International Catholic University
[There follow the outlines on which the taped lectures were based.
- - Ralph McInerny]
First of all, clear your mind of all meanings and association the term "metaphysics" or "metaphysical" has for you. We are embarking on a course that has little to do with what you might find in a used book store under Metaphysics, nor are we concerned with "the round earth's imagined corners."
The term refers first of all to a work of Aristotle's, but one to which he did not give the title Metaphysics.
* possibly derivative from the placement of the scrolls meta ta physica
After the work on physical things, things that come to be as a result of a change and have within themselves the principle of change, matter . . . the work that studied things beyond these is presumably concerned with things which do not have matter . . .
The opening chapters of Aristotle's Metaphysics provide us with a remarkable panorama, at once an overview of the whole task of philosophy, and a presentation that stirs our desire for the aim of philosophy. The love of wisdom. I.1-2 provides us with the itinerary that leads to wisdom.
"All men by nature desire to know."
This seemingly improbable remark is cashed in by Aristotle immediately. "A sign of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness, they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight."
"The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and have little of connected experience; but the human race lives also by art and reasonings."
It is to these he will now advance
Experience can seem indistinguishable from art and science.
Science and art come to men through experience.
"Now art arises when from many notions gained by experience one universal judgment about a class of objects is produced."
Know how / know why
Knowledge and understanding -- belong to art rather than experience
Master works as opposed to assembly line workers
Knowing the causes
Men who know the causes are considered wiser.
Wisdom will be knowledge about principles and causes.
"All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness, they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight." -- Aristotle
If wisdom is knowledge of causes, of what causes?
The marks of the wise man might give us a clue
The wise man
Knows all things as far as possible though not in detail
Things that are difficult . . . sense perception is easy
More exact and capable of teaching the causes
Knows what is desirable on its own account
Knows the superior rather than the ancillary science
Wise man orders rather than is ordered
a] But knowing all things belongs to him who has universal knowledge
b] the most universal are the hardest to know
c] the most exact science deals with first principles
d] knowledge for its own sake is especially found in knowledge of what is most knowable
e] the science that knows the end for the sake of which is most authoritative
Wisdom is not a science of production; theoretical
"For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little . . . etc.
Hence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders...
It was when all the necessities of life and the things that make for comfort and recreation
Beyond human power . . . God alone has this privilege . . .
"For the science which it would be most meet for God to have is a divine science, and so is any science that deals with divine objects; and this science has both these qualities."
God is thought to be among the causes of all things and to be a first principle
Such a science either God alone can have or God above all others
Wisdom as divine science
"For the science which it would be most meet for God to have is a divine science, and so is any science which deals with divine objects." -- Aristotle
This panorama enables us to see that for Aristotle and Thomas philosophy is an umbrella term
not a science among others
It covers them all
Schema
Division into spec and practical
Division of each into three sciences
The order of learning . . .
"It is absolutely impossible to explain the peculiar state of the extant writings without the supposition that they contain traces of different stages in his evolution." -- Werner Jaeger
Until our century, they were regarded as a single unified work
In 1912, Werner Jaeger proposed a genetic reading of the Metaphysics which effective dissolved its unity
For decades scholars vied with one another to provide chronological accounts . . .
People wearied of this . . . let's read Aristotle
But it is not simply that people got bored . . . Jaeger's thesis is untenable
In a nutshell he argues that there are two rival conceptions of the science in the Metaphysics and that Aristotle never succeeds in unifying them
Ontology
Theology
Thus far we have been stressing metaphysics as theology . . . but we we shall see, in order for it to be a theology, it must first be an ontology