exploration of what wisdom or Sophia is. Like another term different than A to Nai is epistemme, which is science or scientific knowledge, sometimes in translation.
And A to Nai, I guess what you're saying about A to Nai as a term for knowing, it's one of having completed or having complete knowledge. Is that the way you're understanding it? A to Nai for the folks at home, A to Nai is the perfect form of the verb to see. It only means to know you don't really see it as to have seen.
But it means a perception. Yes, it relates to perception, but to have seen but with sight in the fullest sense, right? As knowing. And so there's a kind of completeness to the activity presupposed in the verbal form.
And now this is Benedict's interpretation. We might want to push back against this, but it's struck me as positive given what he goes on to say that he's describing a kind of complete knowing in these chapters. Okay, we're going to go ahead. Right.
Well, I was just going to say, I mean, like when I read the opening line of the politics of the ethics, like I think that we philosophical types, we people who fancy ourselves, what real philosophers look like. We sort of think that, of course, all humans desire to know, but I'm trying to read things with the more skeptical, even things that I sort of inclined to agree with. And so my first cut of this would be like, no, that's not true, actually. All humans don't desire to know.
And so I'm wondering if they're never, I wonder if aerosols, he's probably doing that on a bunch of different levels. So on one hand, I think like, man is by nature political does not mean that man everywhere is in political society. And so is there this way in which this human longing to know is something that it is in our nature, it's something we point to, but not all humans actually do it. Or is it universal, is it universal, is it spontaneous universal for humans that actually all human beings do want to know?
So or is it, go ahead, please, Tom. I guess the way I would frame it is not that like some people want to know what some people don't. I think it's clear that for all human beings, one element of their experience is like just immediate desire to know. And the example, the reason he gives there is that like, people like receiving things, particular, they like perceiving things, or like, seeing things, even if there's no other consequence, even if it's not useful.
And that that is one element of human experience seems undeniable to me. I totally agree. But I think about Edipas stabbing his eyes out. Yeah.
Oh sure. Well, the other part of that is for me to say, not then there's a question, that's one element of human experience. And there are infinite others that come up like we desire utility or necessity or we're driven by fear or we're driven by pleasure. And so I'm tempted to give a kind of like Nietzschean formulation of the question, which is like, you know, one might say that we desire to know for its own sake, but possibly that that desire to know was based on something more fundamental, which is like life or, you know, some other point of view of pleasure or something.
So I want to I would refer without doubt that there's some part of human experience that involves a simple desire to know for its own sake, but it's not unproblematic in some parts. There's so many other things. Why for its own sake? Why not just a sort of longing to know?
Well, I'm belonging. For your support, don't say because I put like, I mean, the emphasis on the verb that the callous translating is stretches out, a longing or desire. So it may not be for its own sake, it may be to satisfy some longing. Oh, I see this.
So I desire, I want to know because I have some deficiency, I have some longing that only even like basically, hunger, I long to know what's edible. I read the next couple of sentences just on like, there's on the table and I've got a couple of thoughts about them. So an indication of this is our liking for the perceptual capacities. For even apart from their utility, these are like because of themselves and most of all, the one because of the eyes, or it is not only in orders to do in action, but even when we are not going to do anything whatsoever that we choose sight over, one might almost say all the others.
The cause of this is that of all perceptual capacities, it enables us to know most fully and makes clear many differences. So he's made the assertion in the first sentence that we have a natural desire or longing to know. And then he provides some evidence, which is the liking we have for perceptions and a particular for sight. And I mean, to some extent, that makes just perfect, I mean, just as a first step, it makes sense to me to acknowledge that perceiving things is something we like to do simply.
Like an example is like, if you have a can before you, or like a glass, I have some like, I have a tendency, if I'm looking at a glass, I'm like turning it in my hand to see the other side. And because I want to see the other side, and it's, I'm willing to say that like my looking around at the other side of things is like based in a basic desire to know. Now, there's other reasons you want to see the other side of things, like to make sure like the guy you're talking to doesn't have a knife or something. Or and like, and like, here's another problem, it's like another aspect of my experience is if I look at a glass at one side, I also just imagine the other side without looking at it.
And that's like, that's, you could say in connection with what I was saying, that's a desire to have known or have seen, but that's like separable from the desire to actually know. That's like, that's a longing for like some certainty about the world around me. That's like several rule from my desire to know. So I should say the folks at home, none of this makes any sense because Tom is looking at a transparent glass right now.
That's perfectly transparent. So there is some beer in it. And I can't see what the other side looks like. You said some in our little chat group chat, leading up to recording tonight, you sent us some videos that I thought demonstrated this principle fairly well.
I don't know, it's pretty much a jump into it. But yeah, I would just say like one of my favorite genres of YouTube video, is the one where people think, no, and what the kind that where people perceive things for a percent. So one is like, color blind people getting these like, these glasses. It was amazing.
It was amazing. It was amazing. My mother has green eyes and 65 years old. And he said that I've never seen your eyes before.
And like, you know, tears started blowing up for me, because I mean, but everyone else was crying. Yeah, beautiful. The ones I like to do more than when they looked at the eyes of their beloved is the one where they're just like, Oh, grass. That's what grass looks like.
Yeah. Just happy to know. That's right. My dad's favorite orange because he had never seen orange before.
All right. It's wonderful. It's like a healthy human being once as much of the world as is possible. Right.
And similar, so like the other type of videos is like cochlear implants, regular implants that people hear for the first time or like, I couldn't find a good link, but there's ones of babies trying strawberries and ice cream. I went for ice cream, but I prefer strawberries for some reason that's like, okay, in case like, there's nothing more to like hold and seeing some other human being take the light and don't the world better. Right. And also the first time I was in Amsterdam.
Huh? I mean, who goes to Amsterdam anymore? I was thinking about this. I was like, Oh, I'm going to Amsterdam.
It's going to be fun. I'm like, you're in Colorado. Yeah. So knows is not there anymore.
That's right. I want to go back to Greg's question, which I think is absolutely the right question to ask here, which is, no, people don't want to know. People are constantly have ulterior motives, right? And I think it's interesting the place that techniques or art, right, craft, the ability to make things plays in this, because it's on the one hand, a great example of the fact that people desire to know.
But it's also a great counter example, because there's clearly a motive, a need, and therefore kind of use that that's we'll have in mind. And then this gets expanded ultimately. I don't want to jump too far ahead into the second chapter. You want to jump too far ahead?
You go to the next chapter of it? Yeah, but I mean, it's sort of the end of it. Not the very last paragraph, but like we last half of it, he's arguing against the claim that it is a productive science. And he's also clearing clearing up the difference between, you can say the kind of wisdom or the kind of yeah, the kind of wisdom or that poetry claims to have, right, versus the kind of wisdom that philosophy is aiming at.
And so, it's interesting because if you want to say, all right, well, there's this need and there's usefulness behind it, and there's this other kind of ulterior motive there, that would seem to be the city lurking in the background of you, right, that the community has need of knowing, right? It needs to know how to find it needs to know how to do all these different things. And so it's very easy for knowing to be consumed by the city. Aristotle in a way is trying to assert you could say something like knowledge for its own state or a sort of a disinterested or a purer, we could put it desire to know that in that purity would rise above our enemy called science or wisdom or maybe just philosophy of us, but would have this sort of independence about it.
But what starts as technically or art or handicraft, the city of arts, you can say from the Republic, that turns into poetry, right, the fever city that needs to be purged. And it's not clear to what extent, and it might even infect our understanding of this science or understanding of wisdom. And that might be like something like the philosopher keeps from the republic. So you can even see this as set from technically to poetry to something like a complete science that we would call wisdom, something like the sort of stage of the cities, the three cities of the republic.
Can we look at the first chapter, because I think a lot of what you're saying is already there. Let me give a little summary, and then we can like try out of it. We began in the first paragraph, we'd like to talk about three sentences with perception. And then there was a kind of hierarchy or development of like basic faculties that leads ultimately to science or wisdom.
You've got perception, and then if you've got many perceptions gathered together, you've got memory. And then when you have memories gathered together, you've got experience. And then when you have experience, you know, experiences together with an account of the cause, you've got art. And from art, you get to the architectonic type of art, and finally to something like science.
And he begins, like if I'm just looking at this first chapter, he begins with just a light and perception. Many of these intermediate stages, I think, are not directed towards a simple desire to know. They're directed towards what is necessary for an animal to live, and what's necessary for an animal for a human being to live. So for example, let me go first one, then we get to the culture, which is just that, like in order for an animal to live, it's got to have memory, and it's got to have experience.
In order for human being to live, it's got to have arts, and the like human beings without arts would die out as a species. And so that's a different kind of direction towards learning or knowledge, and then this simple desire to know. So yeah, let's all just stop there and then we can move on. This is, as related to a question, therefore, that you and I spoke about before Alex hopped on, this is really helpful.
So the way that it lays out perception of memory to experience to them, maybe art and science, and that humans need art, whereas other animals don't, this might help explain, and maybe Alex has some thoughts on this. There's a reference in the third paragraph to Polis, who's a character in Plato's Gorgias. And in the next paragraph, there's a reference to Calius, who's a character in many Platonic and Zophonic writings, but the first one that comes to my mind is Plato's Protagoras. And so there's this curious, I don't quite understand, I don't think that Aristotle chooses the references by chance I think he chooses them as such, and so it's Polis, Calius, and then Socrates sort of confirming the Platonic art here.
And I'm reminded at least of Protagoras's myth about the human necessity for art in that dialogue, and that maybe that helps me understand a little better why he's mentioning, or maybe obliquely referring to the Protagoras here. And around by way, because their Protagoras puts in much darker terms, like we're on a good word. No, I was thinking about the Protagoras, where Protagoras lays out the stark theological implications of the human necessity for art, that we need art precisely because we're vulnerable in a way that the other animals aren't. But otherwise, I don't mean you guys have any thoughts on this?
Why Calius and why Polis? If not, it's fine we can move on. But I mean, I do think if Polis is connected with rhetoric, and Calius is connected with the industry, they represent like forms of craft or knowledge that are sort of by definition separated from a desire for truth. Not knowledge, words, own second other words.
Yeah, and I would just like to add that that's a question that arises even apart from the mention of their names, just in the structure of the argument doesn't, it's developed. So I'm okay. Well, I mean, it's interesting that at least with Polis, I mean, it's a point of pure agreement between Aristotle and British. I think this would be a good suggestion that this is not a full philosophic account, or it's sub philosophic, or maybe on the way to philosophy, it depends what you do with it.
Yeah, the one about Calius and Socrates is about when you have a disease, whether the treatment benefits him. And it's not clear that treating a disease is always to the good of the person. I'm thinking about what Socrates is. That's raised in the gorgias.
Yeah, but it's also I'm thinking about theages in particular, right, where Socrates says, it's actually good for him to be sick and sickly, because he kept him out of politics, and maybe he cared more about philosophy. It's, and I've known people who have gotten sick and it's really humbled them, brought them down to earth a little bit and made them more aware of their humanity and mortality. And it's not clear that going through that ordeal, even if it left them with a permanent disability was overall bad for them. Right.
I just, I don't know if that plays into it, right? I feel like it is worth bringing out what's just on the surface of the argument and this discussion of Technae, the part, which is that what Technae are to achieve as opposed to their experience is some kind of account of the universal, which becomes important in the second chapter. And so, as applied to Calius and Socrates is that insofar as they are both human beings, they are subject to the assumption in something like an art and then ultimately a science is that insofar as they are human beings, they are identical with respect to the causes that affect them and their health. It just works like stating that clearly, and it's also worth stating that that is a extravagant claim for knowledge that you could achieve knowledge of universals and the causes, that are the assumption in medicine.
And this is in a way the whole problem with the metaphysics, right? Which is so what does Technae do? Technae, if I present the art or the craft of house building, I know what to do, the causes by which a house comes into being, right? And that makes me technically proficient in this art, right?
I know how to bring into reality the form of house in this material of wood and shingles and nails and all that sort of stuff. Okay, so I know how to put it together. And somehow I'm able to take this particular material or like the stuff I have before me, and I'm able to bring it into a chord with this universal form, right? Now the whole of the metaphysics is in a way about the relationship between the various causes of the things coming into being.
From the physics you learn that a thing has four basic causes. One is the material I cannot be, but for the flesh and bones that I have. So the matter matters, right? Two, you need the efficient cause, right?
Which is whatever is starting that sort of motion towards the sort of creation, this thing. Three, you need the final cause, which is the end for the sake of which that you've made all the stuff. So the house is for dwelling, and so it needs to have a roof to keep out the weather and all that sort of stuff. But most important for the purpose of the metaphysics is what's called the formal cause or the idea of a thing, which is if I'm going to make a house, it has to look like a house that has to have all the essential features of a house that every house, regardless of whether it's made from mud or wood or anything, brick is going to have that form.
Now the whole, in a way, the whole metaphysics is about what is that form? That universal? How do we know it, right? How does it relate to the particularity of the thing?
And so one way to think about what he's doing in the metaphysics is holding tech name in the most broad capacity, kind of universal, kind of it arises to the science of wisdom. He's holding its feet to the fire and asking, how do you reconcile these two parts, the particularity of the thing in his universality? What does it need to know Greg? Is it to know him as rational animal that you're just to know?
Or is it to know the particularities of the Greg that his wife is pregnant, that his girlfriend is a horse, that his boyfriend is a goat, right? These are all very particular to Greg. And it's shared by his family members and countrymen, right? They all have similar particular...
Like you said, non-rational animal, it might have been a nice better parallel structure, but anyway, points take on. Anyways, that's just me. So in a way, jokes aside, this isn't a way the heart of the metaphysics coming up already, which is the way to put it in the terms of book data is there's the essence of a thing. And then there's the thing is you experience it.
How do those two relate? Is it adequate to my experience of a person of Greg to define him as a rational animal? Or do I need to know all the particular things that make Greg who he is as an individual? What does it mean to know him?
That's a very, very difficult question. It's not clear that the expectations we get from Techno, this universal knowledge, is going to square against that familiarity or experiential of the people as a particular. Beautiful. I'm going to go ahead and go ahead, Tom.
I'm going to suggest that we try to discuss the last couple of sections of the first chapter. Can I say good then? So I'm wondering if what Alex just said, what you guys have been saying, wisdom is sort of percolating up here. What is wisdom?
What is this knowledge or science we're after? And I'm wondering if the rhetorician and the Sophists are alluded to as potential, and I think not the answer is no, the potential claimants to this title of wisdom. And then there's the first one that's explicitly mentioned in connection with this is the priest, although it seems to be direct, but then I think he undercuts it. And this is near the very end.
This is like 982, 820 or so. It's only after the necessary arts and those that aimed at pleasure have been discovered where we can actually then move on to this knowing for its own sake, it seems. And it seems that the first claimant to this knowledge for its own sake is the priestly class. But that's not quite how he phrases it.
It's the priestly class that comes up with math. Math is the first, ostensibly the first thing that we study for its own sake. I'll just read the sentence and see if you guys see if I'm teased this out, right? Hence, Ersel says when all such crafts were already developed, the sciences that aim neither at pleasure nor at necessities were discovered.
First in the places where people had leisure. That is why the mathematical crafts first arose in Egypt. Since there, the priestly class were allowed to be at leisure. So I mean, Klein to infer that the illusion of priests might lay us at first place.
I think they're the first people who were after this wisdom. But it seems like he's saying that the priestly class, a part of what they were doing actually was aimed at pleasure and necessity, but that they also did this other thing, math, and that math was the first thing that they did for its own sake. Even though math obviously has practical applicability. So I don't know what you want to say about this Egyptian as Egypt does the first place where the science develops.
It seems kind of strange. Can I quote something from Farabi on this point that I think is really helpful. This is from the aims of Aristotle's metaphysics. He says that there's only one universal science.
Theology has to be a part of it if not the whole of that science. And here he says, because God is a principle of the existence in the absolute sense. You think it's all to say, although mathematics is higher than natural science physics, since its subjects are abstracted from matter. It most certainly should not be called the science of metaphysics, because the subjects are abstracted from matter only by human imagination, not actually.
In terms of actual assistance, they exist only in natural things. So my guess is that with the reasons that the Egyptian priest studying mathematics is because it does not tread on theology. In a way, just playing with numbers that are like qualities you can conceive of as imagined qualities of existing things allows you to avoid it, but it also allows you to cultivate this independent yearning to know, in a way that's socially acceptable. So now this raises, I think, really important questions about the metaphysics as a whole, which is, okay, mathematics, if it is just like a leisure activity of a priestly class in a very pious society, whereas metaphysics is an indication of a very free liberal society, like the Greek poise, why does the metaphysics end with meditations on numbers?
Right? It makes you really wonder what the final position Aristotle arrives at. If this is the first glimpse of mathematics in a book that's on metaphysics, that's trying to distinguish while relating to it. I start out, I can't think as far afield in the textbook.
It's a deficiency of mathematical science that the objects of mathematical science do not exist. Or, I mean, I know that's a disputed in the metaphysics itself, like what the status of mathematical beings is, but I think that's an accord with what you were saying, which is that if we maybe skip into the second chapter, the really interesting questions are like, what is the origin of the all or of the universe and mathematics fails to address such questions? And insofar as the Egyptians or priests, it makes me suspect how sound their views were on questions about the origin of the all and so forth. Do we jump here to the second chapter then?
Before we move on to the second chapter, I think it's worth addressing a kind of definition he has of wisdom or so of the idea at the end of the first chapter, which is it's a science of some kind, of the primary causes that pro to ITA and the starting points, which is a translation of archive or beginnings or whatever else you want principles could be a possible translation. It's also the case that he does not identify what those primary causes or archive or principles are. And into like my hunch is something that like, into our disease, just mentioned these Egyptian priests, whose science was focused on something like mathematics. He is sort of delaying and addressing what those primary causes and starting points are, presumably Egyptian priests would have a different answer to that question than he himself would.
But he's stated it as general fashion such that they would agree with him that this is like the primary aim. So another way, another way to emphasize this is that in book beta, when he's going through the problems of metaphysics, he says, no less a problem than the others, which means it's at least equal, if not the highest problem, is one coming from the theologians and those from Hesiod. And the question is whether the starting points of generating things are themselves corruptible and what allows for this. And so, I mean, one way to put it is that these starting points and causes these archive and idea, right, they don't need to be being or like any kind of abstract, recognizally ordinarily, as we would put it, philosophical term, it could be theology, right?
And it could be the position of a of Hesiod, a poet, a singer who claims to have commused, communed with amuses on not a helicopter, right? It's not like, not even a theologian who has reasoned about the gods, but just one who claims divine inspiration. So it's not clear from this, that we've, that we're really in the camp of philosophy yet, right? So the Egyptians would still have a claim, they'd be informed.
Can you give me an example of what, I mean, the principle of non-contradiation, what are some of the potential principles or causes? It's not a cause, right? But doesn't say so many things other places that later in the metaphysics doesn't say that the sturdiest among the potential first principles is the principle of non-contradiation, for example, or to be rare, that's all aren't there, there are a few of them right there, they're potential first principles, no? But you have in mind that chapter for the bistirial, that's right.
Well, that's one of the places that I'm saying, but even here in the metaphysics where he says, I mean, I have it outlined in my sacks, I'm using the CDC review translation here, thanks to you guys. I have the passage in sacks, I can try to pull it up here online in just a second point. But he's in the, at the end of the posterior analytics, he said, you'd have to know these first principles in order to get to scientific knowledge. But what is the status of these first principles themselves?
Well, they're sort of grasped by the intellect somehow. Like, I refer to this as the new sex mocking argument, like it's all of a nous or intellect or intuition comes in and rescues science because you can now grasp the starting points somehow in a sort of fantastic way to me. Well, I mean, like my reading of the final chapter of the posterior analytics is that the question is, how does knowledge of universal arise? The beginning point, the archive, you could say of universal knowledge is particular perceptions.
And eventually, we've had several particular perceptions, you start seeing something as belonging to some class. And that's problematic insofar as this process of induction is not certain. Just the fact that you've seen many instances of something does not mean that you know that it's necessary. It would only, it would only you would only be certain that that process was certain if you were to say something like, well, we have a separate faculty intellect, which is somehow aligned with the universe such that we have an immediate perception of these universals.
Yeah, I mean, this is the age old problem of induction. This is the tour of fun, which Francis Bacon attacks air solve, merciless. Right. Right.
Like, no, you're jumping the gun, right? The tree is not actually a tree, and you're not using the essence of the tree into your what's actually the tree is just strings, right? Or atoms or whatever it is, right? And you and you tree can actually be reduced to subtree to rocks.
And you know, we all know where this is going, humans get reduced to subhuman, right? This kind of process of induction breaking things down and figuring out how you get from these particulars to this to this universal. But I think aerosol recognizes that you need some kind of I mean, I like the way Greg put it, this new second X mock unit, right to come in sort of service the lynch pen this whole thing. Right.
Right. And this was this turned out, I mean, just historically, I brought up for Robbie earlier, but this turned out to be very important, right? In the history of philosophy and in relation to the theology is that, you know, you have this idea that we have your intellect, it's initially passive, but kind of recognizes that there's some kind of coherence to experience and then it becomes active and get into it these essences, at which point it somehow communes with the intention of this sort of thought thinking itself God. And this was a very, very powerful philosophic argument to justify prophecy, right?
Or revelation in medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, right? So this, if it sounds miraculous, it kind of is right. It sort of, it sort of seems to justify, you know, some of the things we would scientifically not take seriously think to give them scientific scaffolding, right? Chapter two, let's do it.
Let me go through his summary of the assumptions we make about wisdom and just so we get a sense of what exactly he's talking about. First off, it's comprehensive. It's about all things, right? Nothing, nothing's left out to.
It's really hard. It's really difficult to know, because any dumbass he says can look at things and say, Oh, that's a dog, right? It takes a lot more to know being asked to which of the dogs are part three, the whoever knows this knows it more exactly. And for he's also a better teacher, because he has knowledge of cause, right?
If I just have a talent at playing the piano, I might not be able to tell you the best form, right? Or tell you exactly what I'm doing. I need to know the cause of good piano playing so I have to be able to part to others. A fifth, it's the most choice worthy for its own sake.
So it's an end in itself. And that separates it from the arts, which makes you want something separate from it, like you want the house and really the art of art of house making. And finally, and this is really important, it's most ruling, right? It rules over the other ones and can prescribe specifically salicy music can prescribe to the lower ones what they ought to do, right?
So it's architectonic as you might. But and then he goes on, I don't know how much detail we want to go into. He goes on to show that all of these assumptions we make are actually interconnected. So we're not talking about multiple sciences, but one single science, which is actually concerned that persists later, right?
He wants to show that there's just one science in the first principle is not multiple. And so this is an important part of the argument because it could be that the most ruling science is not necessarily about all things or is not most exact, right? Or is not a teachable, right? But he's trying to connect them.
So he spends a paragraph or whatever going through how different assumptions apply one another, suggesting that it's all one science that they're seeking. So a small point, I want to go back to where he does this is actually in the gamma four, by the way, the principal non-contradation says it's the most stable of all the starting points. It's at 1006a, a four. It's just like my point is that even the starting points aren't certain.
That's the most stable one of all the starting points. It seems like the starting points would have to be known simply to be able to make progress off them, not simply like if it's most stable that implies that there's still some potential instability in it. I mean, there are people who deny principal non-contradation, for example. So I mean, they're probably wrong, but they'd have to affirm it at the same time.
But I mean, there's a non- there's a serious, right, the world is mysterious. There is a serious version of the dial, I think. Yes. You can affirm it as a principle of human thinking without affirming it is necessarily true of the world, right?
They might structure, and so you can go like full conch or something or like a caricature of conch where it's like, oh, this is just part of thinking, this is how you have to look at the world. You just accept that we don't know, we leave the world just like that. That's not really, I don't think that's really a const view, but it would, if you take this seriously and you say, well, the world is not intelligible to me and there are certain things that could happen that deny the principal non- like, for instance, are we very supposed to flow downstream? And yet sometimes it just stops still or it separates from itself completely randomly.
No, you know, who knows what's causing this? And that's a sort of denial of the principal non-contradiction. But that would resign any kind of attempt to know the world, the pencil non-contradiction, just being arbitrary and kind of a stupid endeavor, right? Right.
I think that's right. That's true. Yeah. No, that's right.
But I think aerosol sensitive to that serious problem of knowledge, that's all. Can I, about these, so you listed six assumptions about like what this wisdom is or what this knowledge or science is, and they, so like, there's something questionable about this process all together and so far as this is what everybody thinks or some people think about what wisdom is. There'd be some question about whether like all of any of them are all of them are like a correct assumption about what wisdom is. And he is trying to assert that a certain type of knowledge is the knowledge we are seeking.
And the way to describe that is, as he did in the previous chapter, it's a science of concerning primary causes and starting points. I think in this chapter, it seems to identify those causes or starting points with certain like universal scientific knowledge somehow. And I'm just tempted to say something like that's a questionable identification to find to like identify that knowledge he's talking about with what people tend to think about. And that's most obvious to me when it comes to the last two assumptions, namely that the science is choice worthy for its own sake, and then it's and that it is more ruling than subordinate.
Just to take the last assumption, when you see, he says, so this is at 982, B1, or three, I guess, he says, the most ruling of the sciences is the one that knows for the sake of which each thing is to be done. And this is the good of each of them, and in general the best good in all of nature. Now, in the earlier sections of this chapter, he's talking about like knowledge of universals. It's hard for me to connect that knowledge of universals, that kind of science with the that or the state on which each thing is to be done.
So I'm just like placing that there is a there's a infusion or problem for me. Can I point to another confusion? I haven't figured out. Go ahead.
So just a paragraph down from where you just left off reading this another very famous line from Aristotle, and it's it's piggyback done or piggybacking on Plato, maybe. He says that it is not a productive scientist clear to from those who first turned to philosophy, since it is because of wondering of things that humans both now and at first began to do philosophy. So here the implication is that wonder is the beginning of philosophy. And you know, I just the first line is all humans by nature desire to know.
And here it's kind of wonder is the beginning of philosophy. And there's just a small point. This is the first time I think he's mentioned philosophy. Am I wrong?
I figure that's right. So he's here the tension that I'm pointing to would be there's a difference between, I would say a desire to know versus, Oh my God, what is that? I mean, I'm not maybe not articulating very well, but like wonder doesn't seem as connected to desire to me. Like wonder is some some data out there in the world has smacked you in the face.
And it's weird. And he sort of talks about reflexes at some point. Like there's just a weird thing that needs it's something that you've got to try to figure out that this does seem more like science for its own sake here, whereas the desire to know seems different. So I'm just pointing out desire or wonder or seem like competing psychological motivations to try to do philosophy.
Yeah, that's why I see the same and maybe connected. Yeah, that's why I think it's important to prepare philosophy to aid in I right to philosophy, having seen right there's a distinction there. I mean, the example I always use when I think about wonders when you're a kid playing in the swimming pool or in Greg's case, in the creek or the creek, the creek, where you there's two kinds of games you play in a pool, you have to throw something down and you swim down and try to get it while holding your breath. Or there's this other thing which is like the ball that's floating, you try to push it down and then it gets really heavy, but like heavy up and then it pops up and it's strange that certain things just sink down.
And I think I remember as a child being like, this is strange, but interesting, right? It's it's it's wonderful. It's not frightening, right? It's not like you're in like filled with fear and trembling at the certain things, certain things float, but that feeling of the problems of buoyancy, you can say or the phenomenon of buoyancy.
Now you can give that a mathematical explanation and remove that wonder, which would then transform philosophy into something like scientific wisdom or something like that. But I think there's there's also more fundamental and it's not clear that you can do this with with being as a whole for reasons we talked about with demonstration and the intellect and everything like that. But it seems like wonder is is that piggyback on what Greg was saying? Wonder is that sort of psychological experience or passionate experience that is pleasant while not being interested in a in a sort of ulterior sense, right?
But here's my problem with I think that that's right. Except it seems like with the desire is the beginning point and wonder is the beginning point both can take missteps. Yes. And so even here this I could see this disinterested wonder quickly recovering into a self-interested oh my god, I have to say, oh, what's that beautiful things viewing from that mountain over there.
That's so beautiful to look at and oh, it's a lot of my shit run, right? But the more serious version of this is some puzzlers turn to become lover of his myths, he says. I don't know. It seems like both can bleed us astray even if they can also lead us to the proper path to knowledge.
And there's also, he says, an attempt to escape the state. My tendency is, I might be a little chemical about this, but I've met many people that study philosophy who valorize wonder as an experienced. And my tendency is to say that it's nonsense. The goal of philosophy, yes, philosophy begins in wonder, but the goal of philosophy is to destroy wonder because those who experience the good part of wonder is that you are aware that you are ignorant.
And then the healthy response to being aware that you're ignorant is to do everything you possibly can to destroy that ignorance. And those who desire to dwell and wonder are not trustworthy and you should avoid them. I'm so softball. I think that's right, right?
You don't want to be like sitting in wonder of you. This is like, it's always irritating when I talk to somebody like a couple of years apart and they still have the same problems or wonders about that's text. I'm like, dude, figure it out. Like we're conscious.
Like trying to get through it. But I think one counterpoint somebody could say to your point, Tom, is that when he gives an example of this, he's talking about incommensibility, right? So he just an example from that, he doesn't choose a philosophic puzzle that he can readily solve, right? That removes it though he obviously does move past certain elementary problems, for instance, some of the pre-segrads, he almost at the end of alpha two, he says, nothing would make a man who knows geometry, wonder more than if the diagonal were to turn out to be commensible.
So I want to take it back and say, okay, yeah, we want to remove wonder as much as possible and to save ignorance on the one hand. On the other hand, this seems to point to this attempt for a completeness of knowledge of the whole, right? That may not be achievable. And one sign that is not achievable is that this example is a mathematician, right?
With a geometrical problem that's readily solved. Well, I would make two points to that. Like, so first of all, a danger, so like this goes back to Grace Point, there's a danger in this desire to destroy wonder, because then you might convince yourself that you have more exact knowledge than you do. And then that's a terrible mistake, because then you don't know.
And the second point I would make is with regard to the diagonal, I mean, like, the incommensibility of the diagonal to the sides is eternally confusing. It's a record, I mean, to recognize that the diagonal is incommensurable is to say that it's not subject to reason in the way that one would want. So I think I guess I'm saying like, the diagonal is actually a good example from mathematics, because it's the kind of example where that includes this like recognition of the irrationality of the things that you wish in a small point. But I'm struck by the beginning of some of Zenithin's works.
There's a lot of points began, I once wondered or something like this. And then the memorabilia, I frequently wondered about Socrates. So the application being like, I wondered, right? So it is trying to destroy wonder.
I had this, there's this curious thing about Spartans, why are these so powerful and well renowned? But I figured it out. I don't, Zenithin, I Zenithin don't wonder about anymore. There was this human puzzle that I've actually answered to my own satisfaction.
I mean, that's related to I think the we've alluded to this like Hesiod and the poets. My like one definition of poetry is that it like maintains wonder. Interesting. There was on Twitter, there's a chemistry.
There was a tweet on Twitter, there's a fellow the other day that said, you know, I've never read a work of philosophy that has made me cry, like Shakespeare. And that's true. And that's like, that's a deep thought. On the other hand, like, from the point of view of philosophy, it's like, yeah, I mean, like, that's, that's a problem of poetry that I mentioned, in written, instead of thinking.
I don't know, I'm trying reading the phenomenology of spirit. But I think that's a really good point, just to read your point a little bit about the geometry, but maybe just to spell it out a little bit. There is a kind of scientific knowing demonstrable knowledge that proves the limit of you, right? That recognizes that geometry knows the things of numbers, but the things regarding numbers are only so far and noble, demand or maybe simply, right?
It's any kind of knowing being. And this, if you apply this into philosophy, this would mean that the attempt to give a, I'm going to tie this back to the stuff about the Ursula particular, but the attempt to know all things completely will be very difficult. I think that's true. And I think it will be very exact, right?
It might not be capable of ruling and prescribing, in the sense that we would like, but it would at least understand the extent to which saying I know Greg, because he is a rational animal, means that I know everybody, right? But I don't know everybody. And so recognizing that tension between the universal particular working through the arguments that he goes on to work through, particularly through the middle books, especially books of data, gives you a sense of the fact that the science of wisdom, whatever this science is, is essentially apparatic about certain basic things you want to know, right? That you can't get certain problems or puzzles.
Or like, another way to put this is the opening line, which is like all human beings desire to know, and our glosses to know completely, the desire to know completely can be an obstacle to knowing properly. And like, properly knowing is like recognizing the limits to knowing completely. Now, I'm going to add like another like element to this like difficulty or like awareness of the limits of knowing from the second chapter, like the fifth assumption is that knowledge, like wisdom is for its own sake. The sixth assumption is that it's good.
And though that's like, that's another way, that's like another type of difficulty, those are opposed, you cannot like, or those are not simply reconcilable or take some thinking to reconcile those things. And so it's possible that knowledge, you know, does not accomplish what you wish it to. So, Yeah, I mean, to tie this out, Aristotle works, if you go look at the beginning of the ethics, right, it's talking about there's an architect's science at the good, and then you look at the end of the ethics and saying, well, this is this sort of theoretical science, it goes into a digression with politics. And I don't know how you get back to the organ, this is the sixth.
Okay, I have to work out one day, but you can see how it kind of takes this detour to politics, but you do have this deep relation to the ethics, which he quotes here. We've gone on pretty long, but I feel like we should talk, I mean, we should have went all together, talk of the poets of the divine and all that. Let me make, let me do this like initial gloss on it, just connected what we were saying before, which is that the, I mean, my reading on it was my read on was that the poets are the lovers of myth, or at least they appeal to the lovers of myth. And what they present is that the world is more mysterious than one could possibly understand.
And the attempt to understand that mysterious world is, I mean, this is anachronistic, it's simple. So what they provide is the hope that the world has this wonder in it. And the thing that they take away is like the possibility of the human to like seek it. So I have a question.
I don't know if this takes us too far. This strikes me as absolutely 100% right, Tom, but what helped me to understand the human longing, either if you can, what is to be gained, like if this is a real human type that wants there to be wonder and wants the world to be mysterious. Why? Why wouldn't it?
So for example, all human spiders, my nature is there to know, why wouldn't we want to know? Because I think you're right, this is a strong, there's a very common type. There's this there's this deep longing for it, not to know what is the root of that. I mean, like, well, there's, there's two, why are there people who love poetry?
Well, there's two responses. And one is that like the mystery itself is something certain and known. And but then the other direction, you're certain of the fact of mystery, for example, or like the mis, like, you mean my mystery is actually like a particular experience that wasn't, or maybe the second point I want to make is connected to that, which is that the world as it appears to us is con to this goes back to the themes in the first chapter, the world is it's known to us, makes what is pleasant, reusable to us impossible. I was wondering if it was also not some dim awareness that you're mentioning one of the assumptions about the science that's good.
I was wondering if it's some possible dim awareness that it better mysterious than bad. Well, that's what I mean. The assumption is it's a ruling science and it's it's the one that knows for the sake of which each thing is to be done. And this is the good of each of them.
And in general, the best good in all of nature, right, the prospect of having knowledge of the best good and all of nature is very attractive. And that might be more compatible with wonder where the world is presented by the one experience than by that. That makes sense. So let me I want to be the beginning of rules book on the metaphysics, Aristotle's teacher, it's not the beginning of the book, it's the beginning of his commentary on alpha one, where he says to the question that must be put at the outset, where I want to take an interest in science at all, Aristotle answers all human beings yearn by nature to know.
I want to focus on that question that he puts. Why should one take an interest in science at all? To gloss that, we could call it the question why science, which rule I mean, obviously has a mind Strauss there. And the fundamental question of philosophy is the challenge of philosophy is why science?
Why would you try to know? I think one of the basic ways for philosophers to defend their enterprise is to say that all human beings deep down just want wisdom, right? They're all lovers of wisdom. Now one way to love wisdom, this is getting out there, you think back to the first possibility of the time we don't, one way to love wisdom is to start thinking through the principles of the beings and reading the priests of the critics and working through all the causes and the physics and do all that sort of stuff.
The other way is to say, he's he had his wives, he's talked to the muses, I really want wisdom, let me get it from him and to try to do an end run around the whole difficulty of the science. But the argument apparently would be something like this that in so doing the pious believer, right, who trusts in heseid and is communing with the gods is secretly conceiting or unwittingly conceiving to philosophy, this fundamental human drive, right? That what you want is wisdom. And if that source of that was to prove questionable or uncertain, then the certainty part of it, that expectation that it's exact, right?
And that it really is wisdom starts to override this sort of trust or this love of myth or this love of wonders that you get from the poets, something like that. But I think it's, I was really shocked when I first read that, not shocked, but really like impressed by how powerfully brawls situated the beginning of the metaphysics relative to the problem of reason of revelation is very clearly that stresses whole project in mind. So you're inclined to see like my modities and frobial, the medieval slurking of that kind of thing. It looks like an evil book also.
Well, I hate to do this because I could probably go for another half hour or 45 minutes, but using as time as my air, my people coming to be a commentator, I'm decided that we're going to call rule for now on the commentator. I love it. I'm very reasonable. Yeah, and with him, yeah, it seems like a appropriate place to end.
Well, folks, we hope you enjoyed the episode on just the first and a little bit of the second chapter of Aristotle's metaphysics book alpha. Thanks as always to our resident expert on Cleveland coming in on loan from the Jack Miller, Senator Davis, a little drop a little that wisdom that we all long for. Don't forget that all humans also long to like, rate and subscribe the new thinkery. And Alex, I was going to say I don't want you to be more questionable.
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We'll see you next week on the new thinkory. Bye folks. And David, by the way, folks at home, David is contemplating eternal beatings. He's he's all struck and dump struck right now.
David, am I wrong? I guess not David. I had listened to our episode on prophecy and dream. So we went to sleep.
So he said to get wisdom the other way. All right, folks, we'll see you on